Daily Debriefing
By Hank Nelson And Fan Zhang, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, May 15, 2009
Several private universities have accepted fewer doctoral students this year than in the past due to budget cuts, Inside Higher Ed reported on Wednesday. Many of these universities made the largest cuts to their humanities programs. The institutions do not know if the decline in acceptance rates will be a short-term or permanent change, according to Inside Higher Ed. Some experts approve of the changes, believing that they will have a positive pedagogical impact and make it easier for individuals holding Ph.D.'s to find jobs. Harvard University, Princeton University and Northwestern University are among those institutions making cuts, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The National Institutes of Health may decide not to implement stricter conflict of interest regulations following a review of its current policy after a series of recent controversies involving medical researchers, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Thursday. The NIH is not an enforcement agency, and officials fear that tougher regulations would hurt scientific research, Patrick White, vice president for federal relations at the Association of American Universities, told The Chronicle. A university's control over its employees will not be challenged by any new regulations, Sally Rockey, the NIH's acting deputy director for extramural research, told The Chronicle. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and other congressmen may push for legislation calling for more regulations, according to The Chronicle.
Yale University launched the Yale Global Health Initiative, a program that "will unite the range of efforts on campus concerning global health," on Wednesday, according to the Yale Daily News. Public health professor Elizabeth Bradley will head the program, which will also support Yale's Global Health Leadership Institute. The institute works with both foreign leaders on health projects in their countries and with students to "focus on leadership in global health." The initiative was partially funded by a grant from the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. Dartmouth also received a grant from the NIH.