Seems pretty fair to me: you pay to get a set of services including a transcript, and they are withheld if you don't pay. I think that same rules apply at the Supermarket or the gas station.

The strange thing here is the sense of entitlement that people have regarding their debts. Now, the tuition prices at many US schools to seem crazily high, but the correct solution there is to go to a cheaper school. Of course, education is probably one area where it is definitely not a god idea to focus on the short-term cheap deal, but you do need to keep in mind that the price you pay actually has to be paid, even if a loan is involved.

Please do not save me a seat on the space shuttle you build.

This is not serious or credible. Building prosthetic devices is a serious challenge with a lot of ergonomic issues. This project and the reportage like some kids building a lego robot and expecting it to revolutionize the automobile industry. Great, they controlled some simple pneumatic with an alpha wave reader: yawn.

How about Dean Kamen's TED talk as a reference point for what's really needed and where this game is at: http://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm.html

Some conferences are good, and some are mostly unfiltered junk. The junk conferences tend to have worse networking, less interesting content, and generally much less value. Good conferences are very important venues for scientific exchange, networking and hunting down new ideas and trends

Low quality conferences can either been more social, local events, or even money grabs by the organizers. I believe CCSC is a local "unfiltered" conference that is a social event, but not a really high-value scientific exchange meeting. Such lower profile meetings can be a useful warmup to bigger events.

Only in the USA. Everywhere else (even Canada) it means real cheese sliced into ... slices.

Just say no devices at all. It fair, even-handed and realistic. Make an exam that doesn't put such a premium on mindless calculations (for example allow them to submit an expression such as 112*121/11 instead of computing the result). More emphasis on brain and mind, less on fingers.

Oh, and the can use their mind as a dictionary too.

Sheesh.