Once again, we start off the Blog Roundup with something that’s not a blog: an article on Slate by Christopher Hitchens, who at least attempts to remove his boxing gloves long enough to pass along a plea for book donations to a new university in Iraq. He can’t quite pull it off, of course; you’ll have to plow through some of his usual bellicosity to get to the good stuff. But it’s worth it, and worth your extra books and multiple postage stamps.

In more blog-specific (and creepier) news, the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog reports a rise in laptop thefts–specifically, thefts of university laptops that contain sensitive personal information (like Social Security numbers) of faculty, staff and/or students. Encrypt that data, boys and girls!

And in other non-blog news, the New York Times reports a new study that gives career colleges a reputation boost. It reports that:

Now, a long-term and rigorous evaluation of nine career academies across the country, to be released in Washington on Friday, has found that eight years after graduation, participants had significantly higher employment and earnings than similar students in a control group.

The control group wasn’t Harvard or anything, but by comparison with students who did not attend any kind of post-secondary institution, the career college students did very well indeed. And as they move into the workforce and impress their employers with their abilities and experience, more doors open for these graduates, and career colleges start to sound better and better.