College

In rejecting PSA screening for prostate cancer, an influential federal panel has chipped a cornerstone of preventive medicine, declaring that it's not always best to catch cancer as early as possible. "At best, PSA screening may help only 1 man in 1,000 avoid death from prostate cancer," the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said Monday. "Most prostate cancers found by PSA screening are slow growing, not life threatening, and will not cause a man any harm during his lifetime.

Division III schools don't draw the country's premier athletes. That's pretty hard to do when you can't offer scholarships. Most athletes that go the D-III route do so because they want to be able to play more than one sport, stay closer to home or simply because they aren't good enough to play at a higher level. Don't tell that to the women athletes at the College of New Jersey. This past school year, the 10 women's programs compiled a 121-31-1 record, competed in seven NCAA tournaments, captured two national second-place finishes, one third-place and won 43 of 49 events in the highly competitive New Jersey Athletic Conference.

I am almost 60 years old, never graduated from high school, but recently I really got an education. A television reporter was interviewing students at Temple University in regard to having wine and beer on campus. One brilliant student made the statement that having beer and wine on campus is what college is all about. Isn't that odd - I always thought the purpose of college was for an education. Margaret J. Roberts Philadelphia.

In Philadelphia, unlike Boston, Chicago or Washington - in fact, unlike most cities - there are more college dropouts than citizens holding just a bachelor's degree. Tyrone Mays, 52, an unemployed laborer from South Philadelphia with a back injury, is one of the dropouts. He carries a lifetime of shattered dreams and one glorious memory - of the few months he spent attending college in the early 1980s. Besides a high rate of college dropouts - 16.3 percent compared with 13.1 percent who have earned only a bachelor's degree - the city's proportion of total college graduates among its residents is relatively low - about 20 percent, when graduate degrees are added.

Now that the long holiday vacation has ended, the Super Bowl is history and all that looms ahead are winter weather and long hours in the library, more than a few college students are wondering how long they and their school can stand one another - and whether they wouldn't be better off somewhere else. By this point in the school year, libraries have become zoos and dorm rooms feel like cages. Idiosyncracies that were charming in a roommate last fall are now motives for murder.

College interviews are a sport almost any high school senior can learn to play competently, even gracefully. As in tennis or badminton, quality depends on the skill of both sides, and a sparkling volley is exhilarating. But in interviews, players aren't adversaries. Ideally, each helps the other play his or her best - and learn in the process whether a student and a college are right for each other. And both can win, even if one or the other decides that the answer is no. College interviews may sound about as thrilling as root-canal work, but, actually, most are a lot of fun. Championship play during interviewing means knowing the rules, so here are some tips to help your game.

St. Joseph's Prep offensive lineman Mark Arcidiacono will announce his college destination in a press conference at his school on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Arcidiacono, a 6-foot-5, 285-pound junior who has 11 scholarship offers, said yesterday that he has narrowed his choices to Penn State, Florida and Rutgers. "I want to get the decision behind me so I can concentrate on my senior football season," the 17-year-old from Holland, Bucks County, said. Arcidiacono, the oldest of eight children, attended spring football games at Florida and Penn State.

When she grows up, 12-year-old Lisa Womack wants to be a landscaper, hospital worker or telephone operator. College might help her expand her dreams. With the help of a new grant program, Lisa and many other city students will get extra help toward their education. "This is not a sprint. This is a long-distance run," said U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., of Philadelphia, at a press conference yesterday introducing his "Gear Up" grant program. The program works with low-income students, beginning no later than seventh grade.

Everybody wants to be fancy. Especially schools. So there's a move afoot to allow virtually all the colleges in New Jersey to call themselves universities. Nothing else will change. They won't get any bigger or any better. They will just have fancy new names. This could come through that great academician, Assemblyman John Rocco of Cherry Hill, who wants to remove virtually all restrictions on the use of the term "university" - for marketing purposes. Rocco notes that 40 percent of New Jersey kids go out of state to college, failing to note that a kid who's off to Yale will not go to Jersey City State College even if you rename it Oxford University.

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A truck dispensing free ice cream drives around a beautifully appointed 140-acre setting. Motorists take advantage of a valet service that will park their cars for them. And, most importantly, there is a concierge desk to take care of all the needs you can't get to. Is this a description of some lush resort? No, it is High Point University in North Carolina. The school's amenities provide an extreme example of what's happened at too many American universities in recent years.

JIMMY JOHNSON, who went 52-9 and won the 1987 national championship in 5 years at the University of Miami before leaving to become coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Tuesday was announced as part of a class of 17 former players and coaches selected for the College Football Hall of Fame. "While winning back-to-back Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys was rewarding, the most fun I had in football was in college," Johnson said. The other coaches to be inducted in December are Phillip Fulmer , who won the first BCS title in 1998 with Tennessee, and R.C. Slocum , the winningest coach in Texas A&M history.

Under billowing tents in Aviator Park, Moore College of Art & Design presented its annual end-of-year fashion show Saturday night with aplomb. The collections showed depth and creativity and represented looks from decades past, with Laura Galindo's Mad Men-esquetailored pieces and Caralyn Scudner's children's wear infused with 1960s flower prints. Scudner won the Charming Shoppes Inc. Award for the most salable collection and the Jannaman Award for best construction. Great choice.

First things first: Congress should extend the current 3.4 percent interest rate on student loans now. If it doesn't act by July 1, the rate will double to 6.8 percent and the average student borrower will owe $1,000 more each year. Senate Republicans say they support the rate reduction signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, but they blocked full consideration of a Democratic-sponsored bill earlier this month. The legislation proposed to offset the $6 billion cost by closing a tax loophole that allows rich individuals to reduce their taxes by filing as corporations.

Question: Father helped send two sons to law school, though they have student loan debt they'll be paying for decades. Father has much younger stepdaughter. The sons are not particularly close with father's "new" family. Stepdaughter plans to go to medical school. Sons suspect that financial support for her will be greater than they received. Should they insist the stepdaughter receive the same? Less? Don't sons have right to better treatment? Answer: Ugh, no. First of all, "sons suspect" is not the same thing as "sons know," so treating suspicions as actionable facts is a bad idea to begin with.

Former Eagles Ty Detmer, Art Monk and Mark Simoneau were elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in voting announced Tuesday. Detmer is a quarterback from Brigham Young, Monk a wide receiver from Syracuse, and Simoneau, a linebacker from Kansas State. The veterans committee selected offensive guard John Wooten, who starred for Colorado in the 1950s, and was the Eagles' director of college scouting in the 1990s. He now directs the Fritz Pollard Alliance. Also elected were Louisiana State running back Charles Alexander, Purdue running back Otis Armstrong, California quarterback Steve Bartkowski, Southern Cal receiver Hal Bedsole, Notre Dame tight end Dave Casper, Rice quarterback Tommy Kramer, Colorado State defensive back Greg Myers, UCLA offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden, Texas Tech defensive tackle Gabe Rivera and Air Force safety Scott Thomas.

When I think of the new life the Community College of Philadelphia infused into Whitney Lopez and Dawn-Stacey Joyner, the famous line from the age-old poem "The New Colossus" pops up. You know, the one that's mounted on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty that reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. ... " It may sound corny, but freedom is what CCP provided for Lopez and Joyner, who graduated with associate's degrees last week. Lopez, 26, earned a full ride to Bryn Mawr, and Joyner, 45, has been accepted to the University of Pennsylvania.

Friends' Central standout Amile Jefferson is, finally, set to announce where he will play his college basketball. The 6-foot-8, 200-pound senior will make a commitment at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Wynnewood school. Wednesday marks the end of the spring signing period. "The process has been long and tough, for sure," Jefferson said. "But it's time for me to make a decision. I have to do it. " While North Carolina State and Duke are believed to be the finalists for his services, the two-time Inquirer Southeastern Pennsylvania player of the year said Kentucky, Ohio State, and Villanova are still in the mix. "I'm still looking at all the schools on my list," he said.

Robert A. Matthews Jr., 86, a former football coach at what is now SS. Neumann Goretti High School in South Philadelphia and a lacrosse and wrestling coach at the University of Pennsylvania, died of heart failure Sunday, May 6 at his home in Springfield, Delaware County. Mr. Matthews' daughter, Barbara Damon, said in an interview that her father in 2004 was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame for his coaching in both high school and college. In 2002, she said, the Seventh District of the Veterans of Foreign Wars named him its Man of the Year.