The story of The Boys depicts a bleak world filled with power-imbued superheroes who have become reckless, selfish and hedonistic, leaving citizens in danger. Thus, an angry, ultra-violent Englishman named Billy Butcher puts together his own team of ex-military personnel with black ops experience to watch the proverbial watchmen, calling themselves, you guessed it, the Boys.
Thus, in an extreme version of the Marvel Civil War scenario, the Boys run roughshod on corrupt costumers in a brutally sadistic manner. The comic series launched in 2006 under the DC-connected Wildstorm imprint, only to be quickly cancelled, purportedly due to its anti-superhero themes. Ennis would eventually continue the series with indie publisher Dynamite Entertainment, publishing the last series in the end of 2012.
The Boys made a surprise addition to its cast at New York Comic Con. Simon Pegg (of the Star Trek, Mission: Impossible series, and more) crashed the show's panel to announce that he is joining the series. Pegg will play the father of Hughie (Jack Quaid), a role that gives a nod to Pegg being the original inspiration for the comics version of the Hughie character for artist, Darick Robertson.
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Pegg joins a cast already headlined by Star Trek mate Karl Urban. Urban will be playing the role of Billy Butcher, the irate ringleader of the Boys team, whose surname was created to describe what he does to those who prey on the powerless, conventional criminals and otherwise. Billy is nursing a brutal secret agenda to change a world filled with corruption, where even its costumed superheroes need to be checked, recruiting a deadly array of highly-skilled people, dangling the proverbial carrot of vengeance.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) sued not only Harvard, but also the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The outcome of the UNC case could be as important as the one at Harvard. Critics of affirmative action hope to see the issue of college admissions return to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has in multiple cases upheld the right of colleges to consider -- under certain circumstances -- race and ethnicity in admissions. One path to the Supreme Court is for the Harvard case, whatever its outcome, to be appealed....and UNC is defending itself by arguing that diversity is good for institutions of higher education:
Another path could depend on the UNC case. While it's impossible to know whether the Supreme Court will take up any issue, differing interpretations of the Constitution in different federal circuits tend to draw the Supreme Court's involvement. And that involvement worries supporters of affirmative action, since Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, now retired, was a crucial vote for the right of colleges to consider race.
On Friday, both SFFA and UNC filed briefs in the case, outlining for the first time in detail their takes on the issues at Chapel Hill. Both sides want the court to rule in their favor without a full trial. Some of the issues are similar to those in the Harvard case. In short, SFFA argues that colleges like Harvard and UNC go beyond what the Supreme Court permits in considering race in admissions. UNC, like Harvard, argues that it evaluates all applicants as individuals -- through holistic admissions. UNC freely admits that it considers race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, but that it does so much more modestly than SFFA alleges.
In other ways, UNC is different from Harvard. Chapel Hill is a public institution in a state where the law bars public universities from admitting more than 18 percent of students from out of state. This means that the preference in admissions that is the most dramatic is based on state residency. The admit rate for undergraduate applications is 24 percent, making Carolina competitive but unlike Harvard, where single-digit admit rates have been the norm for years. But the 24 percent figure masks very different admit rates for those from the state (typically 41 to 43 percent) and from elsewhere (typically about 12 or 13 percent).
As a state institution, UNC also could consider approaches (such as plans that admit a set percentage of students from every high school) that haven't been embraced by elite private institutions. In this case, UNC offers evidence that it considered such a plan but that it wouldn't work. North Carolina also has different demographics than the nation. In the Tar Heel state, white people make up 71 percent of the population and black people make up 22 percent. Nationally, the population is more diverse (particularly among those of high school age), with Latino and Asian populations growing at fast rates.
In the end, the UNC brief makes the argument that has been crucial to past Supreme Court rulings on the issue -- that diversity has educational value for all students. "University professors report that diversity promotes discovery and innovation and expands fields of inquiry," the brief says. "A diverse student body also improves students’ capacity to work effectively with others: exposure to diversity breaks down stereotypes, creates common understandings, and encourages empathy."Until the Supreme Court takes up these cases and makes some definitive decisions, Students for Fair Admissions will continue to file suits against colleges and universities.
Bo Peep is back and this time, she’s no delicate porcelain figure. She’s traded her hoop skirt for pantaloons and her bonnet for a cute side ribbon in our first look at the long-missing toy in the latest Toy Story 4 teaser. After being absent from Toy Story 3, Bo Peep is making her big return with a brand new look.After that intense ending for Toy Story 3, I'll be interested to see where they go with the fourth installment.
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The long-lost friend (or maybe more) of Woody is returning in Toy Story 4, and she’s got an exciting new teaser and character poster to herald her comeback. But she is different than the delicate porcelain figure we last saw in Toy Story 2. Her exterior has become chipped and faded, but her attitude has not — “it turns out she’s an adventure-seeking free spirit who feels right at home on the road,” Disney writes. This free-spirited adventure reunites her with Woody “under unlikely circumstances” where they sadly realize they’ve “grown worlds apart when it comes to life as a toy.”
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| This is Molly |
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| The Kids, getting ready to take Molly to her forever home |
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| Meeting Molly at her foster home |
The University of South Florida at St. Petersburg admitted nearly 700 applicants in recent days, but human error is being blamed for more than 400 of those admissions offers having been sent out incorrectly. They have since been revoked.
The university issued this statement: “We were dismayed to learn about the acceptance emails that were mistakenly sent Saturday due to human error. All of us work in higher education because we care about students, and we understand the confusion and distress a mistake like this can cause. As soon as we found out about the situation, we immediately reviewed our process for communicating with prospective students and have changed our procedures to prevent this from happening again. In addition, our staff is calling each of the affected students to apologize and discuss their application status. They hope to contact all of the students by the end of this week.”
The report said its review of the evidence demonstrated that:The stakes are high, its co-authors conclude.
- Online education is the fastest-growing segment of higher education and its growth is overrepresented in the for-profit sector;
- Faculty and academic leaders, employers and the general public are skeptical about the quality and value of online education, which they view as inferior to face-to-face education;
- Students in online education, particularly underprepared and disadvantaged students, underperform and on average experience poor outcomes;
- Online education has failed to improve affordability, frequently costs more than in-person alternatives and does not produce a positive return on investment;
- Regular and substantive student-instructor interactivity is a key determinant of quality in online education, leading to improved student satisfaction, learning and outcomes.
“There is a real risk that both cost-cutting efforts and well-intentioned moves to expand access to higher education could lead to greater numbers of disadvantaged students being relegated to cheap and ineffective online instruction, with detrimental results, both in terms of outcomes and student loan defaults,” they wrote.
However, several experts who read the report said it relied mostly on old data and was overly broad in its conclusions.
The paper indiscriminately trashes online education, said Fiona Hollands, associate director and senior researcher at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
“It's almost all old data, old news and not very even-handed,” she said via email, adding that the report “reads as advocacy more than research and conveniently skips out on some of the more recent and positive stories for students in online learning.”
Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the report by Protopsaltis and Baum painted online education with too broad a brush. For example, its comparisons between online programs and on-campus ones failed to acknowledge the low graduation rates and default rates of many traditional programs that enroll similarly high percentages of low-income, older students.
States spent 3.7 percent more supporting higher education in fiscal year 2018-19 than in the previous year. The small rise continued a five-year trend of upward support that this year totals about $91.5 billion. In the previous fiscal year, support for higher education grew just 1.6 percent, according to the Grapevine survey, an annual early survey of state indicators. And while five states reported funding decreases between FY18 and FY19, that represents a small fraction of the 18 states that reported declines the previous year.Here in Pennsylvania, we spent 1,756,295,000 in 2018, up from 1,713,363,000 in 2017 - and 1,644,692,000 in 2014. That represents a 2.5% increase in the past year, and a 6.5% increase over the last four years. Not all states are headed in that direction:
In the five states that provided less funding -- Ohio, Alaska, Minnesota, Kentucky and South Carolina -- the drop ranged from 0.1 percent in Ohio and Alaska to 1.4 percent in Minnesota. In Kentucky, it dropped by 2.4 percent. South Carolina reported the largest one-year drop of all states at 3.7 percent.At least we are headed in the right direction in Pennsylvania...
States spent 3.7 percent more supporting higher education in fiscal year 2018-19 than in the previous year. The small rise continued a five-year trend of upward support that this year totals about $91.5 billion.
In the previous fiscal year, support for higher education grew just 1.6 percent, according to the Grapevine survey, an annual early survey of state indicators.
And while five states reported funding decreases between FY18 and FY19, that represents a small fraction of the 18 states that reported declines the previous year.
In the five states that provided less funding -- Ohio, Alaska, Minnesota, Kentucky and South Carolina -- the drop ranged from 0.1 percent in Ohio and Alaska to 1.4 percent in Minnesota. In Kentucky, it dropped by 2.4 percent. South Carolina reported the largest one-year drop of all states at 3.7 percent.
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| Old Main, on Penn State's University Park campus |
New foreign student enrollment in the U.S. dropped by 6.6 percent in the 2017-18 academic year, double the previous year’s rate of decline, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). While the total number of international students in the U.S. grew slightly, the drop in new enrollees is the biggest since 9/11, said Rachel Banks, public policy director at NAFSA: Association of International Educators. The decline seems to be continuing this year, she said.
The report attributed the drop to multiple factors, including visa delays and denials, the “social and political” environment and the cost of attending a U.S. school. The administration’s hard-right immigration policies, such as banning people from Muslim-majority countries and separating children from their parents at the border, make prospective students and their parents feel “that we’re not a welcoming country,” Banks said.
The number of F-1 visas, the kind issued to foreign students going to school full-time in the U.S., dropped from about 644,000 in fiscal 2015 to about 394,000 in fiscal 2017, according to data from the U.S. State Department. Vanessa Andrade, associate director of international partnerships and program development at California State University, Northridge, said safety is always the biggest concern.
The more than 1 million foreign students in the U.S. contributed $39 billion and supported more than 455,000 jobs during the 2017-18 academic year, according to an analysis by NAFSA. The largest spending benefits went to California, New York, Massachusetts, Texas and Pennsylvania. NAFSA said education is one of the country’s biggest services exports.
“Education—particularly higher education—is a major American export,” University of California, Santa Barbara economics professor Dick Startz wrote in a Brookings Institution blog post in 2017. “When we provide a service that leads to foreigners sending money into the U.S., that’s an export with exactly the same economic effects as when we sell soybeans or coal abroad.”
After being excommunicated from the Continental for violating the High Table’s rules by killing another assassin on neutral ground, the worldwide hit has been placed on Wick (Keanu Reeves), and the professional must fight to escape New York City if there’s any chance of saving his hide. With the bounty on his head, most everyone John’s ever worked with and might have considered an ally now sees him as a target too valuable to give up—except for Sofia (Halle Berry), who might end up having some ulterior motives of her own.
After being excommunicated from the Continental for violating the High Table’s rules by killing another assassin on neutral ground, the worldwide hit has been placed on Wick (Keanu Reeves), and the professional must fight to escape New York City if there’s any chance of saving his hide. With the bounty on his head, most everyone John’s ever worked with and might have considered an ally now sees him as a target too valuable to give up—except for Sofia (Halle Berry), who might end up having some ulterior motives of her own.Looks like fun!
Appealing an admission decision
“My son is amazing! Didn’t you see his test scores? And we know someone who got in who is not as good. How do we appeal?” Well… first, it’s very nice to talk to you ma’am. Not being admitted to a school that you really want to attend stings. There is just no easy way to say it. And at most selective schools, denied and waitlisted students can easily make a case for why they would be great students on campus. However, applications have been read multiple times in a holistic process and ultimately are made in line with achieving institutional priorities. I see how you could read that as the party line but it’s actually just confidence in our decisions.
A couple of things to know here: first, we want to talk to the applicant in these cases. Not someone who does a good voice imitation of the student, and not someone who really loves the student. Honestly, our first thought when we speak to a parent or connected alum about an appeals is, “does the student really want to come?” If so, it seems like they’d be the one to pick up the phone, send the email, or complete the appeal form.
Second, we explain on our website what makes a valid appeal. It varies from school to school, so check their information. Our reasons for a valid appeal normally include medical information, significant life circumstances, or academic details that were not correct on the transcript initially. We also list some of the invalid reasons for appeal. You’ll notice among others that pictures as an infant on campus, a really strong desire to come, or “it’s the only school I applied to” don’t fall into the valid category. #TNHIW
I could go on about how score ranges don’t guarantee admission or how we don’t have quotas of admits by school, or how the recruited athlete didn’t really take your spot, or the fact that deadline really means deadline, or how remnant shampoo doesn’t really wash your body, but I think we’re on the same page now, right?
