College

If Chip Kelly drafted Matt Barkley, a quarterback virtually no one thought he could be interested in, then there is no reason to think that he can't start this season. History says fourth-round quarterbacks hardly ever start in the NFL, let alone as rookies. But the NFL is evolving and in certain segments becoming more like the college game than vice versa. And there's something about the Great Kelly Unknown that suggests anything is possible. There are some pertinent reasons to support Barkley's candidacy, among them his decision-making, accuracy, and moxie.

The abrupt hiring of Houston Rockets assistant general manager Sam Hinkie as 76ers president of basketball operations and general manager, coupled with the swift kick the organization gave to Tony DiLeo on Friday, shows that owner Joshua Harris is going full-bore in doing away with one culture and giving birth to another. Harris has made his billions by propping up distressed companies, restoring them to value, and, in some cases, increasing their value. But in less than one year, the 76ers regressed badly after being one victory away from the Eastern Conference finals.

Gerald Hodges' football career has been about adapting, persevering, and producing. And now it will be about adjusting - to the NFL. The Penn State linebacker and former all-South Jersey performer from Paulsboro was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the fourth round, the 120th player chosen. "It's a blessing when my name was called, and now I get a chance to put a franchise on my helmet," Hodges said by phone. The 6-foot-1, 243-pounder began his college career as a safety but moved to linebacker.

In the late 1970s, when inflation was rampant and memories of Watergate and the Vietnam War were still raw, Pat Toomey spent part of each school day in a high school history classroom quietly seething. It was the teacher who got under his skin. Too many lectures were about capitalism's failings, corruption in Washington, or how America was no better than the Soviet Union. None of it squared with Toomey's patriotic take on U.S. history or his budding conservative ideology. "I felt we were a great, great country, a great civilization," said Toomey, 42, who has represented the Lehigh Valley and parts of Montgomery County in the House of Representatives since 1999.

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.

These South Jersey players have committed to attend colleges on baseball scholarships. Player   High school   College    Christian Adorno   St. Augustine   Wilmington    Frank Angeloni   Highland   Concordia    Tom Bradway   Mainland   Lafayette    Barry Buchowski   St. Augustine   Tulane    Nick Cieri   Rancocas Valley   Maryland    Trevor Datz   Pitman   Univ. of Sciences    Jarrett DeHart   Shawnee   Louisiana State    Derek DeMaria   Gloucester Catholic   Philadelphia    Troy Dixon   Egg Harbor Twp.   St.

By Bill McDermott A skilled workforce is the lifeblood of any successful company, industry, or economy. Unfortunately, many young people in Philadelphia and across the country are falling short of their global counterparts. In a recent ranking of 31 developed countries, American students finished 15th in reading, 19th in math, and 14th in science. Other statistics suggest we may be headed for trouble. International patent filings from the United States declined by 11 percent last year, while China's increased by nearly 30 percent.

This is a time of heightened expectations and sometimes broken hearts for senior high school football players with college aspirations. The recruiting period has heated up, with the National Letter of Intent day of Feb. 2 not that far away. Earning a football scholarship is an exhilarating experience, just as being snubbed by schools is deflating. Yet not all players who are offered pan out, and, conversely, those who received scant attention have often enjoyed exemplary careers.

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.

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.

Student enrollment at the nation's 105 historically black colleges and universities has become increasingly diverse, while the institutions continue to face challenges in graduation rates, fund-raising, and other areas, according to a report by a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. The report includes elite institutions such as Morehouse and Spelman Colleges and Howard University, and local universities including Cheyney and Lincoln. It was prepared by higher education professor Marybeth Gasman, who studies historically black universities, and her research team.

Rugby teams from local colleges gathered in Rittenhouse Square on Tuesday, closing off parts of 18th and Walnut Streets to promote the 2013 USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship at PPL Park in Chester on June 1 and 2. Players from Temple, St. Joseph's, Delaware and Penn explained proper tackling, ball movement, how scrums work, and some of the rules governing the game. "Basically, it's a demonstration to get people acquainted to what rugby is," said Hawks junior wing Eric Jackman, a graduate of St. Joseph's Prep.

Graham B. Spanier, the former president of Pennsylvania State University who was forced to resign in 2011, was the highest-paid public university president in the country that year, according to a report from the Chronicle of Higher Education released Sunday. Spanier, forced out amid a child-sex abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, received $2.9 million in total compensation during the 2011-2012 fiscal year, according to the report, including $1.2 million in severance pay. His total compensation was nearly $400,000 more than that of any other public university president, the report said, and the severance pay alone would have ranked him in the top five.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - After an office manager for New Jersey City University admitted embezzling $486,000 in student funds three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education began auditing the use of all federal money by the state college. It soon discovered that $608,766 in federally subsidized loans and grant money had been improperly awarded by the school - in some cases to students who flunked out or never showed up to class, making them ineligible for financial assistance. An examination of federal Department of Education records by The Star-Ledger of Newark shows that NJCU was not the only state college in New Jersey cited for giving too much money to students who were either ineligible for the aid or whose financial need was overestimated.

Camden County College will increase its tuition and fees slightly next school year and make budget cuts of about $1.8 million as its operating budget shrinks because of ever-rising costs and flat government funding. The school's board of trustees approved the budget at its meeting Tuesday night. The tuition and fee increases were adopted in March. Total cost per credit at Camden County College will increase $5 next year to $138 for in-county students, $142 for out-of-county students, and $217 for international students.

PITTSBURGH - A federal judge has reinstated a lawsuit filed by a college challenging federal health-care regulations that would require its student and employee health-benefits plans to cover birth control. A judge had dismissed the lawsuit filed last year by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a civil-rights group, on behalf of Geneva College in Beaver Falls. U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti reinstated much of the suit in a ruling Wednesday. The school says it must soon decide whether to drop its student health-insurance plan before the final government rules are due in August.

Swarthmore College is in rare company nationally as a school that collects nearly as much or more revenue from investments as it does from students. Its $1.5 billion endowment - about $1 million per student - allows the highly ranked college to spend more on each student, but it does not fully shield Swarthmore from the economic forces threatening higher education. "When we think about the future, we're worried about . . . economic growth in this country," said Suzanne Welsh, vice president for finance and treasurer at Swarthmore.

WHEN WAYNE Hardin was a sophomore halfback/quarterback at Pacific in 1946 he played for Amos Alonzo Stagg, who went into the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and coach in the charter class of 1951. Now, the man who became the winningest football coach in Temple history will soon join him. "How many people ever get to say that?" the 86-years-young Hardin asked yesterday from Florida, where he spends his time with his wife Jane when they're not at home in Oreland.

HEISMAN TROPHY winners Danny Wuerffel of Florida and Ron Dayne of Wisconsin, along with two-time national champion Tommie Frazier of Nebraska, were selected yesterday for the College Football Hall of Fame. They are part of a class of 12 players and two coaches chosen by the National Football Foundation. The rest of the players to be inducted in December are: Miami Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde, whose selection was announced Monday; Ted Brown of North Carolina State; Tedy Bruschi of Arizona; Jerry Gray of Texas; Steve Meilinger of Kentucky; Orlando Pace of Ohio State; Rod Shoate of Oklahoma; Percy Snow of Michigan State; and Don Trull of Baylor.

BOSTON - Three college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were arrested and accused Wednesday of trying to protect him by going into his dorm room and getting rid of a backpack filled with hollowed-out fireworks three days after the deadly attack. The three 19-year-olds were not accused of any role in the bombing itself. But in a footnote in the court papers outlining the charges, the FBI said that about a month before the attack, Tsarnaev told two of them that he knew how to make a bomb.