Hartford Courant - 'World On A Wire' At Real Art Ways (September 22, 2011) - Real Art Ways this weekend will show a recently rediscovered movie made for German TV in 1973, but set in the future...Manchester Community College Prof. Bob Kagan will lead a post-film discussion...

Inside Higher Ed - Gazing Into Higher Ed's Future (September 22, 2011) - College enrollments and degree completion will continue to boom for the rest of this decade, but who enrolls (and finishes) will vary widely and, without a major change, far too few Americans will complete college to achieve the ambitious goals that President Obama and others have set for the country...

Inside Higher Ed - Following Kia Across Georgia (September 22, 2011) - A new Kia manufacturing plant is breathing life into a small Georgia town, and a Christian college is moving its main campus 75 miles to be part of the action. Atlanta Christian College also became Point University...

Inside Higher Ed - Back in Blackout (September 21, 2011) - Considering that only 10 to 15 percent of students fully cooperated with the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology's ban on social media sites last year, the extent to which it succeeded in provoking genuine thought about how (and how much) such sites should be used is debatable. All the more reason to try again...

Inside Higher Ed - Know Thine Audience (September 21, 2011) - They are students, they are faculty members. They are hobbyists and autodidacts. They still prefer to read texts in print, but they are intrigued by the possibilities of digital, especially when it comes to scanning huge swaths of text for key words and phrases. They travel in herds and pledge allegiance to tribes; their social instincts are stronger than their market instincts. Their actions speak louder than their survey responses...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Startup to Offer Hybrid College Experience to Veterans (September 20, 2011) -Most colleges are underprepared for the wave of veterans returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the largest influx since after the Vietnam War. The same is true of many employers. It's not that the colleges and companies aren't looking for veterans... But they often do a poor job of understanding how to attract veterans and help them acclimate to civilian life once they return...

Community College Times - Higher ed advocates discuss needed reforms (September 19, 2011) - New ways of thinking about higher education-including better ways to match prospective students with colleges and competency-based delivery models-could have major implications for community colleges...

Inside Higher Ed - Online and Outsourced (September 19, 2011) - Nevada should create an online community college and outsource its operation to a vendor, such as a for-profit or Western Governors University, according to a new report from a task force ...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Ambitious Provider of Online Courses Loses Fans Among Colleges (September 18, 2011) - To students, starting college for $99 a month sounds like a deal. To wonks wrapped up in soaring tuition and declining financial aid, it may sound like a solution. That's how a company called StraighterLine, which offers online, self-paced introductory courses, became a darling of the industry-at least in theory...

CASE - A Very *Social* Media Orientation (September 16, 2011) - As a young alum working at my alma mater, each fall, I'm awash with memories of my orientation at the same time as the new class begins flooding campus. My own orientation was filled with names and faces and meeting people in person who I had so happily met and fallen head-over-heads in friend-crush with through our Class of 2010 Facebook group...

Diverse Issues In Higher Ed - U.S. Education Department's Community College Leader Makes 'Acceleration Strategies' Part of Ambitious Agenda (September 16, 2011) - Dr. Frank Chong is the deputy assistant U.S. Education Secretary for community colleges. As deputy assistant education secretary for community colleges with the Education Department, Dr. Frank Chong sees his main responsibilities as listening to and promoting two-year public colleges. With students of color relying heavily on this sector in a struggling economy, raising college graduation rates for diverse populations is never far from his mind...

AdAge - Who's Using What Media and When? (September 16, 2011) - A new study by Magid Generational Strategies breaks down who's using what media at what time of day. We worked with our friends at MBA Online to visualize it for you...

Inside Higher Ed - Academic Finance Demystified (September 16, 2011) - As the dean of a residential undergraduate science college within a public research university, I find that faculty members are continually proposing exciting new ideas for integrating research, education, and community life across the disciplines. Then they are confronted with the reality of budget constraints, usually through a conversation with me. Many times we are able to find a way to move an idea forward; at other times, substantial rethinking is required...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - College Spending Trends Show Students Bearing a Growing Share of the Costs (September 14, 2011) - The White House, foundation leaders, and other policy makers love to tout community colleges as key players in raising national educational levels, yet as the recession hit in 2009, two-year colleges were also the sector of higher education that took the hardest financial hits...

Inside Higher Ed - Senate Budget Would Preserve Pell (September 21, 2011) - A Senate subcommittee on Tuesday approved a budget for the Education Department in fiscal year 2012 that would again preserve the maximum Pell Grant at $5,550 -- this time at the expense of subsidized interest on undergraduate student loans during a six-month period after students leave college...

Inside Higher Ed - Calculating Costs and Benefits (September 20, 2011) - New federal requirements have lately been likely to draw groans and complaints from college and university officials who feel deluged by ever-changing rules and regulations. But one change taking effect later this year has found many colleges ready, even eager, to comply. The requirement that colleges display "net price calculators,"...

The Daily Campus - Mansfield General Store offers unique opportunities for community (September 18, 2011) - Equal parts rebel café, deli and antique shop, the Mansfield General Store is the perfect gathering place for friends, family or a first date. Committed to creating a vibrant local community, the store is a family-owned and operated business in an era of impersonal franchises...Featured for October is Manchester Community College art student Ben Keller, whose work will be on display and for sale to the public...

New England Board of Higher Ed - DC Shuttle: Congress to Update No Child Left Behind? (September 19, 2011) - On Tuesday, the House voted 365-54 to pass the latest in a series of bills to update the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law. This latest legislation (H.R. 2218) aims to establish more charter schools in order to increase student achievement around the country. Currently, the national charter school program provides funding for states to establish new charter schools...

Newstimes.com - How about first asking why the economy died? (September 15, 2011) - President Obama proposes that the federal government spend nearly half a trillion dollars in the name of creating jobs. And Governor Malloy plans to summon the General Assembly into special session next month to enact some sort of state job-creation plan...Malloy's plan isn't settled yet but the other day he told the Hartford Business Journal that it may involve workforce development, incentives for small business, and changes to state government's economic development programs..

Inside Higher Ed - Tinkering  (September 21, 2011) - If at first you don't succeed...There isn't much glory in tinkering. Tweaks aren't heralded as breakthroughs. It's hard to rally the troops around incremental improvements...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - 'A' New Adjunct Movement (September 21, 2011) - If you see a red "A" on a colleague's door, it probably doesn't mean "Adultery." The "A" is for "Adjunct." I first heard of this movement from Katherine Burke, a part-time instructor in the School of Theatre and Dance at Kent State University, who posted the idea on the Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty Facebook page. She didn't come up with the idea originally, she says, but she is committed to raising awareness, especially among students...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - U. of Wisconsin Donor Offers $1 for Each New Twitter Follower (September 19, 2011) - Colleges have done some strange things to get Twitter followers. To name a few: offering a free iPod, creating Twitter accounts for mascots, and promising a full scholarship to the applicant with the best 140-character essay...

Inside Higher Ed - The Gated Community College (September 15, 2011) - If you have a kindle, or a kindle app, I really can't recommend "The Gated City," by Ryan Avent, highly enough. (It's a "kindle single," longer than an article but shorter than a book...Although it wasn't written with community colleges in mind, it explains a lot about the community college world...