Manchester Patch - You Are What You Eat! (September 14, 2011) - Five years ago Manchester Community College made a commitment to connect with local farmers and vendors in an effort to serve as a conduit for bringing people together on campus to support and to help sustain local agriculture...

Inside Higher Ed - SAT Scores Drop (September 15, 2011) - SAT scores are down this year. And while the College Board played down that news and attributed the falling scores to growth in the test-taking population, the downward shift runs counter to recent patterns. The data also show continuation of a trend that has concerned many educators for years: growing gaps by race and ethnicity in how students perform on average on the test...

Inside Higher Ed - New Approach to Cuts (September 14, 2011) - When the recession hit in 2009 and colleges and universities saw many sources of funds contract, they did reasonably well making cuts to services that did not touch the academic core of the university... most institutions managed to increase what they spent on instruction by making reductions in other areas and not imposing across-the-board cuts -- a departure from how colleges and universities have usually handled economic difficulty in the past...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Questions About Higher Education's Value Go Viral on YouTube (September 14, 2011) - Have you heard that higher education is a scam? That accusation is racing around YouTube these days, in a video that has been viewed more than two million times. The hourlong video, College Conspiracy, was produced by a group called the National Inflation Association, which warns of a coming era of hyperinflation and recommends converting personal wealth to precious metals...

Inside Higher Ed - Low-Hanging Fruit (September 14, 2011) - Whether they called them "near-completers" or "ready adults" or "stop-outs," the educators and policy experts gathered here today agreed that people who have earned most but not all of the credits they need for a college degree should receive more attention...

Diverse Issues in Higher Ed - Diversity Advocates Voice Caution on Community College Study (September 13, 2011) - Although a new study has found that underrepresented community college students fare better when placed in classrooms with an instructor of their ethnic background, diversity leaders warn that the study is too limited in scope to draw any solid conclusions...

Community College Times - Finalists named for $1M Aspen Prize (September 13, 2011) - A national prize to recognize community colleges that have improved their student outcomes has whittled the list of 120 eligible colleges to 10 finalists. While the selected colleges are relishing the spotlight from the high-profile program in its inaugural year, they are looking ahead to December, when the Aspen Institute will announce the winner and up to three runners-up that will share $1 million...

CCCA News - Fundraising 101 (September 13, 2011) - Community colleges looking to spark a culture of advancement on their campuses need look no further than the classroom. Several two-year institutions have reaped the benefits of teaching their students, faculty and staff the ins and outs of fundraising...

Hartford Courant - UConn Breaks Top 20 In U.S. News Rankings (September 13, 2011) - The University of Connecticut has moved up eight places from last year to No. 19 on a list of top public universities ranked by U.S. News and World Report. "Look at the company we're with," said UConn President Susan Herbst, adding that UConn was ahead of Purdue and the University of Georgia. "I mean, we passed some great schools."...

Inside Higher Ed - 'U.S. News' Participation Drops (September 13, 2011) - Colleges and universities will be giving U.S. News & World Report lots of free publicity today as they boast about their advances in the magazine's annual college rankings. But in one key respect, colleges are becoming notably less helpful to the magazine. Presidents are less likely than in years past to fill out the evaluations that are a key part of the rankings methodology...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Holistic Support that Promotes Student Learning (September 12, 2011) - For decades, the cost of serving college students, from community colleges to Ivy League institutions, has been a barrier that has blocked access for many who want an education. With a recent massification effort aimed at producing more college graduates for the workplace, the enrollment numbers have increased and student debt load has become a real concern...

Community College Times - Colleges seek creative solutions to budget woes (September 12, 2011) - With state funding and other financial resources for higher education continuing to decline, community colleges are exploring ways to add revenue and cut expenses through such means as outsourcing, bulk procurement deals, entrepreneurial initiatives and more aggressive outreach to donors...

Inside Higher Ed - Show Us the Money (September 12, 2011) - Community colleges get lots of love from politicians these days. But although members of Congress like to be seen at community college graduations, the sector's leaders will need to lobby hard for the latest White House-proposed funding boost to become a reality...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Fewer Paths for Faculty (September 11, 2011) - With limited opportunities to move, many senior professors feel stuck. At some point in many professors' careers, they want to move. They want to upgrade to a more-prestigious university, a bigger salary, and better facilities. Some professors want to go where research collaborations are more plentiful...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Community College Draws Foreign Students by Serving as a Gateway to Universities (September 11, 2011) - When American community colleges attend student-recruitment fairs abroad, they are often greeted with blank looks. That's because "community college" is frequently an unknown concept overseas...

Community College Times - Corporate partnerships are the lynchpin for many college programs (August 30, 2011) - For community colleges facing tight budgets, corporate partnerships are more important than ever in supporting ongoing instructional programs and new initiatives...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Student-Loan Default-Rate Climbs as Economy Falters (September 12, 2011) - As students carry off more debt after college and venture into the recession-beaten job market, it's no surprise that more are defaulting on their student loans. In the 2009 fiscal year, the "cohort default rate" on student loans climbed to 8.8 percent, up from 7 percent...

Hartford Courant - Teen Keeps Promise To Honor Victims (September 8, 2011) - Self-Publishes A Book On Those Who Died On Flight 93 In Pennsylvania. Grant Woollacott kept his promise. Congratulations seem to be in order, but that makes the 19-year-old uncomfortable. The book, he said, was never about him...

Hartford Courant - Connecticut Teens Do Well In SAT Reading And Writing, But Lag In Math (September 14, 2011) - Connecticut's recent college-bound graduates exceeded national SAT average scores in reading and writing, but fell short in math. The College Board, which administers the SAT, says the 29,800 public high school test-takers from Connecticut's Class of 2011 had average scores of 502 in reading and 506 in writing. The national averages were 497 and 489, respectively...

CT Mirror - Union leader: To tackle education problems, raise teachers' pay (September 14, 2011) - The head of the state's largest teachers' union issued a call Wednesday to "upgrade the status" of Connecticut educators and address slipping wages and benefits--a call greeted with some skepticism by state and municipal leaders grappling with long-term budget problems...

Hartford Courant - Superintendent Proposes Scholarship Program For Hartford Students (September 13, 2011) - Corporate and philanthropic funding for the city schools is around $10 million, but on Tuesday, Superintendent Christina Kishimoto suggested to business leaders an even bigger investment - helping Hartford students pay for college...

Inside Higher Ed - The Exodus Begins (September 15, 2011) - A key member of the Obama administration's higher education team is departing, diminishing the chances that much of substance will happen in federal postsecondary policy making until the president is either re-elected or ousted...

New England Board of Higher Ed - DC Shuttle: Obama Proposes $5 Billion for Community College Infrastructure (September 12, 2011) - In his speech before a joint session of Congress Thursday evening, President Obama put forward several proposals aimed at bolstering the economy and creating jobs. Among these proposals was $30 billion to repair and revamp school facilities, including $5 billion specifically for community college infrastructure...

Inside Higher Ed - A Student Loan Stimulus? (September 14, 2011) - President Obama has proposed spending five billion dollars on building renovation at community colleges across America. It's a nifty idea, even though it's politically DOA. Divided among 1100 community colleges, it works out to between four and five million each. That's certainly helpful -- no argument there -- but it's not enough to add much capacity. Even a smallish, not terribly cutting edge classroom building will run at least ten million...

Inside Higher Ed - Diversity and the Rankings (September 12, 2011) - It is rankings season again, and despite objecting to their validity and worrying about the incentives they create for colleges and universities, we pay attention nonetheless. And, since they aren't going away, I would like to propose one small change: factor the socioeconomic diversity of a college's student body into the rankings formula...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - How to Make College Rankings Less Self-Serving (September 11, 2011) - This week college administrators will parse U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings with the careful attention of Talmudic scholars. Institutions at the top of the rankings will blithely declare the scores unimportant. Those even a few places below will say their placements do not recognize their institution's unique form of excellence...

Inside Higher Ed - Lower Education (September 9, 2011) - Toby (not his real name) flunked a graduate course I taught last year. He failed the in-class assignment (a mid-term essay exam) as well as the out-of-class assignments (a couple of case analyses and a take-home exam). Reviewing Toby's work was excruciating; extracting coherence from his paragraphs was a futile exercise, even with repeated readings. Theoretical analysis in his writing was virtually nonexistent. Put simply, this was an academic train wreck...

Higher Ed Marketing Blog - Duke's opinion page spotlights faculty expertise (September 8, 2011) - The op-ed page has been a staple of newspapers for decades, home to syndicated columnists and guest contributors who share a broad array of expertise with a paper's readers. Many colleges and universities have been successful in placing articles by their own academic experts in the op-ed pages of prominent newspapers...