They're Talking On Campus.
. . . About federal judge's ruling that the University of Michigan can consider race in undergraduate admissions because of the educational benefits of campus diversity.

U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Duggan said the current admissions policies, adopted in 1999, didn't discriminate against white students.

This is the second recent federal court decision that has found diversity to be an adequate justification for race-conscious admissions policies. Both rulings relied strongly on the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1978 decision, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

. . . About wide discrepancies in salaries paid to part-time faculty found in a wide-ranging survey by the Modern Language Association.

The data revealed that even doctorate-offering departments at major universities pay instructors, on average, less than $2,000 per course.

Also significant: Only 42 percent of institutions provided the requested salary information, far below the usual response rate for MLA surveys of around 90 percent. Among the missing: Harvard and Yale.

More information at www.mla.org.

. . .About a prediction that the U.S. job market for students receiving an undergraduate or advanced degree in 2001 will expand 6 to 10 percent.

Why the rosy outlook? Two possible reasons, notes the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University: Baby boomers are retiring, and employers are showing increased interest in liberal arts majors.