FAMILY UNFRIENDLY: As colleges have adopted "family friendly" tenure policies — such as taking leaves or "stopping the tenure clock" — many female academics have feared that using these benefits may not actually help them. Acccording to Inside Higher Ed, a recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling gives credence to those fears. The EEOC found "reasonable cause" to believe that Laurie Anne Freeman was a victim of sex discrimination when she was turned down for tenure by UC Santa Barbara in 2003. Freeman's claim was that the gender bias was related to two leaves she took, one when each of her daughters was born. A UC Santa Barbara spokeswoman told Inside Higher Ed that the university could not comment on the case because it is a personnel matter. The EEOC does not usually support faculty members charging bias in the tenure process, according to Freeman's lawyer. ...

STANFORD UPSET HEADLINES: A sampling of headlines on last Saturday's 20-17 Aggie football victory over Stanford University: "Stanford hit new low against Davis," from Inside Bay Area; "Aggies revel after biggest victory in school history," from the Sacramento Bee; "Stanford succumbs to I-AA opponent," from the San Jose Mercury News; and "Embarrassing football loss for Stanford, from Palo Alto Online. ...

NCAA AND KATRINA: Division I basketball and football players from schools closed by Hurricane Katrina will still have to sit out for a year if they transfer to one of the many colleges that have offered admission, NCAA president Myles Brand said recently. The NCAA said last month that it would bend some rules to help students and schools deal with the hurricane, including letting students compete without attending classes. ...

SCIENCE EDUCATION: "Should the United States worry about its educational system?" That's one question asked in an annual report on education worldwide by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The answer appears to be "yes," especially in regard to science. The study compares the number of university graduates produced in the sciences for every 100,000 persons employed who are 25-34 years old. The United States figure (1,069) is well behind numerous nations, such as Finland (2,172), South Korea (2,000), Australia (1,942), Britain (1,926) and France (1,900). Also, among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree. ...

PROFESSORIAL SURVEY: UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute recently released "The American College Teacher," a report on a survey conducted every three years. Overall, 41 percent of the nation's faculty believes that "most" of the students they teach lack the basic skills for college-level work. Working with what they consider to be underprepared students is a source of at least "some" stress for 56 percent of today's faculty. This type of stress is most pervasive at two-year colleges, where 68 percent of faculty reports at least "some" stress within this realm and least common at private universities, where only 34 percent indicates similar stress levels. Also, the survey noted that 51.9 percent of the 40,670 professors surveyed described themselves as far left or liberal, while just 19.5 percent said they were conservative. ...

ARCHITECTURAL ANGST: Few universities tear down buildings designed by famous architects. And few architects attract attention like Frank O. Gehry, who has designed several major college buildings, including a $300 million building that opened in 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But at least one university plans to tear its Gehry down. At UC Irvine, plans are underway to demolish a 17,800-square-foot building built in 1986 and used for engineering and computer science. Simply, the building is falling apart. "The exterior of the building is leaking," said Richard Demerjian, director of campus planning. "There is serious water penetration in the building and structural deterioration. ...

NATIONAL STRATEGY: U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans to announce the creation of a panel to map a "national strategy" for higher education, the Associated Press reported. The panel would study such issues as college costs and student preparedness and would be led by Charles Miller, former chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas. ...

SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS: The Faculty Senate at the University of Nevada at Reno voted last week to reject the administration's plan to use surveillance cameras as part of an effort to improve campus security, The Reno Gazette Journal reported. Professors were quoted as saying that the plan did not have enough protection for the privacy of people on campus.