Mansfield-Storrs Patch - Patch Picks: Adult Education Classes (August 3, 2011) - Manchester Community College in Manchester offers a number of credit free classes in many categories ranging from cuisine to drama...

Inside Higher Ed - Debt, Dropouts and Degrees (August 4, 2011) - As concerns grow about student debt and college completion, colleges and universities have been ranked in any number of ways: by sticker price, net price, cost to the taxpayer, graduation rate, default rate and more...

Inside Higher Ed - 'Uneducated Guesses' (August 3, 2011) - What if the educators making important decisions about schools and colleges are acting too much on their guts and not enough based on actual evidence...

Community College Times - Leadership in shared governance (August 2, 2011) - Anthony Tricoli, president of Georgia Perimeter College, at one of the college's monthly open forums, which foster discussions among all stakeholders. When Anthony Tricoli arrived at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) as its new president nearly five years ago and started talking about a shared-governance strategy to improve the college, some folks rolled their eyes...

Hartford Courant - 'Priceless' Exec Leads Business School At University Of New Haven (August 2, 2011) - Larry Flanagan doesn't sound much like a university dean. He calls students "customers" and talks a lot about "marketing platforms," "value propositions" and "product differentiation." But the University of New Haven believes that Flanagan, an alumnus who is former chief marketing officer of MasterCard Worldwide (he shepherded the famed "Priceless" campaign) is the right person to launch the university's business school into its next century...

Inside Higher Ed - 'Fields of Learning' (August 2, 2011) - David Schaad knows a lot about farming. He knows it's important to start work at 8 a.m., so he can harvest the leafy green vegetables like lettuce and kale before it gets too hot, and he knows to bring his harvesting knife for root vegetables like carrots, scallions and green onions...

Campus Technology - 10 Keys to the Portal (August 1, 2011) - Successful web portals help campus users stay informed, in touch, and up to speed. They are also a telling window into the efficiency of your institution...

CNN Money - Community colleges step in to fill 'skills gap' (August 1, 2011) - Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of job openings out there. Problem is that there aren't enough Americans trained to do them. Community colleges and companies are hoping to change that...

Inside Higher Ed - Fighting the Non-University Master's (August 1, 2011) - A Senate bill that would encourage the growth of alternative training programs for teachers and principals, some of which would not be based at colleges or universities but would have the authority to give certificates considered the equivalent of master's degrees, has come under fire from higher education organizations that argue Congress should focus on higher education institutions in efforts to improve teacher quality...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Va. Community Colleges Dive Headfirst Into Remedial-Math Redesign (July 31, 2011) - Developmental education is the bane of community colleges. It costs institutions millions of dollars every year to educate students who come to their campuses unprepared for the rigors of college-level courses...

Diverse Issues in Higher Ed - Charter Schools and College Access (July 29, 2011) - Erica Cohen had been seriously down on her luck when she found herself waiting for her number to be called in the public lottery held by SEED School...

Inside Higher Ed - Fixing Debt (July 29, 2011) - Colleges and universities don't like uncertainty, and right now they're facing a lot of it. No one knows how long it will take the economy to recover to pre-recession levels. The government's sovereign credit rating, once ironclad, is under review for potential downgrade. And people aren't even sure if, in less than a week's time, the government will be able to pay its bills. Nobody knows what the national fiscal picture means for higher education...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Trends & Indicators 2011: Financing Higher Education (July 28, 2011) - New England continues to hold the dubious distinction of America's generally lowest state appropriations for higher education and highest tuitions and fees for public colleges and universities...

Inside Higher Ed - Social Networking Nudge (July 29, 2011) - Colleges are on social media, regardless of whether they have figured out what it is worth to maintain an institutional presence there. A recent survey by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth found that 98 percent of higher ed institutions are on Facebook, and 84 percent are on Twitter. Those numbers have risen dramatically in the past few years, college recruiters, fund-raisers, and marketers having bought into the value - much of it speculative - of keeping active in those communities...

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge - How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University (July 25, 2011) - In the absence of a disruptive new technology, the combination of prestige and loyal support from donors and legislators has allowed traditional universities to weather occasional storms. Fundamental change has been unnecessary...

Inside Higher Ed - Short-Term Stability, But ... (August 1, 2011) - Congressional leaders appeared late Sunday to have reached a deal on increasing the nation's debt limit that would avoid many of higher education's worst-case scenarios: cuts to Pell Grants, the end of subsidized student loans, or a government default that would leave student financial aid and other funding for colleges in limbo going into the fall semester...

West Hartford News - Comcast awards $47k in scholarships to Connecticut students (July 29, 2011) - The Comcast Foundation awarded 38 Connecticut students $1,000 scholarships through its annual Leaders and Achievers Scholarship Program... Gabrielle Okasia, resident of Bloomfield and graduate of Big Picture High School will be attending Manchester Community College...

CT Mirror - Last-minute agreement saves fall sports at state vo-tech schools (August 3, 2011) - A last-minute reprieve has saved fall sports for more than 1,500 students at the state's vocational-technical high schools, Acting Education Commissioner George Coleman announced late Wednesday, but the move will require the State Department of Education to identify budget cuts elsewhere..

CT Mirror - Connecticut may seek waiver from NCLB requirements (August 2, 2011) - Connecticut education officials are considering seeking a waiver to requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, saying the state is unlikely to meet the benchmarks...

CT Mirror - Vo-tech students, parents and staff rally against budget cuts (July 28, 2011) - Standing outside the State Capitol Thursday, with about 50 vocational-technical school students, parents and teachers, Darlene Riquier said they can't help but feel like their schools are being unfairly targeted for cuts...

Hartford Courant - State Employee Union Leaders Push For 'Yes' Vote On Labor Pact (August 2, 2011) - As the unions representing thousands of state workers continue voting on a savings-and-concessions agreement, their leaders are spotlighting the impact of the job cuts that would come if the pact is not ratified...

CT Mirror - AAUP chapter's leadership ratifies concession deal (July 29, 2011) - An American Association of University Professors chapter that represents 1,150 faculty members and others in the four-campus Connecticut State University system has ratified the tentative concession deal...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Your New Campus Guide: A Small Patterned Square That Talks to Your Smartphone (August 3, 2011) - Students touring Wittenberg University, in Ohio, can hear campus history come alive with help from their smartphones and little squares with black-and-white patterns affixed to buildings on the 100-acre campus...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Apollo to Buy Adaptive-Learning Company for $75-Million (August 2, 2011) - The Apollo Group, which runs the University of Phoenix, announced on Tuesday that it plans to pay $75-million to purchase Carnegie Learning, which develops interactive math instruction that adapts to the needs of individual students...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Stanford U. Offers Free Online Course in Artificial Intelligence (August 2, 2011) - A prominent robotics professor and a Google executive are opening up admission to their popular Stanford University course on artificial intelligence this fall to anyone online...

Harvard Business Review - What Job Does Social Media Do For You? (August 2, 2011) - My husband has already nicknamed me "Ladybird Johnson" because I like to tweet. Now I've signed up for Google+, which means I now have yet another social media platform to manage...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - We Can't Teach Students to Love Reading (July 31, 2011) - While virtually anyone who wants to do so can train his or her brain to the habits of long-form reading, in any given culture, few people will want to...