Student Loan Blog : undergraduates

UC System Needs a Boost of Higher-Paying Students

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:53:00 GMT

The University of California public school system is considering increasing the number of out-of-state students it accepts in an effort to help UC schools bring in more revenue and offset cuts in state funding, reports the Los Angeles Times (“UC Officials Debate Accepting More Non-Californians to Boost Revenue,” Jan. 4, 2008).

With the California budget gap now reaching nearly $15 billion and the state’s contribution to the UC system per student having fallen nearly 40 percent since 1990, the school system hopes increasing the number of out-of-state students will provide a substantial funding boost. Once school costs are met the university system gains $100,000 for every 10 out-of-state students it enrolls, since out-of-state students who attend UC schools pay about $20,000 more than in-state students, half of which is strictly profit.

Although accepting more non-California students could help the school system compensate for funding shortages, opponents of the idea warn that it also could squeeze out qualified California students.

“When we start chasing that money as a substitute for state money, that’s bad public policy,” said Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a member of the UC board of regents.

The idea to step up recruiting efforts out-of-state may not be unique to California; it may begin to gain traction at universities nationwide “as a matter of survivability,” says David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges in Washington, D.C. The premium tuition out-of-state students pay helps schools to cover their basic operating costs and to subsidize in-state students’ fees, he says.

Currently, about 10 percent of the UC system’s 220,000 students in undergraduate and graduate programs are non-California residents. Other prestigious state universities in Colorado, Michigan, and Virginia enroll more than 30 percent of students in their freshmen classes from other states.

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Program to Offer NY Students Low-Cost College Loans

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:36:00 GMT

Despite New York’s $15 billion budget deficit, Gov. David Paterson announced he is creating a student loan program that would allow New York college students to borrow $350 million in low-cost private student loans directly from the state, reports The New York Times (“Governor to Unveil a Low-Cost Student Loan Program,” Dec. 15, 2008).

State officials say the new student loan program, meant to help the state “retain the best and the brightest young minds,” will offer lower rates than most private student loans — potentially as low as 8 percent. Interest rates will be adjusted annually based on market conditions.

Paterson plans to allocate $50 million in state funds to jumpstart the program and $10 million each year thereafter — a key recommendation of the Commission on Higher Education. The commission studied New York’s higher education system for more than a year and found that the state’s 1 million college and graduate students had taken out $2 billion in private loans, and that those students often paid as much as 12 percent on their loans, double the interest that students paid in states with low-cost student loan programs.

Paterson hopes the loan program will help ease the financial challenges that face students now that lenders have tightened their credit criteria and as public and private colleges consider tuition increases to cope with state budget cuts. To help balance the state budget, Paterson has proposed increasing tuition at the City University of New York and the State University of New York.

“One of the big problems in the student loan program is that it is drying up,” said Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for the budget division of the governor’s office. “People who were able to get loans last year can’t get them this year.”

Under the loan initiative, students at two-year colleges would be eligible to take out a maximum of $20,000 in loans, while undergraduates at four-year institutions could borrow up to $50,000. New York students pursuing both an undergraduate and graduate degree would be capped at borrowing a combined total of $70,000 in private student loans.

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Colleges Using Creative Solutions to Meet Growing Demand For On-Campus Housing

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:20:00 GMT

Forty percent more upperclassmen requested on-campus housing this year at the University of Missouri than the previous year, creating a housing-accommodation challenge that colleges across the country are facing this fall, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Campuses See Rising Demand for Housing,” August 1, 2008).

This demand for housing is increasing at the same time that many colleges are expanding the number of freshmen who will be competing for the same limited on-campus housing that upperclassmen, many of whom had forgone college dorms for off-campus apartment living, are now also seeking.

Increased Demand for Housing Compounded by Larger Freshmen Classes

This year, the University of Missouri’s freshmen class increased 14 percent over 2007, and the school ended up needing 1,000 more beds than it did in the fall, according to Frankie Minor, the school’s director of residence life.

To help meet the demand, the school opened new dorms, renovated older buildings, leased rooms in two private apartment buildings, and reopened an old residence hall that had been converted to office space.

The need for on-campus housing is so great at the University of Washington, that 5,100 students are living in buildings that were designed to house only 4,100. And as the university prepares for its largest freshmen class ever at 5,600 students — 100 more than last year’s class — the problem may only get worse. To ensure current and new students have adequate housing, the Seattle university plans to add 2,400 beds for both freshmen and upperclassmen in the next 10 to 12 years.

The housing dilemma is similar at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. This year 5,670 returning students will live on campus, some 350 more than last year. The school recently opened a 172-bed apartment complex, but until the addition of 600 more spaces is completed in 2010, students are living in converted lounges and being packed into double rooms that have temporarily been converted into triples.

Educators say the housing shortage may either be a fluke or the beginning of a new trend brought on by rising rent prices off campus, soaring energy costs, and gas prices that have topped $4 per gallon.

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Harvard Professor Urges Students to Consider Public Service Over Wall Street

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:53:00 GMT

A Harvard University education professor is challenging undergraduates at elite colleges to forgo high-paying consulting and finance jobs, for careers in public service.

The professor, Howard Gardner, is leading seminars at Harvard and, Amherst College in Massachusetts, and Colby College in Maine, to encourage undergraduates to reflect more seriously on the connection between their education and their aspirations, according to an article in The New York Times (“Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to Test,” June 23, 2008).

“Are Ivy League schools simply becoming selecting mechanisms for Wall Street?” Gardner asks.

Gardner’s question has college officials at these schools contemplating whether too many of their top students, some of whom might otherwise choose to enter professions that aren’t measured by financial success, are choosing money over their ideals.

“We’re in the business of graduating people who will make the world better in some way,” says Anthony Marx, president of Amherst College. “That’s what justifies the expense of the education.”

Corporate Jobs Hold Big Appeal for College Graduates With Student Loans

Some universities, like Amherst, Harvard, Tufts University, and the University of Pennsylvania, are so concerned about corporate America’s hold over new graduates, that they have expanded their public service fellowship and internship programs.

This year Tufts announced it would pay off college loans for graduates who choose to work in the public-service sector. And officials at Harvard, Penn, Amherst, and a number of other colleges tell the Times that one reason they have begun offering financial aid packages that offer more grant money than student loans, is so their students don’t feel pressured to pursue lucrative careers just to be able to pay off their college debt.

While colleges and universities are taking steps to give graduates more freedom in choosing a career path by offering expanded financial aid, some students still prefer the safe, financially secure route.

Akshay Ganju, who wanted to become a doctor when he enrolled at Harvard four years ago, recently accepted a full-time job with Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm. The generous salary, he says, will make it possible for him to pay off his college loans.

“I don’t think the point of our education is to make us rich,” Ganju said. “We all feel we want to do something meaningful beyond just accumulating wealth.”

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Teach for America Sees Surge in Applications

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:40:00 GMT

Teach for America, the nonprofit program that recruits graduates of elite colleges to become teachers at underserved public schools, is on a winning streak, according to U.S. News & World Report (“Plenty of Praise for Teach for America,” June 20, 2008).

This year Teach for America applications jumped to 25,000 from 18,000 last year — a 37 percent increase. And this fall, the organization will place 3,700 new teachers in classrooms across the country, up from 2,900 last year.

A recent study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research institution, concluded that Teach for America is successful at turning high-achieving college graduates with no prior experience or coursework in education, into effective teachers. Authors of the study found that “TFA teachers’ effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience,” particularly in math and science.

Founded by Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp, who was recently named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, Teach for America looks for candidates with strong critical thinking skills, solid grades, and who have the ability to influence and motivate others.

Among this year’s recruits, 90 are from the University of Michigan, 60 are from the University of Illinois, and the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas each have 50 graduates joining Teach for America.

The program will place teachers in more than 100 school districts located in 29 urban and rural areas this fall.

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New Report Details Federal Grant, Student Loan Trends

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

During the 2005–06 academic year, 75 percent of the 2.7 million full-time undergraduates pursuing a program certification or a bachelor’s degree for the first time received one or more types of financial aid, according to a new report on enrollment in postsecondary institutions by the National Center for Education Statistics.

The report focused on data supplied by Title IV institutions, schools that must comply with government-mandated rules regarding federal financial aid. Authors of the report found that 37 percent of undergraduates received federal grants, 28 percent received state or local grants, 29 percent received institutional grants, and 46 percent had taken out student loans.

The pattern of aid distribution varied depending on the type of school students attended.

At private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, 60 percent of undergraduates took out college loans and 75 percent had institutional grants. Some 44 percent of students at public four-year schools took out student loans and 34 percent had institutional grants. While at public two-year colleges only 18 percent of undergraduates borrowed student loans and 11 percent received grants from their schools.

NCES researchers found that borrowing was highest at for-profit institutions, where 67 percent of undergraduate students at four-year colleges and universities and 73 percent of those at two-year schools took out student loans.

The NCES report was compiled using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which collects data from all schools that receive federal funds.

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Wilkes University Puts Freshman Recruits Front and Center and Billboard-Size

Student Loan Girl — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:56:00 GMT

Wilkes University, a small, private school in northeastern Pennsylvania, is using a quirky new in-your-face $120,000 ad campaign to get the attention of today’s media- and marketing-savvy students.

The university is plastering personalized messages on billboards, pizza boxes, gas pumps, and even on MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central to students it wants to make a part of its freshman class, reports Michael Rubinkam in a story by The Associated Press (“Pennsylvania College Woos Students by Putting Them in Ads,” April 30, 2008).

The “trendsetting and forward-thinking” marketing campaign appeals to the “look-at-me generation,” teens comfortable sharing all-things-personal on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, says Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association.

The Message: Personalized and Not for the Shy

Wilkes features applicants in its ads who have a “mix of talents and determination” and who live in markets where the university wants to promote itself, says Jack Chielli, the school’s director of marketing. Students must also consent to having their names used.

The ads, writes Rubinkam, are meant “to convey the message that the school gets to know its students personally and pays close attention to their needs.”

To get messages with the right personal touch, 160over90, the Philadelphia marketing firm contracted by Wilkes, interviews participating students and their friends and families, uncovering likes, dislikes, hobbies, nicknames.

The agency uses the information it gleans from these in-depth interviews to design the highly personalized ads that have turned some college-bound seniors into quasi-celebrities in their high schools and communities:

“Lake Lehman senior Greg Heindel: You give your time at the soup kitchen, the firehouse, and your church summer camp. Wilkes University would like to give you something — a top-quality education.”
“Hey Kristen Pecka. Only your closest friends at Central Catholic call you Pecka-lecka-lecka. Choose Wilkes University and add 2,362 more people to that list.”
“Scranton High senior Nicole Pollock: Our goal at Wilkes University is to be as much a mentor as your mother has been. (Now, if we could only make her ravioli.)”

Each ad includes an invitation to “call a Colonel” (the school’s mascot) and provides a phone number that plays a recorded message from a current Wilkes student.

It’s the Thought That Counts

Even if targeted recruits end up choosing another school, says Chielli, he considers the ads successful as long as they continue to grab attention and get other students to think about Wilkes.

But besides drawing more students to apply, the school wants to help make it possible for them to actually attend: Nearly all students receive some form of financial aid apart from student loans to help cover the $25,000 price tag. Wilkes awards $22 million in financial aid each year.

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Death by Popcorn

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:43:00 GMT

Microwave popcorn “pushers” grossed well over a billion dollars ($1.33 billion to be exact) in the year 2000.

But this popular, ubiquitous snack food may be adversely affecting your health, making you sick and potentially even leading to death.

We’re totally serious: Your microwave popcorn could be killing you.

Smog, Carbon Monoxide, and Now—the Waft of Bogus Butter

Whether you’re settling in on the couch to take a TiVo break or just looking for an easy snack, microwave popcorn has a tantalizing go-to convenience: five minutes and you’re in hot buttered heaven.

But that rich, savory smell is exactly what got one Colorado man seriously sick. “When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” writes Gardiner Harris in a New York Times article (“Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit,” Sep. 5, 2007).

That fragrance comes from diacetyl, a chemical added to microwave popcorn to give it its buttery flavor and smell. Although eating foods that contain diacetyl hasn’t previously been found to pose health risks, inhalation of the fumes produced when diacetyl is heated has been linked to “popcorn lung,” a respiratory disease found in workers at food-flavoring factories and popcorn plants.

The Colorado man, Wayne Watson, went to his doctor, plagued by a worsening cough and deteriorating shortness of breath.

A self-confessed “Mr. Popcorn,” Watson told his personal physician, Dr. Cecile Rose, that he had been eating at least two bags of microwave popcorn every day for over 10 years. Rose discovered the popcorn link on a hunch, asking Watson about his popcorn consumption after noticing similarities between Watson’s symptoms and those of popcorn factory workers afflicted with popcorn lung.

Following her theory, Rose measured levels of diacetyl in Watson’s home after he made popcorn and found levels of the chemical were comparable to those in microwave popcorn plants. Naturally, she encouraged Watson to kick his popcorn habit.

Six months later, Watson’s lung condition has improved. But that hasn’t alleviated concerns among the medical community and industry officials: Until Watson, popcorn lung had only been found only in flood-flavoring and popcorn plant workers, not in everyday consumers.

Professional Poppers Plagued by “Popcorn Lung”

Popcorn lung, medically referred to as bronchiolitis obliterans, is the obliteration of tiny airways in the lungs and can be fatal. When the vapors from heated diacetyl are inhaled over a long period of time, Harris explains, “the small airways in the lungs [can] become swollen and scarred. Sufferers can breathe in deeply, but they have difficulty exhaling.”

Flavoring manufacturers have so far paid out over $100 million as a result of lawsuits brought by affected workers, according to ABC News (“Could Microwave Popcorn Be Toxic?,” May 16, 2007).

ABC recounts the case of Jerry Blaylock, a 53-year-old employee for a flavoring company in St. Louis, Mo. After just 10 months at the plant, Blaylock developed the condition and his lungs now only function at 45 percent capacity. Blaylock says he can no longer take his grandchildren to amusement parks or the zoo.

ConAgra Foods, manufacturer of Orville Redenbacher popcorn, has acknowledged a concern for “workplace exposure” to diacetyl, but told ABC News that “everyday use of its popcorn was safe for consumers.”

Despite ConAgra’s and other manufacturers’ assurances that the disease is isolated to plant workers, Watson’s case—which, according to Daniel DeNoon at WebMD, led Rose to fire off a letter on July 18 to the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—has raised concerns about the risks to consumers (“Microwave Popcorn Linked to Lung Harm,” Sep. 5, 2007).

Stopping the Pop, at Least for Now

So what does this mean for those of us who love our microwave popcorn and refuse to part with it, in spite of all the evidence that those delicious buttery aromas could be harming us?

You could continue eating it, but with some precautions. Here are some suggestions for dealing with the deadly fumes when your bag is fresh from the microwave:

§ Open it underneath your stove’s fan in the kitchen while holding your breath.

§ Have your least favorite roommate open it for you, then pretend you never read this article.

§ Open the bag and eat as much as you can as quickly as possible without breathing. Hope you don’t burn yourself.

For those of you who have the willpower to stay away from your five-minute snack that’s loaded with deadly diacetyl, you won’t have to deny yourselves forever.

Pop Weaver has already eliminated diacetyl from its products. And makers of major-league brands Orville Redenbacher, Act II, Pop Secret and Jolly Time have announced they’ll also be releasing diacetyl-free versions of their microwave popcorn.

Waiting until then to indulge your craving for a whiff of bagged imitation butter may be the wisest and healthiest move you can make.

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Gaming Industry Giving Back to Its Girl Gamers

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:51:00 GMT

As big-name video game companies in the multibillion dollar gaming industry search for ways to expand their market share and find new audiences in an increasingly saturated marketplace, some of them are turning to a segment that’s oft-ignored in the gaming world: Females. Working moms and stay-at-home moms, college girls and school girls are poised to embrace this technology-as-entertainment trend, and gaming companies want to find ways to tailor their products and services to this up-and-coming demographic.

Christa Phillips, one of Microsoft’s “goodwill ambassadors” who monitor player behavior in the corporate giant’s Xbox Live online gaming communities, estimates that females already comprise about 10 to 20 percent of their seven-million-strong audience, according to an L.A. Times article by Alex Pham (“A Refuge for Women in a Hostile Game Space,” Sep. 3, 2007).

And Microsoft is looking for more.

Some hardcore male gamers, flocking to the online worlds of popular, male-dominated games like BioShock, World of Warcraft and Halo, have raised their controllers in objection to female intrusion, engaging in sexually charged greetings and hostile game play.

“American society has evolved since the advancement of women’s rights in the 1960s,” writes Pham. “But the world of video gaming has been largely stuck in a time warp with its frat house culture of sexual insults and put-downs.”

Despite some male gamers' negative reception of their female counterparts, gaming executives are beginning to recognize the benefits of welcoming more women into the traditionally male industry and of creating a supportive environment for female participation.

Changing the Face of Gaming

Whereas male gamers will spend hours immersed in virtual combat zones and first-person shooting expeditions, female players tend to be drawn to games that involve puzzles, social interaction and strong story lines.

At a panel at the 2005 Game Developers Conference focusing on female gamers, a British researcher unveiled a study that found that

more so than men, women in the UK like strong plots, rich characterizations, choices in goal-attainment strategies, freedom of self-expression, novelty, immersion in atmospheric environments, games they can immediately pick up and play, flexibility, and social interaction.

A games analyst for market researcher NPD Group presented his findings that 93.9 percent of Nintendo’s female base “prefers card, puzzle, arcade, or word games” (“GDC Panel Charts Trajectory of the Female Gamer,” March 10, 2005).

Gaming companies trying to build their female player demographic are striving to recruit more female programmers and writers to create games like these, with more female appeal.

But these companies find themselves in a catch-22: They want more female developers in order to design games that entice more female players, but they need more games that appeal to female players in order to entice females into the gaming industry. Considering that women working in the gaming industry dropped to 11.5 percent in 2005 from 17 percent the previous year, according to Gamasutra.com, the companies might be facing an uphill battle (“Soapbox: ARGs and How to Appeal to Female Gamers,” Nov. 29, 2005).

Yet not all industry analysts attribute the fledgling female gaming market to a lack of females in the business. Some cite greater competition among entertainment sources for female attention.

A panelist at the 2005 GDC, for example, “hypothesized that the explanation for why women don’t prefer games as strongly as men may be the result of men watching less television (as they shift to interactive entertainment), and television programs more aggressively recruiting female viewers.”

Another panelist suggested that gaming companies should take these entertainment preferences into account and focus on cultivating the status of many female gamers as “secondary” or “nondominant” gamers instead of trying to recruit or convert women to become primary gamers, who tend to be mostly male.

Females Virtually “Go to the Mattresses”

Besides custom-tailoring their game design and marketing approach, gaming companies working to expand their female customer base are beginning to realize they must show care for their female gamers who venture into male-dominated virtual worlds.

This realization has led to strategies like Microsoft’s recruitment of monitors like Phillips, to help defuse the sometimes heated environment stirred up by veteran gamers in some Xbox Live communities.

Phillips has run her online group, GamerchiX, since June 2006 and drew her inspiration from PMS Clan—that’s Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers—an online gaming group of female competitive players.

GamerchiX, Pham explains, “functions as a virtual Grand Central Terminal for women and girls who tread into the testosterone-steeped world of console gaming.”

Phillips says she wanted her fellow gamers to have a place to turn and feel supported when they experience the trash-talking, the naysaying, and the come-ons.

“I wanted to create a safe place for all women gamers,” Phillips says in Pham’s article. “It’s a place where you can go to socialize and not have to worry about being harassed or hit on.”

Phillips’ role as TriXie in the gaming world mirrors her role as a mother of two in the real world, as she oversees her GamerchiX like a mother hen. She holds the power to revoke Xbox Live playing rights from male gaming bullies when and if she receives complaints from one of her girls of stalking or harassment.

And the hassling female gamers experience can run the gamut.

“I’ve heard it all,” says PMS Clan founder Amber Dalton in Pham’s article. “They tell you to go to the kitchen and get them a sandwich. Or they ask you if you’re hot. You can also be targeted just because you’re a girl. They all just start shooting at you the second they find out you’re a girl.”

But GamerchiX doesn’t protect its members just from male badgering; the girls must also abide by a code of ethics Phillips calls a “manifesta,” which prohibits them from engaging in virtual cat fights or trash-talking each other.

Gaming Doesn’t Make the Grade

With gaming and gaming recruitment on the rise, concerns may surface about what effect gaming will have on college students, their study habits and their grades.

A study conducted in 2001 by Todd Stinebrickner, an econometrics professor at the University of Western Ontario, and Ralph Stinebrickner, a math and computer science professor at Berea College, found that the presence of video game consoles in dorm rooms can have a detrimental effect on study habits and grade point averages (“The Causal Effect of Studying on Academic Performance”).

The Stinebrickners analyzed a randomly chosen sample of two groups of college freshmen comparable in academic ability, preparation and motivation, but separated by whether or not their roommate brought a video game console to school.

Of those with roommates who brought game consoles, 24 percent were female and 53 percent were male. On average, the group of female students with access to their roommate’s game console studied about 46 percent less and finished their first semester with a statistically significant 0.128 lower GPA than those female students whose roommates didn’t bring a game console. The male students with console-toting roommates studied 66 percent less and finished their semester with a 0.239 lower GPA.

The study was initially designed to measure how study time affects grades, but in the process resulted in these significant findings on how much distraction video games can cause for those students just beginning to develop their college study habits.

The gaming industry may be starting to exhibit more responsibility for its female players as it becomes more cognizant of their needs, but young female—and male—gamers have a similar responsibility to themselves when it comes to their gaming practices.

As the Stinebrickners’ study shows, student gamers must be careful not to let themselves get too carried away in their virtual worlds and risk throwing away their opportunities for education.

Like mom and dad always said, study hard, and then play hard.

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Meningitis Puts College Students at Risk

Student Loan Girl — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:46:00 GMT

The close quarters, the shared drinks, the all-nighters that weaken your immune system, and other aspects of your college lifestyle can make you more susceptible to meningitis, a virulent disease that, in its bacterial form, can kill you within days and sometimes even hours. If you’re lucky enough to survive, you still stand a 20 percent chance of suffering brain damage, arm and leg amputations, deafness, and vision loss.

Meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes and cerebrospinal fluid near the brain and spinal cord, can strike in both bacterial and viral form. The disease is transmitted by direct contact and through your saliva when you sneeze, cough or kiss.

It’s often difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to the flu: high fever, severe headaches, stiff neck, rash, nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light.

Reported cases of meningitis are rare but more common on college campuses, where the cramped quarters of shared dorms are ideal breeding grounds for potential outbreaks. States are split on whether to make the vaccination voluntary or mandatory for college students.

Onset of Disease Looks Innocent but Quickly Turns Deadly

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll find numerous accounts of otherwise healthy college students who have died or barely escaped death after contracting meningitis.

ABC News tells the story of Evan Bozof, a baseball player and pre-med student at Georgia Southwestern University. One day in 1998, he thought he was suffering from a migraine; 26 days later, the 20-year-old died after meningococcal meningitis ravaged his body. Both of his legs and arms had been amputated, he had lost all liver and kidney function and seizures led to irreversible brain damage (“For Parents, College Meningitis Deaths Still Evoke Pain,” Sep. 6, 2007).

Then there’s the MSNBC article on Ashley Lee, an 18-year-old at Indiana University Bloomington, who thought she was coming down with the flu (“Killer at College: Meningitis Threatens Students,” Sep. 5, 2007). After vomiting every half hour while at a frat party, she went home to rest. The next day, she collapsed and her family rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. Two years later, Lee’s still alive, but she’s undergone multiple surgeries, had a foot and three fingers amputated, and she lives with severe and permanent skin damage.

In Bozof’s case, his parents weren’t aware of the meningitis risks or that a simple vaccine could have saved their son. Hoping to spare others the same fate, Bozof’s mother went on to found the National Meningitis Association, which promotes education of the disease and universal vaccination.

In Lee’s case, her mother had taken her to get the vaccine before she left for college, six weeks prior to her contracting the disease, but the vaccine was out of stock at her doctor’s office. Lee, like Bozof’s parents, was unaware of the viciousness of meningitis and kept putting off getting the vaccine once she got to school—and then it was too late.

“I just didn’t know the severity of it,” Lee said in her MSNBC interview. “I thought it was just, like, another vaccination.”

Debating the Need for Mandated Vaccines

ABC News reports that there are 1,400 to 2,800 cases of bacterial meningitis in the United States each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the death rate for bacterial meningitis—around 13 percent—is more than 20 times higher than that for the measles, the number one childhood killer worldwide.

While some 10 to 20 percent of the population can carry the meningococcal bacteria in their nose or throat, 99.9 percent develop antibodies and never get sick, according to a CDC official quoted by ABC.

Increased awareness of the risks posed by meningitis as well as of the readily available vaccine has ignited a national debate, much of it centered on college campuses.

MSNBC reports that:

20 states currently require college students to either get the meningitis vaccination or sign a waiver that says they’ve read about the disease.
3 more states mandate the vaccination for college students but allow exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
11 states require only that information about the vaccine and the disease be provided on campus.

But a growing grassroots movement, led mainly by parents who have lost or nearly lost a child to the disease, want to see more states require the vaccination. The CDC recommends the meningitis vaccine, Menactra, for young people ages 11 to 18, but only 12 percent got the vaccine last year.

The vaccine is covered by some insurance companies and costs about $120 on college campuses.

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All Work for Little Play: Less Popular Collegiate Sports Teams Forced to Fundraise

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:15:00 GMT

We imagine the life of a standout college athlete as being a glamorous foray into a fame-filled world of celebrity status. For former student sports superstars like Matt Leinart, Diana Taurasi and Carmelo Anthony, strolling through their respective college campuses in their heyday must have been like walking on air.

But life isn’t so light and fluffy for the college athletes playing less mainstream sports.

Due to the lack of visibility and revenue-generating popularity with the TV-watching public for sports like fencing, swimming, softball and soccer, more and more Division I college athletes find themselves participating in “high-schoolish” fundraisers and working in sometimes exhausting odd jobs just to keep their teams alive, according to a New York Times article by Teddy Kider (“Odd Jobs Help College Teams Stay Afloat,” Aug. 24, 2007).

Year after year, NCAA Division I football and basketball teams generate millions of dollars in revenue for their schools from ticket sales, donors and national sponsors, while their coaches rack up salaries of $3 million and $4 million. Meanwhile, their less-followed sports siblings struggle to come up with even the most basic funding.

And it isn’t always a matter of dollars following success on the field or on the court. Football and basketball teams with persistent losing records may not land lucrative TV deals, but they could still receive millions in donations, while top-ranked sports programs that will never make the ESPN highlight reel must pay for themselves or risk being pushed out of the way.

In January, Butler University, for example, axed its men’s lacrosse team after 14 years and its men’s swimming program after 79 years. According to Butler Athletic Director, Barry Collier, in an announcement released by the university, the decision was made as a means to focus effort and financial support on Butler’s remaining 19 teams (“Butler University Announces Changes to Athletic Program,” Jan. 26, 2007).

Butler’s football team, on the other hand, despite an ongoing decisively losing record (2-9 in 2003, 1-10 in 2004, 0-11 in 2005, and 3-8 in 2006), raised $2.3 million for a renovation of its stadium.

Student Athletes Trade In Sticks and Rackets for Trash Bags and Brooms

It has become increasingly common for lower-revenue college sports to rely on their own means for funding, which often involve services for their cash-producing fellow teams.

As an annual team fundraiser, Kider explains, members of the Penn State co-ed championship fencing team spend one Sunday morning a year ridding their school’s 107,000-seat football stadium of trash left behind by the game-going crowds. The fencing team continues its efforts by selling school merchandise at football games throughout the season.

Members of the University of Utah swimming team also work football games, serving as hospitality workers for the stadium suites. Butler’s softball players work as gate attendants at football games and as concessionaires at basketball games, in addition to cleaning the school basketball arena.

Although the NCAA places restrictions on how much time student athletes can spend on team-related activities, those constraints don’t apply to fundraising, Kider notes.

Jeanne Rayman, Butler’s softball coach, uses fundraisers to provide about 15 percent of her team’s annual budget, but has concerns about how much strain the additional work—serving at school football and basketball games, as well as directing traffic at home games for the Indiana Pacers and Indianapolis Colts—creates for her players.

“They have so much going on in their college lives, trying to be the best athletes they can be and trying to have somewhat of a social life,” Rayman’s quoted as saying in Kider’s piece. “It just becomes a daily grind. It’s more of a drain on them than a morale booster.”

What’s Fair Got to Do With It?

Not all out-of-the-spotlight teams resort to types of fundraising that take additional time away from their athletes. Instead, they find other ways of financially supporting themselves.

For instance, says Kider, sports in need of extra funding at Baylor University rely on alumni and other donations to avoid overexerting their players with yearly moneymaking activities.

Some coaches outright object to their student athletes having to work to financially support their teams, particularly since the practice is blatantly unequal, required only of the non-darlings of the college sports world.

“You’re not going to ask a major Division I football or basketball athlete to do a car wash,” says Bob Reasso, the men’s soccer coach at Rutgers. “We have the same caliber athletes.”

These coaches, writes Kider, maintain it’s “unreasonable to ask Division I athletes to participate in small moneymaking projects, especially those that involve working for more profitable programs”— the haloed college football and basketball teams that exist in a whole other isolated dimension from their school’s other sports, regardless of how superior those other teams’ win-loss records may be.

Whereas the financial livelihood of the Penn State fencing team depends on the money it makes by cleaning the school’s football stadium every year, the football team itself has only faced one year where it had to clean its own stadium—and not to fund its existence, but as a coach-imposed punishment for some of its players’ suspected connection to an off-campus fight.

Some of the fencers on Penn’s team, which won its 10^th national title in 18 years last season, still don’t see the situation as fair, but they’re happy to know their football-playing fellow athletes can partake in their cleaning experience.

“I’m glad for once that they’ll have to do it,” says Penn State fencer Jimmy Moody in Kider’s article. “They’ll get a taste of it. They get to see what we do every year.”

But perhaps the lacrosse and rugby players, the softball and soccer players, the fencers and swimmers and rowers of the college world have at least one thing on their more pampered contemporaries: a hard-earned appreciation for the opportunity they’ve been given.

“It’s unfair that we have to put in extra work because our sport might not be as fun to watch. … But it is fair that the school is giving us a chance to work to keep the program around,” says Andrew Brown, a senior swimmer at Utah. “I’m just happy we still have a swimming team.”

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