Lee Gardner, reporting for Chronicle: James Dragna had his work cut out for him when he became "graduation czar" at California State University at Sacramento, in 2016. The university's four-year graduation rate sat at 9 percent. It hadn't moved in about 30 years, he says. Like many student-success experts at public colleges these days, Dragna combed through academic data about students that the university had on hand -- grades, attendance, advising information -- to track how they were doing as each semester wore on. He fed those data into predictive-analytics software to look for potential problems or hurdles that might lead to failing grades or dropping out, and to identify students who might benefit from a little extra support. Three years later, the university's four-year graduation rate is up to 20 percent. Its six-year rate has risen to 54 percent from 47 percent.

Stories like that dot the higher-education landscape as more colleges take advantage of burgeoning Big Data technology to keep tabs on their students and find more places where they can successfully intervene. But recently, the practice of tracking students has taken a more literal turn. Sacramento State plans to gather data on where some of its students spend time on the campus and for how long, joining 14 other institutions using software from a company called Degree Analytics. When a tracked student -- a freshman who has opted in -- enters the student union, her smartphone or laptop will connect to the local Wi-Fi router, and the software will make note of it. When the student leaves and her phone connects to the router in the chemistry building, or the library, or the dorm, it will capture that, too, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It isn't hard to imagine the wealth of observational data such location tracking might produce, and the student-success insights that might arise from it. For example, knowing that A students spend a certain number of hours in the library every week -- and eventually communicating that to students -- might motivate them to study there more often.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Applications to some of America's most elite business schools fell at a steeper rate this year, as universities struggled to attract international students amid changes to immigration policies and political tensions between the U.S. and China. The declines affected some of the nation's top-rated programs, with Harvard University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, all reporting larger year-over-year drops in business-school applications. Some, such as Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, posted double-digit percentage declines.

Overall, applications to American M.B.A. programs fell for the fifth straight year, according to new data from the nonprofit Graduate Management Admission Council, an association of business schools that administers the GMAT admissions test. In the latest academic cycle ended this spring, U.S. business schools received 135,096 applications for programs including the traditional master of business administration degree, down 9.1% from the prior year, according to an annual survey. Last year applications for U.S. business programs were down 7%.

California governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Sunday preventing schools in the state from starting classes before 8am. Quartz reports: The law bars middle schools from starting before 8am, while high schools must wait till 8:30am to begin classes. This means that about half of California schools will need to delay their opening bell by 30 minutes or less, according to a legislative analysis (pdf), while one-quarter will need to wait an additional 31 to 60 minutes to get going. Schools have until July 1, 2022 to comply with the rule, or whenever their three-year collective bargaining agreements with employees expire -- whichever comes later. Some rural schools are exempt from the law, and the new start times do not apply to optional "zero period" classes.

The move makes California the first U.S. state to heed the call of health advocates who argue that early school start times are forcing adolescents to operate in a state of perpetual sleep deprivation. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which backed the bill, said in 2014 policy statement that getting too little sleep puts teenagers' physical and mental health at risk, as well as their academic performance. The organization cited research that shows that biological changes in puberty make it difficult for the average teenager to fall asleep before 11pm, and that teenagers need between 8.5 and 9.5 hours of sleep to function at their best. It recommended that schools adjust their schedules rather than compel students to go against their natural sleep rhythms.

An anonymous reader writes: TED Conferences has its own educational YouTube channel (now with 10 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion views). Two weeks ago it launched a 10-episode animated series about computer programming, and its first episode -- The Prison Break -- has already been viewed nearly a quarter of a milllion times.

In the 7-minute video, a programmer wakes up in a prison cell -- with total amnesia -- and discovers a "mysterious stranger" squeezing through the jail cell's bars. It's a floating anthropomorphic drone, saying it needs the programmer's help to rescue a dystopian future world "in turmoil. Robots have taken over." The video introduces the computer programming concept of a loop -- since escaping the jail cell involves testing a key in every possible position. And the video's page on the TED-Ed web site offers links to related resources from Code.org and Free Code Camp, as well as from Advent of Code, "which is run by Eric Wastl, who consulted extensively on Think Like a Coder and inspired quite a few of the puzzles."

The episode ends with the programmer dangling from the flying drone, off on an attempt to recover three artifacts -- nodes of memory, power, and creation -- that are currently being used for "nefarious purposes."

"In a widely-reprinted essay, Ohio State University assistant professor of physics Chris Orban ponders whether the tech world did students a favor or disservice by getting states to count computer science as high school math credit," writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp.

The assistant physics professor writes: In 2013, a who's who of the tech world came together to launch a new nonprofit called Code.org. The purpose of the organization was to get more computer science into schools. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates donated millions of dollars to the group. According to the organization's last annual report...$6.9 million went to advocate for state legislation across the country. As part of the organization's mission to "make computer science count" in K-12 education, code.org takes credit for having influenced graduation policies in 42 states. Today, 47 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science classes to count in place of math classes like Algebra 2.

Prior to the organization's work, only a few states allowed computer science to count for math credit. In addition, 29 states passed legislation allowing computer science to count in place of a science course. When computer science begins to count as math or science, it makes sense to ask if these changes are helping America's students or hurting them...

I worry that students may take computer science just to avoid the more difficult math and science courses they need for college. Computer science could be a way for students to circumvent graduation requirements while adults look the other way....

Computer science advocates have created a kind of national experiment. The next few years will show if this was a good idea, but only if we're looking at more than just the numbers of students taking computer science.

This year's "International Day Against DRM" is highlighting user-disrespecting restrictions on educational materials.

An anonymous reader quotes the Free Software Foundation's Defective By Design site: The "Netflix of textbooks" model practiced by Pearson and similar publishers is a Trojan horse for education: requiring a constant Internet connection for "authentication" purposes, severely limiting the number of pages a student can read at one time, and secretly collecting telemetric data on their reading habits.

Every year, we organize the International Day Against DRM (IDAD) to mobilize protests collaboration, grassroots activism, and in-person actions against the grave threat of DRM. For IDAD 2019, we are calling on Pearson and similar companies to stop putting a lock on our learning, and demonstrate their alleged commitment to education by dropping DRM from their electronic textbooks and course materials. At the same time, it is our plan to show that a better world is possible by encouraging people to contribute to collaborative and DRM-free textbooks, and resist the stranglehold these publishers are putting on something as fundamental as one's education. To help us, join the Defective by Design (DbD) coalition as we organize local and remote hackathons on free culture educational materials, and an in-person protest of Pearson Education on Saturday, October 12th.
The group is joined in this year's event by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and The Document Foundation (as well as 10 other participating organizations). Here's some of the site's suggestions for ways to participate:

• In Boston, we'll be leading the way with our own demonstration on October 12th, 2019, at Pearson Education's corporate offices, followed by an evening hackathon on collaborative, freely licensed educational materials... We'll be providing activists around the world with support on how they can stage their own local in-person event, as well as how to join us online while we help improve the free and ethical alternatives to educational materials restricted by DRM.

• The easiest way to participate is to join us in going a Day Without DRM, and resolve to spend an entire day (or longer!) without Netflix, Hulu, and other restricted services to show your support of the movement. Document your experiences on social media using the tags "#idad" or "#dbd", and let us know at info@defectivebydesign.org if you have a special story you'd like us to share.

• Print and share our dust jacket design, which you can slip over your "dead tree" books (while you still have them) to warn others of the dangers of ebook DRM. Pass them out at coffee shops, libraries, and wherever readers congregate!

"The first data from an experiment in a California city where needy people get $500 a month from the government shows they spend most of it on things such as food, clothing and utility bills," reports the Associated Press: The 18-month, privately funded program started in February and involves 125 people in Stockton.... But critics say the experiment likely won't provide useful information from a social science perspective given its limited size and duration. Matt Zwolinski, director of the Center for Ethics, Economics and Public Policy at the University of San Diego, said people aren't likely to change their behavior if they know the money they are getting will stop after a year and a half. That's one reason why he says the experiment is "really more about story telling than it is about social science." Plus, he said previous studies have shown people don't spend the money on frivolous things. "What you get out of a program like this is some fairly compelling anecdotes from people," he said. "That makes for good public relations if you are trying to drum up interest in a basic income program, but it doesn't really tell you much about what a basic income program would do if implemented on a long-term and large-scale basis."

The researchers overseeing the program, Stacia Martin-West at the University of Tennessee and Amy Castro Baker at the University of Pennsylvania, said their goal is not to see if people change their behavior, but to measure how the money impacts their physical and mental health. That data will be released later....

Since February, when the program began, people receiving the money have on average spent nearly 40% of it on food. About 24% went to sales and merchandise, which include places like Walmart and discount dollar stores that also sell groceries. Just over 11% went to utility bills, while more than 9% went to auto repairs and fuel. The rest of the money went to services, medical expenses, insurance, self-care and recreation, transportation, education and donations.... "People are using the money in ways that give them dignity or that gives their kids dignity," Castro-Baker said, noting participants have reported spending the money to send their children to prom, pay for dental work and buy birthday cakes.

At a roundtable event in Dallas, Tex. Thursday alongside Ivanka Trump, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced new job training opportunities through a White House initiative. From a report: Google will sign the "Pledge to America's Workers," a White House initiative that calls on employers to expand education programs for American workers, Pichai said in a statement prior to the event. As part of the commitment, Pichai said the company provide 250,000 training opportunities for Americans in technology skills over five years. Google had previously signed the pledge through its membership in the trade group the Internet Association, but Thursday's announcement further strengthens that commitment. Google already has a national skills training program called "Grow with Google," which provides free resources to learn various online skills. In a blog post Thursday, Google announced plans to expand that program to 100 community colleges in the U.S. by 2020. At the roundtable, Trump said the pledge is meant to fill job opportunities with young workers as well as help reskill workers later in their careers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the past month or so, about 20 volunteer moderators out of about 600 have distanced themselves from Stack Exchange, the online network of Q&A communities, to protest corporate policy changes and the removal of a moderator, Monica Cellio, over alleged violations of as-yet unpublished Code of Conduct changes. Cellio on Friday posted her account of what happened, claiming that her moderator status had been revoked by a Stack Exchange employee on the assumption Cellio "will in the future violate a thoughtcrime-style provision of a Code of Conduct change that hasn't been made yet." Cellio raised concerns that the Q&A site's revised Code of Conduct would require people to use other people's preferred gender pronouns -- a phrase that advocacy group Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education (GLSEN) says should be simply "pronouns" to assert that their chosen pronouns are mandatory and not optional.

Caleb Maclennan, a Stack Exchange moderator who resigned in protest of Cellio's treatment, offered his own take on the dust-up. He suggests Stack Exchange intends to treat refusal to use a person's designated pronouns as a code of conduct violation. In a post on Monday evening, Cellio offered more details about what happened to complement Maclennan's account. "In January a mod asked a discussion question on the mod team: should we require that people use preferred pronouns?" she explains. "My answer said we must not call people what they don't want to be called, but there are multiple ways to avoid misgendering and we should not require a specific one. Under some pressure I said I don't use singular they or words like chairwoman but solve the problem other ways (with examples)." She said the moderator linked to her question and called her a bigot. Things went downhill from there. In response to an email from The Register, Stack Exchange director of community Sara Chipps said, "On Friday, we revoked privileges for one Stack Exchange moderator when they refused to abide by our Code of Conduct (CoC) after being asked to change their behavior multiple times. The disagreement stemmed from an interpretation of a certain policy, but our CoC is not up for debate."

In the first nine months of the year, ransomware infections have hit over 500 US schools, according to a report published last week by cyber-security firm Armor. From a report: In total, the company said it found and tracked ransomware infections at 54 educational organizations like school districts and colleges, accounting for disruptions at over 500 schools. To make matters worse, the attacks seem to have picked up in the last two weeks, with 15 school districts (accounting for over 100 K-12 schools) getting hit at the worst time possible -- in the first weeks of the new school year. Of these 15 ransomware incidents, Armos said that five were caused by the Ryuk ransomware, one of today's most active ransomware strains/gangs. Overall, Connecticut saw ransomware infections hit seven school districts throughout 2019, making them the state whose educational institutions were compromised the most by ransomware attacks this year. But while Connecticut saw the most ransomware infections targeting school districts, it was Louisiana who handled the attacks the best when, in July, Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency in response to a wave of ransomware infections that hit three school districts. The governer's actions rallied multiple state and private incident response teams together and helped impacted school districts recover before the new school year, without paying the hackers' ransom demand.

theodp writes: On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced $123 million in new Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awards to 41 school districts, nonprofits and state educational agencies. Over $78 million of that went to 29 grantees focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, and more than 85% of the funded STEM projects include a specific focus on computer science. The announcement was scant on details, but the awardees listed include tech-bankrolled Code.org, whose Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith, Amazon CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke, and Google VP of Education & University Programs Maggie Johnson. In his new book, Tools and Weapons, Smith interestingly reveals how Microsoft, Amazon, and Google each pledged to commit $50 million to K-12 computer science education to get First Daughter and Presidential Adviser Ivanka Trump to work to secure $1 billion of Federal support for K-12 STEM/CS education.

From the book: "While you would be hard-pressed to say that every student must take computer science, you could say that every student deserves the opportunity. That means getting computer science into every high school, and into earlier grades as well. The only way to train teachers at this scale is for federal funding to help fill the gap. After years of lobbying, there was a breakthrough in federal interest in 2016. In January President Obama announced a bold proposal to invest $4 billion of federal money to bring computer science to the nation's schools. While the proposal produced enthusiasm, it didn't spur Congress to appropriate any new money. Ivanka Trump had more success the following year. Even before her father had moved into the White House, she was interested in federal investments in computer science in schools. She was confident she could persuade the president to support the idea, but she also believed that the key to public money was to secure substantial private funding from major technology companies. She said she would work to secure $1 billion of federal support over five years if the tech sector would pledge $300 million during the same time. As always, there was the question of whether someone would go first. The White House was looking for a company to get things rolling by pledging $50 million over five years. Given Microsoft's long-standing involvement, financial support, and prior advocacy with the Obama White House, we were a natural choice. We agreed to make the commitment, other companies followed, and in September 2017 Mary Snapp, the head of Microsoft Philanthropies, joined Ivanka in Detroit to make the announcement."

The $300 million was apparently money well-pledged. Surrounded by children, educators, Ivanka Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, President Trump in late 2017 signed a presidential memorandum directed to DeVos calling for the expansion of K-12 computer science and STEM education in the U.S. with at least $200 million in annual grant funding.

The conventional wisdom that liberal arts majors earn less than compsci majors may be true for the first job, but not necessarily for an entire career, reports the New York Times, in an article shared by jds91md (and republished by Indiana State's College of Arts and Sciences). "By age 40 the earnings of people who majored in fields like social science or history have caught up." This happens for two reasons. First, many of the latest technical skills that are in high demand today become obsolete when technology progresses. Older workers must learn these new skills on the fly, while younger workers may have learned them in school. Skill obsolescence and increased competition from younger graduates work together to lower the earnings advantage for STEM degree-holders as they age.

Second, although liberal arts majors start slow, they gradually catch up to their peers in STEM fields. This is by design. A liberal arts education fosters valuable "soft skills" like problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. Such skills are hard to quantify, and they don't create clean pathways to high-paying first jobs. But they have long-run value in a wide variety of careers.
Some other interesting stats from the article:

• STEM salaries grew more slowly -- and the field experienced a higher exit rate. "Between the ages of 25 and 40, the share of STEM majors working in STEM jobs falls from 65 percent to 48 percent. Many of them shift into managerial positions, which pay well but do not always require specialized skills."

• High-paying jobs in management, business and law raise the average salary of all social science/history majors.

According to the College Board, average scores dropped on the SAT this past test-taking cycle, with a greater percentage of high-school students not ready for college-level work. The Wall Street Journal reports: A record 2.2 million 2019 graduates took the college entrance exam, up from 2018's record of 2.1 million. The increase is partly attributed to more districts offering students the option to take the test during the school day, often at no cost. The College Board said the lower scores were partly due to the rise in students taking the exam during the school day. These students are more likely to be minority, attend high-poverty public schools and have parents without college degrees. The groups are typically underrepresented on college campuses and might never have taken the test before, said the College Board.

Since the SAT is now measuring the college readiness of students who previously wouldn't have taken the test, it is understandable that overall performance has fallen slightly, she said. College Board officials said the increase in students taking the exam is a good indication that more are considering college as part of their future. The percentage taking it during the school day grew to 43% from 36%. Overall, the combined mean SAT score is down to 1059, from 1068, out of a possible 1600 point scale for the two sections on the exam -- math and reading, writing and language. The percentage of students meeting benchmarks to indicate readiness for introductory college-level coursework slipped to 45% from 47%. Those not meeting any of the benchmarks increased to 30% from 27%.

The University of Alabama is taking an extraordinary, Orwellian step to reward students who attend games -- and stay until the fourth quarter -- by using location-tracking technology from students' phones to see who skips out and who stays. If students stay until the fourth quarter, they will be rewarded with improved access to tickets to the SEC championship game and to the College Football Playoff semifinals and championship game, which Alabama is trying to reach for the fifth consecutive season. The New York Times reports: Greg Byrne, Alabama's athletic director, said privacy concerns rarely came up when the program was being discussed with other departments and student groups. Students who download the Tide Loyalty Points app will be tracked only inside the stadium, he said, and they can close the app -- or delete it -- once they leave the stadium. "If anybody has a phone, unless you're in airplane mode or have it off, the cellular companies know where you are," he said.

The creator of the app, FanMaker, runs apps for 40 colleges, including Clemson, Louisiana State and Southern California, which typically reward fans with gifts like T-shirts. The app it created for Alabama is the only one that tracks the locations of its students. That Alabama would want it is an example of how even a powerhouse program like the Crimson Tide is not sheltered from college football's decline in attendance, which sank to a 22-year low last season. The Tide Loyalty Points program works like this: Students, who typically pay about $10 for home tickets, download the app and earn 100 points for attending a home game and an additional 250 for staying until the fourth quarter. Those points augment ones they garner mostly from progress they have made toward their degrees -- 100 points per credit hour. (A regular load would be 15 credits per semester, or 1,500 points.) Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog, said it was "very alarming" that a public university -- an arm of the government -- was tracking its students' whereabouts.

"Why should packing the stadium in the fourth quarter be the last time the government wants to know where students are?" Schwartz said, adding that it was "inappropriate" to offer an incentive for students to give up their privacy. "A public university is a teacher, telling students what is proper in a democratic society."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Australia is once again deciding to follow in the tracks of the United Kingdom, with the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs to look into age verification for online pornography and online wagering. The matter was referred to the committee by the Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator Anne Ruston and Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety, and the Arts, Paul Fletcher. The terms of reference for the inquiry state that it will be looking into age verification under the auspices of protecting children online.

The committee will look into "the potential benefits of further online age verification requirements, including to protect children from potential harm, and business and non-government organizations from reputation, operational and legal risks," the terms state. Potential risks and unintended consequences for age verification will be looked into as well, the terms state, including privacy breaches, freedom of expression, false assurance, and whether adults are pushing into "unregulated/illegal environments or to other legal forms of these activities." The committee will also examine the economic impact of age verification, and the impact on "eSafety resourcing, education, and messaging." The UK's age verification system for online pornography became mandatory on July 15.

For the first time in 185 years, there will be no fall semester at Green Mountain College in western Vermont. The college, which closed this year, isn't alone: Southern Vermont College, the College of St. Joseph, and Atlantic Union College, among others, have shuttered their doors, too. The schools fell victim to trends in higher education -- trends that lead one expert to believe that more schools will soon follow. From a report, shared by a reader: "I think 25% of schools will fail in the next two decades," said Michael Horn, who studies education at Harvard University. "They're going to close, they're going to merge, some will declare some form of bankruptcy to reinvent themselves. It's going to be brutal across American higher education." Part of the problem, Horn explained, is that families had fewer kids after the 2008 recession, meaning that there will be fewer high school graduates and fewer college students. "Fundamentally, these schools' business models are just breaking at the seams," he said.

That's what happened to Green Mountain College. When Robert Allen became president of the school in 2016, he realized "very quickly" that the school had a problem. "I'm a mathematician by training, a financial person," he said. "And I realized that we were going to come up short." The main problem was shrinking enrollment. By last year, just 427 students remained on campus, leaving the school broke. "At Green Mountain College this past year, we didn't have one full paid student," Allen said, adding, "Our published tuition was $36,500, and the average student paid just a little over $12,000." Unable to find a school with which to merge, Allen announced in January that the school's 184th graduation would be its last. "I've had a long professional career, not all of it in education, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Allen said. "As you can imagine, many parents were really angry."

Jack Ma has stepped down from the position of chairman at the company he co-founded exactly 20 years ago. Ma announced his retirement plans last year, saying at the time he wanted to spend more time focusing on education. ZDNet reports: Ma bid farewell to Alibaba, sporting a rock star wig and guitar at an employee event Tuesday, according to Reuters. "After tonight I will start a new life," Ma reportedly said at Tuesday's event. "I do believe the world is good, there are so many opportunities, and I love excitement so much, which is why I will retire early."

His retirement was not the end of an era, the former English teacher said when he announced he was stepping down, but "the beginning of an era," adding also at the time, "I love education." CEO Daniel Zhang succeeds Ma as chairman of the board, effective September 10, 2019. Ma stayed on for a year to "ensure a smooth transition of the chairmanship." "I have put a lot of thought and preparation into this succession plan for ten years," Ma wrote in a letter to shareholders and customers in September. "When Alibaba was founded in 1999, our goal was to build a company that could make China and the world proud and one that could cross three centuries to last 102 years. However, we all knew that no one could stay with the company for 102 years. A sustainable Alibaba would have to be built on sound governance, culture-centric philosophy, and consistency in developing talent. No company can rely solely on its founders."

In addition to launching new iPhones today, Apple unexpectedly announced a new 7th-generation iPad, featuring a larger display and support for Apple's forthcoming iPadOS update. Ars Technica reports: This new model comes with a 10.2-inch 2160x1620 "Retina" display, up from the older model's 9.7-inch panel, and an A10 Fusion chip. The latter is the same chip used for the existing 6th-gen iPad, and that chip was first introduced with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus -- so don't expect a significant performance upgrade. Still, it should provide enough power for the entertainment, Web browsing, and casual work needs this iPad is primarily aimed at. The design is otherwise very similar to before -- thicker bezels, home button, roughly one-pound weight, and all -- and Apple still claims the tablet will get up to 10 hours of battery life. The device still comes with either 32GB or 128GB of storage.

Naturally, the new iPad will come with Apple's forthcoming iPadOS update, which will give the device a more robust multitasking system. It'll be able to connect to thumb drives and SD cards, too, and it'll work with Apple's Smart Keyboard attachment and the first-gen model of the Apple Pencil stylus. Apple did not switch to a USB-C port here as it's done with its higher-end iPad Pros, though that's not surprising with a cheaper tablet like this. The device will retain the $329 starting price of the previous 9.7-inch iPad and will begin shipping on September 30, with pre-orders available on Tuesday. Education customers will be able to get it at a slight discount of $299.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: All watches should be banned from exam halls to discourage cheating, says an inquiry into the extent of malpractice in exams taken by pupils across the UK. Smart watches, connected to the internet, are already banned from use by students taking public exams. But the review, commissioned by exam boards, says it is becoming difficult to distinguish between hi-tech and traditional watches. Review chairman Sir John Dunford called for a "blanket ban" on watches. The Independent Commission on Examination Malpractice, set up by exam boards to investigate the prevalence of cheating in public exams in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, says that overall there is a "very low level of malpractice." "It can look as if it's a time-telling watch and actually, you press a button and it becomes an email-type watch," said Sir John, a former head teachers' union leader. "If you don't ban them all I think you're giving a very difficult job to invigilators who are looking round an exam room. So I think the obvious thing to do here is to ban watches."

U.S. prosecutors have charged a Chinese professor with fraud for allegedly taking technology from a California company to benefit Huawei, in another shot at the embattled Chinese telecommunications equipment maker. From the report: Bo Mao was arrested in Texas on Aug. 14 and released six days later on $100,000 bond after he consented to proceed with the case in New York, according to court documents. Bo Mao was arrested in Texas on Aug. 14 and released six days later on $100,000 bond after he consented to proceed with the case in New York, according to court documents. According to the criminal complaint, Mao entered into an agreement with the unnamed California tech company to obtain its circuit board, claiming it was for academic research.

The complaint, however, accuses an unidentified Chinese telecommunications conglomerate, which sources say is Huawei, of trying to steal the technology, and alleges Mao played a role in its alleged scheme. A court document also indicates the case is related to Huawei. Although Huawei has not been charged, the company said it views the case against Mao as the U.S. government's latest instance of "selective prosecution."