Journal Inquirer - MCC wins Region 21 Women booters down Holyoke (October 24, 2011) - The Manchester Community College women's soccer team finally took out its nemesis Holyoke on Sunday. With that win, came the Region XXI championship...

Inside Higher Ed - Advanced Degrees for Fire Chiefs (October 27, 2011 ) - Aspiring fire chiefs take note -- you may need a master's degree to get that job. In the past a firefighter could climb career rungs through experience and training. A degree wasn't important. But that has changed over the last decade, experts say, as the fire safety industry has followed the lead of corporations and other government agencies, where virtually all top executives hold bachelor's degrees, and many have advanced degrees...

Inside Higher Ed - It's Your Money. Spend It. (October 27, 2011) - The University of Virginia announced Tuesday that it is moving toward a decentralized internal finance model that vests responsibility for revenues and expenses with individual schools and colleges rather than the university as a whole, a move designed to drive deans to find additional revenue streams and operate their units more efficiently...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Rise in Sticker Price at Public Colleges Outpaces That at Private Colleges for 5th Year in a Row (October 26, 2011) - The State of California enrolls about 10 percent of the country's full-time students attending public four-year colleges, and about 15 percent of those at public two-year colleges. So when the state's public colleges have a big tuition hike-as they did this year-it has a big impact on the average tuition increase at public colleges across the country, says a new report from the College Board...

Community College Times - Tuition, fees edge up as state funds decrease (October 26, 2011) - An annual study of college pricing shows that the average tuition and fees at community colleges increased this academic year by 8.7 percent, which is not surprising given that public higher education institutions are receiving less state funding...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - What Wikipedia Deletes, and Why (October 26, 2011) - Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, famously allows anyone to write or revise its entries, and the history of each item is open for anyone to review. Except for material that leaders of the effort consider too "dangerous" to leave online...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Gateway to Healthcare Careers for Vulnerable Students: A New Approach to the Teaching of Anatomy and Physiology (October 25, 2011) - At Southern Vermont College (SVC) and at our nation's other colleges and universities, Anatomy and Physiology I (A&PI) is the gateway course into healthcare careers. Given the country's growing workforce development needs in this field, it is critical that our first-year students accumulate the requisite body of knowledge in the course to pass it and proceed in their healthcare programs: nursing, radiologic technology, dental hygiene, allied health and so forth...

The Chronicle of Higher Ed - Lack of Confidence as Professionals Spurs Women to Leave Engineering, Study Finds  (October 25, 2011) - Women who begin college intending to become engineers are more likely than men to change their major and choose another career, but it's because they lack confidence, not competence, says a paper in the October issue of the American Sociological Review...

LINK - E-Expectations 2011: The Online Expectations of Prospective College Students and Their Parents (October 20, 2011) - In February 2011, Noel-Levitz called 1,089 high school seniors and 517 of their parents. They asked them about how parents and students are different in their use of e-recruitment, how they are using mobile, how are they using social media, what online tools are most useful, and will email still work as a communications tool...

Inside Higher Ed - Far From Honorable (October 25, 2011) - Much of the urgency around creating a "sense of community" in online courses springs from a desire to keep online students from dropping out. But a recent paper suggests that strengthening a sense of social belonging among online students might help universities fight another problem: cheating...

Inside Higher Ed - Realistic or Radical? (October 24, 2011) - California's community college system is among the most idealistic in American higher education, with a deep commitment to sharing resources equally among all its 2.6 million students. That may soon change, as a state task force has argued that students who demonstrate academic progress should get the most attention, as well as financial incentives and first dibs in enrolling...

Inside Higher Ed - Ohio's Completion Agenda (October 21, 2011) - The leader of the University System of Ohio, Jim Petro, believes remedial education does not belong at the university level, and is pushing for the state's four-year universities to phase out their remedial programs over the next six years...

Inside Higher Ed - 'Urgent' Warning on Aid Fraud (October 21, 2011) - Education Department officials issued what they called an "urgent call to action" late Thursday warning colleges about "fraud rings" that use "straw students" to pilfer federal student aid and outlining a series of steps that institutions and the government can or will take to combat the problem...

Inside Higher Ed - Myths of Online Education (October 21, 2011) - One of higher education's biggest exports is skepticism. So it is perhaps unsurprising that, whereas many educators have questioned the virtue of online education, others would question the way in which the questioners have questioned online education...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Community-College Dropouts Cost Taxpayers Nearly $1-Billion a Year, Report Says (October 20, 2011) - Students who drop out of community college before their second year have cost taxpayers nearly $1-billion annually, says a report released today by the American Institutes for Research. From 2004 to 2009, the study found, federal, state, and local governments spent almost $4-billion in student aid and appropriations to community colleges that benefited full-time, first-year students who never made it to graduation day...

Inside Higher Ed - Loan Changes, Sans Congress (October 26, 2011) - President Obama today will announce a plan to consolidate federal student loans for millions of borrowers and expand income-based repayment for current students -- both steps he will take without input from or action by Congress, amid rising concern about student debt...

Inside Higher Ed - A Shifting Burden (October 26, 2011) -While tuition and fees continue to rise at a fast pace, particularly at public colleges and universities struggling with declining state appropriations, federal financial aid policies have kept down the price students pay for a college degree, according to two annual reports released today by the College Board on tuition and financial aid...

Journal Inquirer - Grant notches hat trick in MCC victory (October 20, 2011) - Mark Grant of Coventry produced a hat trick that helped the Manchester Community College men's soccer  team win a game Wednesday. Grant's three goals Sports powered MCC to a 5-1 win at Springfield Tech...

CT Mirror - Speakers tell school funding panel the answer is more money (October 25, 2011) - Parents, school officials and teacher unions had one message for the panel responsible for resolving the highly-criticized formula used for financing schools across the state: Increase funding...

Stamford Advocate - State needs strong tech schools (October 24, 2011) - Gov. Dannel Malloy made two welcome announcements last week concerning technical high schools in the state. One, he announced that his administration was abandoning consideration of a controversial plan to cede control of vocational technical schools to local school districts...

CT Mirror - Charter schools: Many apply, few new schools open (October 24, 2011) - Despite daunting odds, seven organizations have applied this year for state approval to open new charter schools, including four that were turned down last year. Only two new charter schools have opened in the state in the last six years, although 20 applications were filed. The state didn't accept applications at all in 2006 and 2009...

CTNow - Obama acts to ease burden of student loans (October 25, 2011) - President Barack Obama is taking steps to ease the burden of student loans, the White House said on Tuesday, potentially helping millions of cash-strapped college graduates in a tough economy...

CT Mirror - State doesn't wait for overdue union efficiency ideas (October 21, 2011) - State employee unions insist they can make government more efficient without cutting vital services, but they are fumbling their chance to prove it. The labor-management panels that were to identify $170 million in efficiencies as part of last summer's concession deal haven't met yet...

CT Mirror - Unions, Malloy bump heads over public-private partnerships (October 20, 2011) - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's up-and-down relationship with labor unions dipped again Thursday when his administration introduced a proposal that seemed to open the door to privatizing some state functions as part of next week's special legislative session on economic development...

Inside Higher Ed - The Cutting Edge May Not Be Where You Expect (October 24, 2011) - Academics have a weakness for the latest cutting-edge innovations. It's kind of what we do. And in many cases, that's a good thing. This week, though, I've seen two older ideas come back as new solutions to current issues. They've both been out of fashion long enough that they actually seem new, even though they're anything but. The first, prosaically enough, is the return of the desktop computer...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - A Way Out of the Merit-Aid Mess? (October 24, 2011) - Last week, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics documented a dramatic-and disturbing-shift over time in institutional grants for undergraduates from need-based to non-need-based merit aid...

Community College Times - Turning immigration into a workforce issue (October 24, 2011 ) - The U.S. accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey, there are just under 40 million foreign-born residents in the U.S. accounting for 12.5 percent of the total U.S. population and nearly 16 percent of the labor force. Those numbers are expected to grow steadily in the coming years and represent an ongoing infusion of fresh knowledge, skills and enthusiasm into U.S. society...

Inside Higher Ed - The Faculty-Staff Divide (October 23, 2011) - A thoughtful correspondent wrote last week to express concern about what she perceived as a growing rift between faculty and professional staff on her campus. It's one of those issues that waxes and wanes, but never really goes away...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Ill-Mannered Students Can Wreck More Than Your Lecture (October 23, 2011) - Discourteous. Inattentive. Brazen. There's an old-fashioned cast to those terms, as if they've been lifted from the handwritten report card of some reprobate fourth grader. In fact, I feel like a fussy schoolmarm just typing the words, betraying myself as someone concerned with an irrelevant matter: good manners in the postsecondary classroom...