The New York Times today covers a fascinating dilemma for the Lord: When BYU, an officially Mormon school, competes against the University of Utah, a mostly-Mormon-but-also-Christian public school, in their annual “Holy War,” is a victory predetermined by the guy upstairs? It’s a sensitive subject:

“Obviously, if you do what’s right on and off the field, I think the Lord steps in and plays a part in it,” said Collie, the Cougars’ leading receiver this season. “Magic happens.”

That comment has not been forgotten by the Utes.

“It definitely rubs guys the wrong way,” said Utah defensive end Paul Kruger, who is Mormon. “We’ve got guys who go to chapel every day after practice, people who are doing good things up here. People think that just because they go to a religious school, God’s blessed them with success.”

Perhaps religious schools should only play heathen liberal arts colleges. We certainly don’t want a good-natured “Holy War” to evolve into a “Thirty Years War,” now do we?

By now college admissions officers are used to their schools taking a hit because of the economy. A complete campus power-down? If we must. Fewer TAs and books, and brown lawns? Anything to stay within budget. So you can imagine their surprise when they checked out early-decision stats and actually saw a rise in fall applicants. Selective private institutions like Dartmouth, Middlebury, Northwestern and Pomona have all seen at least a 10% jump in students wanting to secure their spot in the 2009 freshman class. Remarks an admissions officer at Wesleyan (who experienced a whopping 40% hike in early-decision apps, compared to last year):

It’s hard to believe that one group of 17-year-olds has become more decisive than the group you saw the previous year. So maybe it’s that in a time of economic uncertainty, people want something settled.

So high school seniors are less willing to roll the dice on college admissions in exchange for a more stable future? Dude they sound like my parents.

(Source: The New York Times)

What better way to understand poverty than by playing pretend?

Last year, Princeton ran a month-long simulation called “Realville.” Participants were assigned families and budgets — and even given paper money! Starting tomorrow, you can follow Realville: The Sequel.

Maybe this is a good idea. After all, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed — a super book about living on minimum wage — after undercover reporting as a waitress, maid, and Wal-Mart employee. But she was actually living on those wages, not pretending to, and for way more than a month. Using Monopoly money and then going back to your Princeton dorm room (with, by the way, free laundry) is a little different.

Then again, it didn’t take long for fake prisoners and guards in the Stanford prison experiment to get carried away.

Tuition increases. Budget cuts. How are college students suppose to pay for college while times are rough? Maybe it’s time for some donations. According to the The Harvard Crimson, Ivy League brothers Michael Kopko (Harvard ‘07) and Matthew Kopko (Princeton ‘08) created a new Web application called GradeFund, which gives broke students the opportunity to invite family and community members (your family doctor, your mom’s cool, wealthy boss) to pledge money towards their education for getting all those A’s.

Here’s how it works: students upload their transcripts onto the site, and when grades improve, the application collects money from donors and sends it to the students’ colleges. Getting an A in your statistics class is reward enough, but getting an A and $1,000 from donors to lessen the loan load sure sounds a lot better.

It’s no surprise that college students went overwhelmingly for Big Barry Obama in this month’s presidential election. Was it his refreshing take on foreign policy? College debt programs? Or was it his strong support of a college football playoff system?

On the campaign trail, and in his 60 Minutes interview last Sunday, Obama has come out firmly in favor of foregoing the endless BCS (Bowl Championship Series) in favor of a bracketed playoff system that would have ranked teams go ’round, NCAA basketball tourney-style, in order to determine the national champion. The playoff system would give underrated teams a chance to show their stuff on the field, not in the polls. Change we can believe in, right?

But others aren’t so sure, noting that the college football regular season schedule, conferences, and rules would have to be seriously re-shuffled to make it happen. Maybe it won’t happen during Obama’s first presidential term…but hey, how about the second?

Wow, I feel old. The New York Times reports that Boston College will not give out school e-mail addresses to newly-enrolled students, since so many students are showing up to school with their own pre-existing digital addresses. But don’t worry, incoming BC freshmen–your dreams of a university account of your very own aren’t completely dashed. BC will still assign bc.edu addresses, but instead of setting up a separate inbox and password, all mail will be forwarded to already existing accounts like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. (jk, who uses Hotmail?)

The school figures that, at this day and age, students are so digitally savvy that they don’t need another account. (Not to mention they’ll save a buck or two in IT costs.) Touche, BC. Could this be the dawn of a new era? Only time will tell. But for now I’m dying to see what peeps at Twitter are saying about this!

Just how far are schools willing to go to combat budget crunches? For two weeks in December and July, Western Kentucky University will shut down completely. Western’s VP of finance and administration hopes this measure will cover a little over $100,000, or 20%, of the $500+ hike in energy bills.

Hey do you think if energy prices continue to rise and school budgets continue to fall, entire states will close up shop for a while? Vacay!

Yeah, burn.

Last year, Brown profs went for the free-for-all approach: the majority of grades administered were As. What happened to working for it?

Also…sign me up, please.

(Source: Brown’s Office of Institutional Research via Inside Higher Ed)

Mighty Joe the Plumber was being feted for a while on TV, right wing radio, the blogosphere, and even in Nashville, TN, where he was rumored to be considering a country music career. But the media got distracted when the next bumblebee flew by. As his latest chitchat with the Tufts student newspaper shows though, we should not let this guy slip out of the spotlight yet. He gives great interview:

Obama has been closely linked to many terrorists. Again this is not rhetoric; [these are] facts that the media did not want to bring out. Rasheed Kahalidi being amongst one of them, and there are nine or 10 others … These close ties scare me. As far as Obama getting into office with his ties and with the fact that he is willing to be dictated to by a known terrorist — [that] scares me for Israel.

That Rashid Khalidi! What a terrorist! Where is he being held again? Oh yeah, Columbia University, where he’s been a professor since leaving the University of Chicago. Huh. Maybe another student newspaper could call Joe up and ask him whether the “nine or 10 others” are also just guys with Arab last names.

(Source: Wonkette)

Not everyone gets their college choice right the first time around. But is transferring to another school really going to solve all your problems? A new study from the National Survey of Student Engagement (via the Chronicle of Higher Ed) found that transfer students have a harder time getting involved and interacting on campus than classmates who were there from the get-go. Specifically, when seniors who had transferred were compared to “native” seniors (who had stayed at the same school all four years), the survey showed:

• Transfer seniors were less likely to collaborate with classmates than natives (54 percent versus 64 percent).
• They were also less likely to talk to professors about career plans than their classmates (40 percent versus 49 percent).
• About half as many transfer seniors participated in campus activities as non-transfers.

But don’t get down on your chances of collegiate happiness if you’re planning on transferring. Many schools, including the University of Southern California, University of California-Santa Barbara, and Texas Tech, have recently stepped up resources for transfer students to ease the transition.