Inside Higher Ed - Open Access and Interventionism (February 9, 2012) - After soliciting publishers and higher education groups last fall to comment on the government's proper role in regulating the availability of federally funded research, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Jan. 30 posted all 377 responses on its website, reviving the debate over open access broadly and stoking controversy in one discipline in particular...

Diverse Issues in Higher Ed - Hispanic Education Highlighted at Twitter Town Hall Meeting (February 9, 2012) - U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan On Wednesday during what was billed as a Twitter Town Hall event, more than 400 participants accessed a live video stream on their computing devices as tweeted questions and answers pertaining to Hispanic education access and success produced a multilayered dialogue with the U.S, Education Secretary...

Inside Higher Ed - 'We're Losing Our Minds' (February 9, 2012) - You know about the completion agenda. Let's call this the "learning agenda." With most critics of higher education focused on rising prices or on whether American colleges and universities are producing enough degree and certificate holders with sufficient skills to keep the U.S. economy vibrant and...

Hartford Business Journal - CT college offers master's in disaster readiness (February 8, 2012) - Connecticut's and the nation's violent brush with weather and other natural disasters last year has prompted the University of New Haven to respond with a master's program in emergency management - billed as the first in the state...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Stanford Campaign Brings In $6.2-Billion, a Record for Higher Education (February 8, 2012) - In a five-year fund-raising campaign that concluded December 31, Stanford University raised $6.2-billion, the largest sum ever collected in a single campaign by a higher-education institution, the university announced on Wednesday...

Inside Higher Ed - Understanding Community College Demographics (February 8, 2012) - The increased public focus on community colleges makes this a time for policy makers and others to gain a better understanding of the demographics of the institutions, according to a brief released Tuesday by the American Association of Community Colleges...

AACC - Advancing the Humanities at Community Colleges (February 8, 2012) - The Community College Humanities Association (CCHA) has been awarded $360,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct a nationwide multi-disciplinary mentoring two-year project...

New England Board of Higher Ed - Remember Access? Dissed Concept Gets a Boost Amid Focus on Degree Completion (February 7, 2012) - The term "Access" has acquired a bit of a Rodney Dangerfield complex since back in the day when I suggested: "If one word captures the range of compelling issues that the New England Board of Higher Education should focus its energy on at the start of the new century, the word is access...

Community College Times - Improve completion but not at the expense of access (February 7, 2012) - National efforts to significantly increase the number of college graduates could lead to curtailing access to higher education for some community college students, according to a new policy brief from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC)...

Inside Higher Ed - Why Pay for Intro Textbooks? (February 7, 2012) - If ramen noodle sales spike at the start of every semester, here's one possible reason: textbooks can cost as much as a class itself; materials for an introductory physics course can easily top $300...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Will MITx Change How We Think About Higher Education? (February 6, 2012) - While many colleges and universities are trying to adapt to the forces affecting higher education today, a recent move by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is about to cause a seismic shift...

Inside Higher Ed - Well Endowed (February 6, 2012) - For $2,000, a Dixie State College of Utah donor could have been the namesake of a porcelain castle complete with a locking door, a generous supply of off-brand toilet paper and an occasional copy of yesterday's sports section...

Chronicle of Higher Education - Obama Aims to Make Colleges Cut Costs (February 5, 2012) - The college-affordability proposals that President Obama outlined briefly in his State of the Union address and again in a University of Michigan speech are prompting plenty of questions among higher-education lobbyists-and not a few cases of heartburn...

Chronicle of Higher Education - Multiyear Study of Community-College Practices Asks: What Helps Students Graduate? (February 2, 2012) - Community colleges are brimming with programs and policies designed to help students complete their studies. Practices like requiring orientation and establishing early-academic-warning systems have sprouted since 2009, when President Obama announced that he wanted to make the United States the best-educated country in the world by 2020...

Hartford Business Journal - Pupils, check this CT dean's $120K tuition offer (February 8, 20120 ) - The University of New Haven's College of Business wants driven future business leaders so bad it's laying $480,000 on the line to land four of them...

Hartford Courant - Great Path Students Attend AIC Model Congress (January 24, 2012) - Students from Great Path Academy in Manchester attended the 72nd annual Model Congress at American International College...

CT Mirror - Malloy: teacher tenure will have to be earned, and re-earned (February 8, 2012) - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is calling on legislators to completely change how the state's 45,000 teachers earn tenure. The change - linking tenure to student performance and teacher evaluations -- will apply to new teachers and those who already have tenure...

CT Mirror - Malloy calls for new charter schools, with some new rules  (February 7, 2012) - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is proposing a 30 percent increase per student in charter school funding and the opening of five new charter schools. That 30 percent increase -- to $12,000 per student -- includes a new requirement that each local school district pay $1,000 per student to the charter school that enrolls that student...

CT Mirror - Malloy turnaround plan for lowest-performing schools could hinge on union approval (February 7, 2012) - Unfazed by a looming state Supreme Court decision that could say the state overstepped when replacing Bridgeport's school board, the governor wants the state to intervene in up to 25 of the state's lowest-performing schools to turn them around...

CT Mirror - Malloy exhausts fiscal cushion for education, pensions (February 8, 20120 0 - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy unveiled a revised, $20.73 billion budget plan for the next fiscal year, adding nearly $330 million in spending over the preliminary budget, largely to fund additional education aid for towns and to bolster the state employees' pension fund...

State of Connecticut - Gov. Malloy Proposes To Enhance Education Profession (February 7, 2012) - Governor Dannel P. Malloy today rolled out another component of his 2012 education reform package-initiatives designed to better support Connecticut's teachers and attract top candidates to the field. The new proposal includes $3 million in new funding for teacher preparation and recruitment, and an additional $7.5 million for professional development and the implementation of teacher evaluations...

CT Mirror - Malloy likely to keep plenty of state jobs vacant (February 7, 2012) - Whatever new initiatives Gov. Dannel P. Malloy unveils Wednesday in his revised budget for the next fiscal year, he likely won't be asking for much extra staffing to carry them out...

New England Board of Higher Ed - Congress Looking at Obama's Plans to Reward Colleges that Keep Down Costs (February 6, 2012) - Members on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) took advantage of a hearing Thursday on containing the cost of higher education to voice their thoughts on President Obama's plan to reward colleges who keep costs down with increased federal support...

Inside Higher Ed - 'You're Assuming We Thought it Through' (February 8, 2012) - A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to discuss a proposed and relatively dramatic policy change with someone fairly high in state government. I objected to the change with some vigor, and outlined several objections that I thought added up to a compelling case. She listened politely, and then gave an answer for which I hadn't prepared...

Inside Higher Ed - Resilience (February 6, 2012) - I love this story. Apparently, a scholar of student success, Shaun Harper, has decided to turn around the usual methods of studying African-American men in college. Instead of the typical questions - what obstacles do they face, what prevents success, etc. -- he decided to focus on African-American men who have succeeded in college and to try to determine what worked for them. In other words, he's focusing on resilience, rather than failure, as the subject needing explanation...

Chronicle of Higher Education - The Future of American Colleges May Lie, Literally, in Students' Hands (February 5, 2012) - A friend of mine who works at Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict, in Minnesota, recently told me a story: Her book group read Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet, one of many recent books to focus on the vulnerabilities of the industrial food system and the threats posed by climate change. The book's treatment of the topic held few surprises, and the solutions offered were equally well-worn and deceptively simple: Buy fruits, vegetables, and meats locally, and cook them at home...

Inside Higher Ed - Learn Now, Pay Later (February 5, 2012) - You know how a song can get stuck in your head, and you can't get it out? That's where I am with the idea floated in California to have students learn now and pay later. As I understand it, the idea is that students will be advanced the cost of tuition, fees, room, living expenses, and books. In return, the students will be "taxed" five percent of their post-graduation income for twenty years...