In a debate that I admittedly missed because of the holidays, Babson College professor Kara Miller published an op-ed in the Globe lamenting the laziness of her American students. She writes, “My “C,’’ “D,’’ and “F’’ students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have – despite language barriers – generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants.” Jules and I have already blogged a number of times about “kids these days” posts, but I had to write this one up.

As a non-lazy American student, I feel I have to apologize for the lazy ones. I know they exist. But I think her foundational assertions are based on flawed assumptions about the quality of her sample pools, as do a lot of commenters.

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After decades of relegating grad-school dissertations to dusty shelves on the top floors of libraries, Stanford’s believed to be the first school in the nation to put dissertations in a digital repository, the Chron is reporting.

As a hopefully-future grad student, this is fabulous news. Dissertations are the culmination of years of work and typically only publish a few copies that collect dust in libraries for the rest of eternity. It’s kind of disheartening to view it that way. They’re great resources for others doing highly specialized research as well, so they’ll hopefully see more use online as well.  Plus, there’s the whole saving lots-of-paper thing. We really, really like that, too.

I know that just a few weeks ago I was telling my generation to tailor themselves to professional norms and not be idiotic, but this time I have to take the other side (Juliette, aren’t you proud?).

A recent essay on the Chron by a leadership recruiter, Dennis Barden, bemoans the current culture of tattoos, piercings, abbreviated language and Facebook photos with bongs. He worries about its potential impact on recruiting practices and hiring standards in the future, when our pierced-and-tattooed generation takes over the world’s helm. And while his point that things that used to be frowned upon largely for moralistic reasons are now cultural norms is valid, I think his worries largely disappear when applied in the real world. Why? Because we might be liberal, but the students who will be executive vice presidents, nonprofit administrators, political movers-and-shakers, award-winning journalists, and other professional leaders are simply not that dumb, not even in our youth.

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As I’ve reported in the past: In the case of a Zombie emergency, the University of Florida has got it covered. They have Zombie attack emergency procedures written into their emergency policies to provide a little bit of levity to the document. We read about it and we all laughed. One theater troupe on campus took the joke to the next level last week.

Check out this video of Theatre Strike Force’s publicity stunt: A fake Zombie invasion on campus.

Jessee Vasold, a member of the College of William and Mary’s Class of 2011, was just elected homecoming queen.  This would not have made news, except for one critical fact: Vasold is transgender.  Vasold, who prefers to be known by the gender-neutral pronoun “ze” in place of “he or she” and “zir” instead of “him or her,” identifies as gender-queer.

Vasold was nominated by her friends and was elected by her classmates in a school-wide election.  There is no existing school rule preventing men or women from running for opposite roles, and students who made nominations were simply asked to describe how the nominee exemplified school pride.

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In its latest issue, Newsweek tackles a question I’ve been seeing posed quite frequently lately: Can college be completed in three years?

Lamar Alexander, a former senator and education secretary, argues that a three-year degree would be a beneficial option for some students, given the financial costs of a four-year program and the archaic nature of the school calendar (which was set back in the day when students needed to take time off and work on the family farm). Then, a panel of education profs and college presidents, including Columbia’s Lee Bollinger and Penn’s Professor Robert Zemsky, debate the potential pluses and minuses of the three-year plan.

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We don’t often post on totally Penn-specific things, though we generally <3 Penn, but when this came across my reader I thought I had to write about it. Penn and the University of Southern California topped a list of “best-neighbor” colleges.

First reported by the Chron, the survey takes a look a civic partnerships that universities make with their local communities to better the community. At USC, this took the shape of funds for helping local and new businesses in the area. At Penn, we were cited for improving the schools via our boatload of education-outreach initiatives, like the Penn-Alexander School.

A proposal to change the Student Government Association’s bylaws to allow same-sex couples to run for homecoming king and queen was shot down last Thursday at the University of North Texas.

The Student Senate voted 10-5 against, with eight in abstention.

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What better way to attract potential M.I.T. students than speaking to them in a language that they understand… that of the internet?

In a brilliant move, M.I.T. admissions added blogs onto their website five years ago in order to showcase the diverse lives M.I.T. students lead (read: Anime Club, Star Wars Marathons, and a record-setting game of Mattress Dominos).  But the most interesting part is the fact that everything is unedited and right there on the admissions website. They even include comments from prospective high schoolers.

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According to a recent report from the Task Force on College Gambling Policies (part of the Harvard Medical School), 3 to 11 percent of college students have a serious gambling problem, one that can result in psychological difficulties, overwhelming debt and failing grades. And schools aren’t doing anything about it — only 22 percent of schools have an official gambling policy, whereas most school have aggressive programs in place to curb alcoholism and drug problems.

The Task Force has numerous recommendations for addressing the problem, all of which begin with accessing the problem on a campus and developing a policy that fits. Among things to look out for they include avoiding mixed messages — schools should avoiding holding gambling-like events when raising money for charity.

There’s an interesting post on the whole proposal over at The Choice — I recommend checking it out.