As you can imagine, the campaigns aren’t going well. The donors who either have pledged money or would have pledged money were hurt by the financial crash and are rethinking their donations.

The worst part? Even if the economy starts to recover over the next year, universities will still see a “significant dip” in giving because many of the large donations are year-long affairs. Some universities, like Brown, are even negotiating with their donors to get pledged money sooner at a discount. For example, if Mr. Moneybags has pledged $50 million in 2011, the university might persuade him to give $40 million now.

At the same time, universities are seeing a surge in enrollment numbers as people who are out of work look to learn the skills to start off on a new career path.

Of course, donations aren’t the only way that higher education is funded, but it helps, especially in a time when governments are looking for ways to cut spending and finding colleges to be easy targets.

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An explanation on the university’s Web site.More from the CHE here.

Basically, a survey last fall showed that 99 percent of students bring their own computers. And though students spent over 650,000 hours in the campus’s labs last year, most of that time was for text editing and Web browsing — stuff you can do on any computer.

This news really takes me back to my early college days. Back then, it was just becoming normal for everybody to bring a computer with them, and the university had only installed Ethernet ports in all dorm rooms the year before I arrived. Before then, you connected to the campus network via the telephone jack — the old-fashioned way.

I used the computer labs, but that was mainly when I needed to get away from my girlfriend at the time and because I wanted to use a Mac — there’s still a lab just full of Macs on our campus. At least, I think there is.

At any rate, the days of public computer labs are coming to and end. I just hope that lots of people get some good deals on all the computers universities are going to try to get rid of pretty soon.

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The old stuff getting broken in this case is newspapers. More and more of them are failing or approaching the verge of failure. No doubt dozens more will close by the end of the year, if not more. Why is that?

Because the business model that they operated on for centuries has shattered, Shirky writes. It is no longer difficult and expensive to publish information; the Internet makes that possible for next to nothing, and that is a serious problem for an industry that counted on that advantage to pay for itself.

Shirky’s essay, posted Friday, winds us through a little of the history of the print revolution and, now, the digital revolution. The focus is, of course, newspapers; but separating the problems facing newspapers from the transformation that is happening to the world of printing (thanks to the Internet) is impossible. The Internet didn’t set out to kill newspapers, but it has made good work of it by accident.

This is important to note: The Internet is killing newspapers, the physical product printed on paper and delivered (at ridiculous expense) to customers every day. The Internet is not killing journalism, the practice that is vital to a free and informed populace. However, the Internet is killing the business model that supported journalism, hence the current crisis.

“‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’” Shirky asks. He answers, “Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.”

In fact, he goes on:

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

It’s like the singularity, that point in time and technological development that will trigger so much change that predictions beyond that point are impossible. I’m not saying that the current crisis is the singularity, but I am saying that we are in the midst of revolutionary times. Predicting the outcome of that revolution or what will work when the dust settles is not possible, not yet.

Nobody has any answers for the newspaper industry. There aren’t any. As long as the Internet continues to have at least as much influence as it does now and as long as access to the Internet is as free and open as it is now, there won’t be any answers for the newspaper industry. The Internet is its replacement; now it’s time to figure out what “replacing newspapers” means.

Shirky says that, like all revolutions, this one must have a period of unbridled experimentation. The entrepreneurs and volunteers who will drive (and are driving) those experiments must not be afraid to fail. It won’t be until long after the revolution, when we all have the benefit of hindsight, that we’ll be able to know which of those experiments (even if they were failures) were transformative and vital.

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An image of the destruction in Bozeman from someone with a camera phone not long after it happened.

At 8:12 a.m. MDT, an explosion rattled downtown Bozeman, Mont., destroying three whole buildings and at least five businesses. Shortly after the explosion, few people outside of the immediate downtown area knew anything about the growing crisis.

But Twitter knew. A handful of people were already posting to Twitter, probably from their phones, wondering, in essence, “What the hell just happened?” It was the beginning of what would become a flood of information about the explosion, all posted in real time to Twitter, 140 characters at a time.

I knew that something had to be done to organize things, and I knew that the best way to do that was to create a hashtag. So I came up with #bozexplod, and eventually other people started to use it. In fact, a lot of people started using it.

How many? I’m not sure, but at one point during the day #bozexplod was the second most popular trending topic on Twitter. — As a side note, related Google searches for “bozeman daily chronicle” (the local newspaper) and “bozeman explosion” were the number one and two searches on Google for a few hours.

What got posted? Eyewitness reports, rumors, unconfirmed facts about casualties, phone numbers to call for help, phone numbers to call to volunteer to help, quotes from press conferences, links to photos, links to news stories.

People were responding to each other, answering people’s questions about what was going on. People were self-regulating each other too. Remember those unconfirmed rumors about casualties and missing victims? They were squashed almost as soon as they were posted. Discussions were held through the non-public direct messages.

Citizens journalists showed restraint, just like pro journos.

For a town where it’s rare for a news organization’s Web site to update more than once a day, the volume of news about Bozeman that flowed through Twitter was like a dam break.

People kept sharing the search.twitter.com address for the hashtag, which meant that people who weren’t even members of Twitter could follow the feed. And they did, according to all the reports I received. Very little work got done in the offices around Bozeman today: all eyes were glued to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23bozexplod.

Yes, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, KBZK (CBS), New West-Bozeman and other local news outlets got their stories out, eventually. (I think the Associated Press had its first few paragraphs out around 10 a.m.)

But Twitter got there first.

The story is encapsulated by one blog post I found from a man who lives in Livingston, a two 25 miles east of Bozeman (and over a mountain pass). He wrote:

A few minutes ago my cousin’s wife updated her Facebook status looking for updates on the explosion this morning in Bozeman. They live in Livingston, MT. Their radio and TV stations did not have anything.

I did like many others and went right to Twitter Search to get the update. Found a Livingston radio call-in show and am listening live now. It’s amazing how once again the people are way ahead of the media. I hope that the current status of no injuries or fatalities stays that way.

A response to his post also tells the story of the day:

twitter was really the only place i could find with good info with the exception of kmms.

Another message came (via Twitter) from a man in New Zealand who has a business-owner sister in Bozeman:

@superjaberwocky Am in New Zealand. Sent my sister (a Bozeman business owner) info from you. She loved getting news of 3:00 meeting from NZ.

This is the information access that Twitter can provide, and, if I may point out, only handful of that information came from people at the scene. Most of it, the majority of it, was generated by people using the Web to its fullest and reporting whatever they could as soon as they could.

Will this sort of thing ever replace those journalists who went into the blast zone this morning, the ones who stood at the press conferences and asked questions? No. Not at all. But Twitter did a job that traditional journalism could not possibly do in a city of this size. It informed the people as quickly as events happened and let people know what they needed to know right away.

A lot of people think of Twitter as little more than idle chatter in 140-character segments. I think that the Twitterers of Bozeman proved that view wrong today. I just wonder if what we can learn from this that we can apply to normal, non-crisis journalism.

I’m willing to entertain ideas and suggestions. You can find me on Twitter if you want. http://www.twitter.com/superjaberwocky

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Let me start off by saying this: I’m a cross-OS person. I have to be. If I had my choice, I’d have nothing but the hottest and fastest Apple computers at home and at work, but, alas, that’s not going to happen. So I’m stuck using my PC at work, occasionally using the PC at home and mostly using my MacBook Pro.

The point of mentioning my cross-OS-ness is that, as a journalist and as a techie, I read RSS feeds throughout the day. I read them at work and at home, and until a few days ago, I kept everything in sync using NewsGator. It was a decent solution. I have NetNewsWire on my Mac and Feed Demon on my PC. It keeps my subscriptions in check and updates my read-unread status between work  and home, so I don’t have to spend 10 minutes cleaning up the program at home to get at the new stuff.

But then, one day, I hap’d to click onto Google Reader again. I’m no slouch. I know all about Google Reader and was there to try it out when they first released the service (whenever that was). I tried it, thought it was cool, and yearned for my desktop application. So I never took Google Reader seriously.

I’m starting to now, though. Look at the benefits. Google Reader is, of course, cross-platform. All I need is Firefox or any other browser — though I’m not sure there actually are any other browsers for me anymore. Unlike NetNewsWire and its not-quite-perfect cousin Feed Demon, with Google Reader I can watch things like embedded videos right in the reader window. With the desktop apps, I have to open things in a browser window for that: one extra step.

In Firefox, I have all my easy sharing shortcuts and Twitter stuff set up and ready to go. Feed Demon and NetNewsWire are limited in this scope; usually I just end up picking cherry links to read from the program and opening them to read in Firefox. Google Reader eliminates that step.

On top of all that, Google Reader provides some pretty sweet stats, which, though useless to me now, may yet show their utility. It seems to me that Feed Demon provides great stats, NetNewsWire less so. I don’t really use the stats much, but the desktop apps do seem to provide more useful ones.

And yet, despite the seeming charms of Google Reader, I don’t really like the way it looks or feels. I know that’s a superficial thing, but it matters to me. I love NetNewsWire. I hate Feed Demon, but I use it because it syncs with NewsGator. (That hate is probably because, oh, everything in Windows looks awful on my crappy work monitor.) And I feel it’s good to get out of the browser from time to time, to remember that not everything needs to or should exist in the cloud.

So what would I like to see? I’d like to see NetNewsWire sync with Google Reader, plain and simple, though it doesn’t look like that’s ever going to happen.

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Many of those instructors work part-time and aren’t paid as much as their tenured or tenure-track counterparts. Non-tenure track instructors make up nearly 70 percent of the professoriate in the U.S.

This information comes from a report issued by the American Federation of Teachers, which worries that academic freedom is compromised because most of the undergraduate instructors in the country lack the job security that comes with tenure.

When you can lose your job at any time because of budgetary reasons or because of something you said or did, I’d say academic freedom is compromised.

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In part, that’s because writing relies on a lot of the subconscious functions built in to the human brian, Reid writes. So he asks what we can do to help students develop these subconscious processes and become better writers.

He writes that we might think of the mind itself as a rhetorical device “that allows us to construct relationships like author and audience for purposes of communication.” Basically, we model the behavior we want students to learn — acting like good writers in the hope that the students will emulate that behavior and become good writers themselves.

There seems to be a lot of responsibility there. I’m not a writing teacher anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what it was like or that I won’t become one again. Holding myself (or at least my mind) as a model for my students seems fraught with pressure. What if my mind isn’t of the right rhetorical shape? Will my students learn effectively?

Basically, if my mind is not of the right rhetoric, if I am just “acting” like a good writer when really I am not, will that artifice show through? Will the students get a deep educational experience if my mind is not of the right shape?

This lends itself, in my mind, to dedication. Perhaps as a struggling grad student, I was not as dedicated to teaching as someone hired for that purpose might be. Perhaps I was not pure of mind enough, not dedicated.

And yes, of course, this is all theory. Of course there’s no 1:1 transfer of thought patterns and subconscious neural formations. This isn’t Star Trek, after all. But it does get me thinking on the humanitarian, literature level.

If my heart, and apparently my mind, isn’t in the work, will those learning from me be shortchanged?

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The survey of mainly biomedical students showed that about 9 percent had seen some kind of academic misconduct in the past three years; 37 percent of those breaches went unreported.

The authors surveyed 2,212 researchers and found 201 instances of possible academic misconduct over those three years. Among those, almost 60 percent were fabrication or falsification incidents, and 36 percent dealt with plagiarism.

The most guilty segments of academia? About a quarter of the incidents pointed the finger at postdoctoral fellows, though professors and senior scientists were right on their heels at about 22 percent.

Of course, the tricky question of whether a researcher should inform on their colleagues comes next. The easy answer is yes, but that does not take into account career-ending consequences that an accusation of misconduct can bring, as well as the damage done to friendships.

The reports authors, however, see things in a simpler light: “Fundamentally all explanations seem to share a common denominator — the failure to foster a culture of integrity” (981–82). They recommend clarifying for scientists how to report misconduct, protection for whistleblowers, more training for scientific mentors, and positive role modeling as ways to cut down on misconduct.

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According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription probably required), out of the 300 or so articles accepted each year by the Journal of Clinical Investigation, 10 to 20 may have been tampered with.

Some young researchers may not even think of image editing as being wrong, the CHE reports, considering the ease of image manipulation. However, experts contend that even changing a few pixels for clarity’s sake can alter the meaning of that image.

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In the CHE interview, Moulton said that grades in those classes have been going up since the study kits became available and that some students are using them as a means to avoid attending class. He said that other, harder-working students also buy the kits, feeling that they must have every academic advantage lest they lose their scholarships.

An added wrinkle is that sometimes the study kits are wrong, Moulton said, which costs students points on exams. The situation has forced Moulton to change the ways he makes class materials available online. In addition to recordings of his lectures, he now puts (correct) outlines of notes on the Web and has ceased giving out old quiz answers. Moulton told the CHE, “If they don’t want to come to class I can’t make them come, but I’ll be damned if I help [Einstein’s Notes] sell answers to questions if they don’t want to come.”

Most of the comments on that CHE blog post criticize Moulton, saying that if students can improve their grades simply by having the class notes then the course is poorly designed. While there is no doubt more to this story, I can see Moulton’s point. While the grade at the end of the course is what matters to most students, there is something deeper that most of them do not see — something that professors want them to see. That is: Academic work is hard work, and it’s about more than just the grade. It’s about the journey.

I’m inclined to think that many college students these days are in college because they think they have to be there (like another few years of high school). They are there because of the paycheck that will come from the degree they earn. The age-old essence of hard work and carefully learned study habits is over their heads. I applaud Moulton for defending that point of view. (Of course, these are the words of someone who once taught English 121 — College Writing to freshman, none of whom wanted to be there. Take that by way of disclaimer.)

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