NPR today ran a story about the mainstreaming of video game development as viable college major. Game development has arrived in the upper echelons of academia; it has outgrown it’s previous status as a novelty “Buffy the Vampire Studies” type of major. From the NPR lead off:

This year, the University of Southern California enrolled its first class of undergraduate students who will major in video-game development. The school is not the first major university to have a program in video games. But the curriculum is not all about car races and shootouts.

Note that the degree USC offers is not called “video game development” rather, it’s a subset of a very marketable CS degree: “Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (games).” The classes offered at USC are more traditional CS fodder: C++, Java, AI, 3D animation, computer programming. Still, the degree description sounds just like the career schools who have been offering this degree for years, “Students graduating from this program will be capable of engineering next-generation games and simulations and their technologies in the entertainment and serious game fields.”

Here is a list of career schools offering video game design degrees.

Life | School | Education | Technology

Are colleges today more selective than ever? According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling , over the last 20 years the college admissions selectivity rate hasn’t changed; 4-year colleges on average still accept 75% of their applicants. But Harvard and Princeton are just as selective as they’ve always been with acceptance rates under 13%. Forget SAT prep, it’s private college coaches and counselors who are giving kids the edge they need to get into the universities of their dreams (only 2.6% of the nation’s colleges accept less than 25% of applicants).

I listened to an archived NPR program about college admissions in which two private college counselors tell their side of the story. College counselors want to act as guides for their clients, helping them to find the college that’s “the right fit” for the student in question. Both of the counselors interviewed tended to try to steer the students (read: their hyper parents) away from “brand-name schools.” Some parents are hyper and have hired a counselor to better their kids’ chances of getting into the best schools. Some parents are overwhelmed and confused by the application process itself as well as by the sheer number of colleges to choose from. The two private counselors repeatedly stated that “name brand” schools are often the focus of the parents, which is a big part of why the parents felt their kiddo needed the extra advantage a private college counselor could give them.

My initial gut reaction to the whole idea of private college counselors was utter disgust that parents can do this for their kids. It seemed like one more item in the already long and messed-up list of bizarre, high-pressure hoops that parents demand their kids to jump through because a child who is anything but stellar makes his / her parents look like failures.

But college counselors aren’t entirely evil. They do this for a living, so they’re better at it than a parent or a high school student doing it for the first time. They have probably toured hundreds of colleges, and have a good idea about the personalities and the philosophies of different schools. They have seen more schools than any student will ever have the time or the money to check out, so the counselors will be far better able to match the best fitting school with the student. They have excellent book recommendations such as: Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope, and Rugg’s Recommendation on the Colleges by Frederick E. Rugg. (more…)

Entrepreneurs Are H-O-T

If you have a yen to make a dollar (holy bad joke, Batman) by joining the entrepreneurial ranks (the badness of that is still hurting me), then you are in luck, my friend. Being young and hip and using your noggin to come up with the next new thing is now considered perfectly respectable. So much so, that High Point University is now offering a Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship.

“The Entrepreneurship major is intended for people who are interested in becoming owners of small businesses, working in a family-owned business upon graduation, or who are interested in the unique concerns of managing a small business. Students will learn to deal with the issues of starting a new business venture and also the management issues unique to the small business.”

Which means that you might possibly be able to work it so the ‘rents will pay for you to learn how to kick some entrepreneurial booty. Or, if your parents won’t fork out the tuition, student loans are more easily obtained than business loans. I’m just saying.

You can look at all the entrepreneurial hype as intensely frustrating competition if you’ve already been slaving away in your basement for years working on that digital shoehorn. Or you can look at the new wave as inspirational information (I‘m rolling my eyes, too). Glean what you need, and try to remember that competition makes the world…shinier?

Here are some interesting articles that will either make you sing with inspiration or flare your nostrils and close your eyes while you try to keep the anger inside.

If you want to wonder what in the hell you’ve been doing with all of your spare time, be sure to read about the bright young things, all age 25 and under, who are considered by Business Week Online to be the best young biz whizzes in America. This includes the kiddos from YouTube, Digg and Facebook. And Ben Casnocha of Comcate, who you can just tell is incapable of turning his brain off. I think he just never stops.

Not on that list: Ramit Sethi. Is he under 25? Not sure. But he’s ridiculously smart, and it’s impossible for me to not have absolute respect for someone who has a ranting blog called Things I Hate. It doesn’t matter how foul my mood or how not funny my life is at the moment; if I read one line of Things I Hate, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying (and also snorting, which is certainly unfortunate and not at all polite).

An article on the blog gradschoolstory.com lists one of the top ten reasons for going to graduate school as the perfect place to start starting up your startup. It’s late, and yes, that was satisfying to write.

The Guardian has several articles in their technology section about a whole slew of Web entrepreneurs.

Web 2.0 in general
Bebo, Michael and Xochi Birch
Blogger/Odeo, Evan Williams
Craigslist, Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster
Del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter
Digg, Kevin Rose
Feed Burner, Dick Costolo
Flickr, Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield
Last.fm, Martin Stiksel
Netvibes, Tariq Krim
Technorati, David L. Sifry
Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales
WordPress, Matt Mullenweg
Writely, Sam Schillace

And if you just want to look at something pretty and be able to think to yourself (in a totally non-competitive way) “That’s genius! Why didn’t I think of that? Of course! A dance floor that generates usable energy!” then you should take a gander at Springwise.com. It’s one idea after another, in streamlined and well-lit perfection. Yes, it’s the rainy season in Seattle and I require well-lit websites.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

College | College Education

The NY Times ran an interesting article about wading through college stats. Statistics rarely tell the whole story, they’re misleading, and they don’t measure what’s important. What do statistics really tell you about a school? Are they even useful?

Here are the top statistics to pay attention to (or not):

1. Average Class Size at 25
Read the fine print. Ask how often you will have small classes.

2. Majority Percentage of Full-Time Faculty
Disregard # of PhDs on staff.

3. Retention Rate Above 80%

4. Average SAT Scores
Note that most averages are slightly inflated.

5. Diversity

6. Graduation Rates
Graduation rates should be above 55% for students graduating in four years. 75% for students graduating in five or six years. Disregard statistics for students who get jobs within a year of graduation.

Read the full article here.

College | College Education | College Admissions

The NY Times today published a piece about an interesting college admissions strategy: To get into a selective school, apply to a less popular program and then once you’re accepted, transfer into your desired program. Transfering within a university is easier than entering it.

How to choose which major to apply to? Some programs are more selective than others.

At UC Berkeley, the combined SAT average score of this fall’s freshmen was 1953 for the College of Letters and Science; 1892 for the College of Environmental Design; and 1842 in the College of Natural Resources. At Cornell University this fall, 90 percent of freshmen admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences placed in the top 10 percent of their high school class; 75 percent ranked that high for Agriculture and Life Sciences. Gender matters, too. A woman had a 20 percent chance of getting into Arts and Sciences but a 49 percent chance of getting into the College of Engineering.

The catch is that you can’t fake passion and more universities are becoming wise to this practice. The University of Michigan recently added new essay requirements to weed out any applications that may be trying to game the system.

College | College Education

Open University Makes Educational Resources Available Free Online

On Oct. 25th 2006, The Open University in the UK officially launched their open content initiative OpenLearn. Now all knowledge-seekers around the globe can access educational resources for free. They’re trying to get the educational word out to folks living far far away from the university experience, for what ever reason (geographical, financial, the aliens have them locked up and they can’t leave the house so they need to pursue that college degree via the Internet, etc.).

The Open University has always been ahead of its time. Here’s a BBC article about what the Open U has been up to for the last 30 years. The OU used to kick technological booty by televising their distance learning course lectures. Now they’re moving on up to more technologically advanced badassness. I’m on board with the whole idea of free access to educational resources (whatever happened to good old fashioned libraries, you freaks? Is paper not good enough for you people?). And, yes, I get it that paper and ink are so last season. It hurts me bad…Anyway, I think it’s a stupendous trend. Free stuff: good. Educational resources made available to everyone: good. The OpenLearn site will initially have some 900 hours of study in a variety of topics – from access to postgraduate level.

I do, however, have just the teensiest issue with wholly online learning. It’s the science girl in me. I can’t help it. I love a good lab table. Yes, very funny, in that way, too. I just think some stuff can’t be replaced. I get it that paper and pens (which I prefer to this super shiny MacBook) will go the way of the buffalo soon. And that printing up my photos in a darkroom is so old school. Alright alright alright, I have a hard time with digital photography. It’s wrong on so many levels! It doesn’t feel right or smell right! Never mind. Writing and photography the old fashioned way are not important right now.

So does that mean the future of learning can be online for everyone except science majors? What about art majors? They need studio time and hands-on learning. Design majors, music majors, architecture, theater. What are we down to? History, math, sociology, and languages majors can learn wholly online. Anything involving brains only and not your hands, yes?

All Online Schools

Posted by Alexa Harrington

College | Online Education

Yes, it’s another college ranking list, but this snarky / cheeky one really stands out. Radar Magazine Online recently put together a “semi-scientific guide to the most substandard schools in America.” Using a wide variety of sources, Radar took up the challenge of choosing which accredited 4-year colleges with physical campuses made the “dishonor roll.”

Worst Party School: (Tie) California State University-Chico; San Diego State University
Illustrious Alumni: Chico lays claim to good-time-guy novelist Raymond Carver (who graduated elsewhere) and bare-knuckled political consultant Ed Rollins, while SDSU graduated disgraced former CIA executive director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and oft-disrobed former C-movie actress Raquel Welch.

Worst Trust-Fund-Baby College: Bennington College (VT)
Notable Course: “SHHH! The Social Construction of Silence,” a class focused on breaking down the classification of silence as an absence of sound and “establishing it as a presence.” Or, the class where you sleep off your hangover.

Worst Ivy League University: Cornell University (NY)
School Pride: “I haven’t overheard a single intellectual conversation in three years, unless it was between Indian or Asian students,” writes an architecture major on Students Review.

Worst Christian University: Liberty University (VA)
School Pride: “The mountains and all are beautiful. It’s right near the Wal-Mart too,” writes a student on Campus Dirt.

Worst of the Big Ten: Michigan State University (East Lansing)
It’s not surprising this hard-drinking football school hasn’t made it to the Rose Bowl since 1988: Much of its student body seems to be in jail. Over 1,000 students were arrested for drug and alcohol offenses last year, along with another 1,224 perps in the crime-ridden city.

Worst Military Academy: Virginia Military Institute
VMI excluded women from its ranks until the U.S. Supreme Court forced the academy to admit female cadets in 1996.

Worst Women’s College: Texas Woman’s University
Notable Course: Cultural Perspectives of Personal Appearance.

The Worst College in America: University of Bridgeport (CT)
Fun Fact: At orientation, all incoming students are given a “personal alarm locator” that will send swarms of campus policemen racing to their rescue whenever they press a panic button.

College | Humor | College Education

If you have too much self-respect (or maybe just enough) to no longer traipse around the nice neighborhoods begging for free candy, then you’re probably hitting the lean month of the college term: any extra cash you may have had at the beginning of the term is gone, and any holiday which might involve your family or friends feeding you is a month or more away. How to survive until Turkey Day? If you’re brave, want to save the planet, and you aren’t a germaphobe like me, then Freeganism is your path to three squares a day, my friend. That’s right, the hip kids of today have made dumpster-diving the super-cool new trend. According to their site:

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

Sadly, it’s not as new-school as they imagine it to be. My raised-in-a-commune-by-intellectual-hippies husband went to Guilford College (which I hear is a very good private school) and he, along with his super smart liberal artsy housemates, dove in the supermarket dumpsters for the majority of their food.

And this will kill it for the hipsters: my mother, who went to college around about 1969, and who is absolutely not a hippie in any way, shape or form, had to resort to diving for her dinner because her extremely financially secure parents disowned her for a while (they found out she was riding around on a motorcycle). So my mom lived in a closet (which she paid rent for) and foraged for food every week behind the supermarket. If you met my mom, this information would shock and amaze you: she does not strike you as the refuse-eating type.

The Freegans are doing it for the eats as well as the political statement it makes. I think it’s great. I, however, am not nearly ready to face my microbiological demons. I fear the microscopic germapalooza that is gargbage. Yeesh. I have the heebie jeebies just thinking about it. But, yea Freegans! I’m sure their immune systems could kick my immune system’s ass. I’ll do my part to save the planet by not wasting, how’s that?

Dumpster Directory:Freegan.info’s Guide to Recovering Discarded Waste in Your Community

Posted by Alexa Harrington

College| Freegan|
Life