Higher Education

Over at Higher Ed Watch, Stephen Burd has a good post on the political chicanery surrounding the end of the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. Though the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which will end FFEL program lending, has yet to pass in the Senate (it passed in the House in September), […]

If you feel like you’re in too good of a Friday mood, this will help: A nonprofit organization that promised a group of Tucson kids a full ride to college has gone back on its word. In 2005, Arizona Quest for Kids guaranteed 23 local fifth-graders scholarships that would pay four years of tuition equivalent […]

Writing in Inside Higher Ed, Tim Mann, director and senior analyst for Eduventures’ Academic Leadership Learning Collaborative, points out that while the current economic climate should have served as a perfect storm to get academic institutions to evaluate every aspect of how they operate, something has been missing from such discussions: However, generally absent from […]

The Boston Globe reports that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer is, as I write this, giving a lecture at Harvard’s Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. The head of the center was quick to attempt to defuse the irony: “He’s not speaking about ethics. He’s here to talk about a research project we’re launching on […]

From a San Francisco Chronicle editorial: Californians are pleased with the current quality of public higher education, yet they are anxious about the future. They worry about the impact of budget cuts on class offerings, enrollment limits and faculty pay and hours – yet they are unwilling to raise taxes or student fees. These were […]

From Inside Higher Ed: While many higher-education institutions have been affiliated with particular religions since their founding, there has been a broad movement in recent years to accommodate religious diversity by enlisting additional chaplains to serve different faith groups, such as Muslims, Jews, Hindus and various Christian denominations that might not have been present at […]

Jay Mathews has a good article in today’s Washington Post that mentions Jon Marcus’ recent, excellent piece on how Maryland has been able to curb higher education costs. Matthews does lose some points, however, for referring to the piece as “a story in the November/December issue of Washington Monthly,” when it fact it was a […]

From Inside Higher Ed: The University System of Maryland flirted with adopting rules at the request of state legislature to ban public viewings of pornography, but its leaders voted Wednesday against adopting such a policy on the grounds that it would present unwanted legal and logistical challenges. William E. Kirwan, the system’s chancellor, and its […]

From The New York Times: Sonja Taylor applied to LaGuardia Community College this summer with every expectation of being admitted. She planned to study business, bringing her closer to her dream of owning a restaurant. But her application arrived in August, after the college had closed the floodgates because of a surge of interest from […]

From Inside Higher Ed: Lloyd A. Jacobs announced last week that in his role as president of the University of Toledo, he plans to interview every faculty member who comes up for tenure before making a recommendation to the board on whether to approve the bid. While many faculty members are angry about the idea […]