Daniel Luzer

Nobody’s getting any money next year. At least as far as public higher education goes, it looks like 2011 is going to be another grim year. Continuing state budget problems across the country mean that the Great Recession-induced stingy funding is likely to continue. According to an Associated Press article by Judy Lin and Shannon […]

In an effort to help more American colleges to avoid tobacco products, the health education organization the Bacchus Network, is helping campuses to certify how far they go to get tobacco off campus. According to a piece by Sam Petulla in Inside Higher Ed: Colleges can be certified diamond, gold, or silver, depending on the […]

New Jersey’s Rutgers University returned a Renaissance painting (right) to the grandson of the Dutch Jewish couple who surrendered the painting to the Nazis in 1940. According to an Associated Press article in the Star-Ledger: …The 1509 work “Portrait of a Young Man” by German painter Hans Baldung Grien had hung in [Simon] Goodman’s grandparents’ […]

As part of its effort to digitize the entire collection of President Kennedy’s papers, last week the Kennedy Library put the future president’s 1935 college application online. It’s not so impressive. Kennedy explained his desire for higher education like this: The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel […]

Advocates for America’s for-profit colleges have a weakness for suggesting doomsday scenarios if the Department of Education implements its “Gainful Employment” rule, which will make career colleges ineligible for federal financial aid if average graduates need to spend more than 8 percent of starting salaries to service student loans. In fact, for-profit schools could already […]

College students may have trouble learning because their classes don’t focus enough on reading and writing. At least that’s according to a new report prepared by the Social Science Research Council. According to an article by Jamaal Abdul-Alim in Diverse Issues in Higher Education: The study found that students who took courses that required both […]

State university leaders have been complaining for years, though more angrily given the severity of the Great Recession, about the paucity in state funding. Some have even argued that public colleges actually need a new funding model. Well at least one administrator—Richard Lariviere, president of the University of Oregon—is now actually proposing a new model. […]

Because apparently bicycle theft is some huge problem worthy of sophisticated intervention, South Carolina’s Winthrop University is cracking down. According to a piece by Jamie Self in the (Rock Hill) Herald: Police started attaching GPS devices to three “bait” bikes in September 2010, placing the bait bikes among students’ bikes around campus, some locked, some […]

A student at the University of Colorado decided to pay his entire tuition in cash. Using a duffel bag filled with $1 bills he apparently tried to demonstrate that tuition was too high. Colorado sophomore Nic Ramos said “It’s just an absurd amount of money. I wanted to give the school a different way to […]

Facing budget cuts, many public colleges are now trying to get alumni to increase contributions. The trouble is that budget cuts come from continuing economic problems, and the Great Recession is forcing public colleges, particularly those in the Northeast, to do some rather interesting things. According to an article by Lisa Foderaro in the New […]