Dan's Landing

Ontario colleges have ‘fessed up’ to being behind the Obay campaign (see Accordion Guy’s post and the Torontoist coverage). To give you a summary, ‘Obay’ ads sprouted up in Toronto (and maybe elsewhere too) and made it seem like a “mind-control” drug parents could use to control their children’s behaviour. “When Amy started thinking for herself, we had to nip it in the bud with Obay.” claimed one of the posters.

Maclean’s reports that the Canadian Federation of Students seized this opportunity to remind colleges that while free thinking is all good, they should obey the law when it comes to the illegal ancillary fees college students are taxed each year. A class action suit was filed against the colleges for this reason in June of 2007. For more information on that go to StopUnfairFees.ca.

As for the whole politics of these press releases…this is how I will remember it:

(Created with the help of Despair.com)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Stanford University has dropped tuition fees for some of its students.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that John Hennessy, Stanford’s President, announced yesterday that students whose families make less than $100,000 a year will no longer be charged tuition. Also, if a student’s family income is less than $60,000 a year, room and board will not be charged either.

I think it’s time for me to change universities again.

Joey Coleman wrote a pretty interesting article on the way universities attract students (it is his take on the story ran by The Windsor Star). In it he tries to discuss whether or not universities are using deceptive practices to “lure” (if you will) students to enroll there. He mentions a few ways in which this is done, and I would like to address some of these (some in more detail than others).

Continue reading »