Manchester Patch - MCC Community Garden in Full Bloom (July 8, 2011) - The idea for a garden at Manchester Community College was sprouted four years ago in a classroom, as students wanted to learn about gardening firsthand. Then, other departments at the school, such as the biology and art departments, began to use the garden for their own teaching purposes...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Recession Reshaped College Enrollment Patterns, but the Sky Didn't Fall (July 14, 2011) - As the recession's grip tightened during the summer of 2008, dire predictions swirled on campuses everywhere. Enrollment chiefs huddled with presidents and trustees, bracing for an era of heightened uncertainty. They worried that the number of applicants would dwindle and the number of dropouts would surge...

Inside Higher Ed - Easy A (July 14, 2011) - Two critics of grade inflation have published a new analysis finding that the most common grade at four-year colleges and universities is the A (43 percent of all grades) -- and that Ds and Fs are few and far between...

Chronicle of Higher Ed  - Learning Assessment at Community Colleges Is Growing but Fragile, Report Says  (July 13, 2011) - Community colleges are putting increasing amounts of energy into measuring their students' knowledge and skills, but those learning-assessment projects are still fragile, according to a report being released on Wednesday by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment...

New England Board of Higher Ed - Down Economy Still Shaping College Enrollment, Consulting Firm Says (July 13, 2011) - Two years after the depth of the Great Recession, the economy is still a major factor in college-enrollment decisions, according to a new survey by Concord, Mass.-based Maguire Associates and Fastweb.com...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Professor Accuses Texas Community College of Violating His First Amendment Rights (July 11, 2011) - David M. Smith, a professor of political science and president of the employees' union at the College of the Mainland, a two-year institution in Texas City, Tex., has filed a lawsuit alleging that the college and its president violated his First Amendment right to free speech...

USA Today - College Offers Scholarship for Twitter 'Essay'  (July 12, 2011) - At the University of Iowa, a good tweet is worth $37,000. That's the price of a full scholarship, and that's exactly what a student hopeful can win in a contest the university has dreamed up that takes electronic communication to a new level. The university is asking prospective students to submit a 140-character tweet in place of a second essay...

Inside Higher Ed - Starting from Zero (July 12, 2011) - An administrator who wants to change how a college does business in the "new normal" -- the post-recession world -- might as well start at square one. That's the outlook that administrators at Colorado Mountain College took two years ago when they decided to switch from incremental budgeting to a zero-based process...

The Chronicle of Higher Ed - College Leaders Discuss One Last Faculty Transition: Retirement (July 12, 2011) - Presidents, provosts, and senior human-resource officers from more than 50 colleges gathered in Chicago on Monday to talk about how to support soon-to-retire faculty members and help them maintain meaningful connections to the institutions where they built their careers...

Inside Higher Ed - Wikipedia Aims Higher (July 11, 2011) - The United States' foremost custodian of public records had advice for professors whose colleagues still turn up their noses at Wikipedia. "If all else fails, you can tell them, 'If it's good enough for the archivist of the United States,' " said David Ferriero, who was appointed to the post in 2009...

The Chronicle of Higher Ed - Efforts to Measure Faculty Workload Don't Add Up (July 10, 2011) - Some people might consider Carlos L. Aiken's job pretty cushy. At a glance, anyone can see that he taught a total of 45 students at the University of Texas at Dallas in a recent academic year, while earning a six-figure salary...

Inside Higher Ed - Courting Valedictorians (July 8, 2011) - Ivy Tech Community College announced last month that it was awarding every high school valedictorian in Indiana a scholarship valued at 15 credit hours, or about $1,500. Officials at the 24-campus community college system know better than to think they'll lure all 373 of these high-performing students away from four-year institutions with such a modest merit award. They merely hope the students will pass through to pick up some spare credits to transfer along their route to a baccalaureate degree, and that their presence will help promote the state's two-year colleges to more households...

Campus Technology - Nao STEM Available for Community Colleges (July 6, 2011) - Nao STEM, Aldebaran's humanoid robot for STEM education, is now available for use in community colleges and high schools in the United States...

Inside Higher Ed - The End of Subsidized Loans? (July 13, 2011) - As talks continue and the deadline approaches on increasing the federal debt limit, the federal government's subsidy for undergraduate student loans is now on the table...

The Chronicle of Higher Ed - Despite Fiscal Woes, Spending Rose on Student Aid in Many States in 2010 (July 11, 2011) - At first glance, it looks like a bright spot in an otherwise bleak year for higher education: State aid for students appeared to rise by a small amount in the 2010 fiscal year. But look again and the picture is less sunny: Nearly half of the states surveyed cut their need-based grants, even as demand for financial aid went up because of booming enrollments and higher tuition...

Inside Higher Ed - A Nudge for the Neediest (July 8, 2011) - Two students, both eligible for Pell Grants for the needy, are randomly chosen to receive extra need-based aid as they start as first-time, full-time freshmen. One is considered very likely to complete a four-year degree; the other, an at-risk student, is a likely dropout. Whom does the grant help more...

Hartford Courant - Top Graduates From The Academy Of Engineering And Green Technology Are Headed To College With Special Awards (July 5, 2011) - ...Sena, class salutatorian, received the CBIA Scholarship Award, and the Edward Bode Award. He will be attending Manchester Community College in September...

Hartford Courant - Connecticut Carwash Association Awards 2011 Scholarship (June 27, 2011) - The Connecticut Carwash Association (CCA) has announced that Michael Cullen of Newington, CT is one of two recipients of the Kenneth M. Gustafason Sr. Scholarship award...

Hartford Courant - Students Make Modest Gains In CAPT Scores (July 12, 2011) - High school sophomores scored better than last year on the 2011 Connecticut Academic Performance Test in math, science and writing, but reading scores dipped slightly...

CT Mirror - State Authorizes Takeover Of Bridgeport Schools  (July 6, 2011) - By a single vote, the State Board of Education on Wednesday gave Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch the "miracle" he says is needed to turn around the troubled schools in the state's largest city: a takeover by the state of Connecticut...

CT Mirror - SEBAC Plans Monday Meeting On Changes To Voting Bylaws (July 13, 2011 ) - State employee union leaders will meet Monday to consider changing labor bylaws regarding future votes on contract concessions, according to a letter posted Wednesday on one union website...

Hartford Courant - More Than 300 Layoff Notices Already Issued For Executive Branch, Including 222 In Prisons Around The State (July 13, 2011) - More than 325 state employees in the executive branch have received layoff notices, including 222 in the Department of Correction. Correction is the largest department in the state, by far, with about 6,500 employees. The next two closest agencies have about 3,800 employees each...

CT Mirror - Without Union Concessions, Big Consolidations Yield Small Savings (July 12, 2011) - The challenge of reducing state government operating costs without wage and benefit concessions was underscored in a new, nonpartisan report showing a reduction of nearly 30 percent in the number of government agencies will save less than 1/20th of 1 percent of this year's overall budget...

Inside Higher Ed - Ask the Administrator: How to Spot Bloat? (July 13, 2011) - A thoughtful correspondent writes: I really wish someone would figure out a useful guide for identifying bloat, so I can know it when I see it and know whether to get rid of it...As it stands now, "eliminate administrator bloat" is an empty slogan. It allows people to fall back on one of several unproductive answers...

CT Mirror - Implementation Of Education Reforms Passed Last Year Will Have To Wait (July 11, 2011) - A gamut of education reforms passed last year in the state's attempt to land federal Race to the Top money will have to wait two more years to be implemented, as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has signed a bill delaying most of the initiatives because of the costs...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - A Community College Reaches From Peoria to Beijing (July 10, 2011) - It's early morning, and a vanload of students from Peoria, Ill., is on the expressway, en route to a Caterpillar factory. This is not surprising, considering that Caterpillar is headquartered in Peoria. Except that this Cat factory is in Tianjin, a Chinese city near Beijing, and these are community-college students, most of whom have seldom been out of Illinois, let alone the United States...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Introducing Google+  (July 11, 2011) - Almost two weeks ago, Google caught most everyone off guard by suddenly introducing a new social network, Google+. Google+ isn't the search giant's first foray into social networking...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - A College Education for All, Free and Online (July 10, 2011) - All around the world, people have been waiting for someone like Shai Reshef to come along. Reshef is the founder and president of the University of the People, a tuition-free online institution that enrolled its first class of students in 2009...