Inside Higher Ed - Gulf Between the Gulfs (March 8, 2012) - Houston Community College had lofty goals for its partnership with the government of Qatar. The hope was that Qatari students would master English, complete prerequisite courses and earn associate degrees at the Houston-led Community College of Qatar before transferring to an American or Qatari university. To some extent, that seems to be happening...

Community College Times - Focused on retaining students in first two years (March 7, 2012) - A partnership between a San Francisco community college and university that has improved at-risk students' persistence and completion rates is gaining national interest...

Inside Higher Ed - Minutemen and Patriots (March 7, 2012) - Massachusetts will soon track civic engagement at its public colleges, addressing increased concern that Americans aren't equipped to impact their communities or interact meaningfully with government...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - The Chronicle's College Completion Web Site (March 6, 2012) - Who graduates from college? Who doesn't? And why does it matter? Use our new site to answer those questions-and join the discussion...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Grad Rates Don't Tell Full Story of Community College Performance (March 6, 2012) - Anyone who fixates on graduation rates has little understanding not only of the rich mission and value of our community colleges, but also how deeply flawed and inadequate those rates are as a principal assessment tool for the performance of community colleges...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Study Finds That Working-Class College Students Are Less Engaged Than Their Middle-Class Peers (March 6, 2012) - College students who come from working-class backgrounds are less likely than middle-class students to take part in formal and informal campus-based activities, have fewer friends on campus, and report feeling less integrated into campus life...

Inside Higher Ed - Voting Rights for Adjuncts (Updated) (March 5, 2012) - Colleges increasingly rely on part-time faculty to teach, but when it comes to giving them voting rights to decide issues before the professoriate, many institutions are reluctant...

Community College Times - Online advising helps students and colleges, too (March 5, 2012) - At many community colleges, student advising no longer ends when the student services office closes. Online advising tools are giving students the freedom to track their progress and plan for the future 24 hours a day...

Inside Higher Ed - When to Tell (March 2, 2012) - Deciding when it's appropriate to notify the parents of a student who may be suicidal is already one of the more complex and consequential responsibilities with which college counselors must grapple. But with the recent emergence of several compounding factors that are already notable in their own right, this charge is becoming even more complicated...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - The Rise and Fall of the Graduation Rate (March 2, 2012) - A college's graduation rate is such a basic consumer fact for would-be students these days that it's difficult to imagine that the federal government didn't even collect the information as recently as the early 1990s...

Community College Times - The power of relationships in student success (March 2, 2012) - Eleven successful community college students with various science and liberal arts majors have one thing in common: they all thought about quitting school...

Inside Higher Ed - Me or We (March 1, 2012) -Those innocent-seeming brochures imploring students to find their passions and express themselves may be helping to widen the socioeconomic achievement gap, a new study finds...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Problem With a Private Student Loan? Federal Agency Will Take Your Complaint (March 5, 2012) - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will begin collecting complaints regarding private student loans, its director announced today...

The Chronicle - Spraypaint artist (March 2, 2012) - Spraypaint artist Ben Keller, a local artist and student at Manchester Community College, creates a spray-painted no freeze shelter sign on a board attached to the front of the building...

CT Mirror - As teacher layoffs go out, seniority will remain primary factor for most districts (March 6, 2012) - Faced with a multimillion-dollar budget deficit, Bristol Superintendent Philip Streifer may be forced to lay off some of his teachers. He's glad the education reform proposals moving forward at the state Capitol won't change the way he will determine who will go: The last teacher hired will be the first one fired...

CT Mirror - Are charter schools cherry-picking their students? (March 5, 2012) - As students from the highly regarded Jumoke Academy Charter School filed into the gymnasium for a mid-afternoon assembly last week, onlooker Gov. Dannel P. Malloy pointed out that at first glance these students seem to mirror those attending the neighborhood public schools...

CT Mirror - Comptroller's report lacks overdue analysis of concessions savings (March 7, 2012) - Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo left a big question mark in the state's new annual financial report, reflecting an overdue assessment of billions of dollars in promised long-term savings tied to union health care concessions ratified last summer...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - DC Shuttle: Credit Hours and Online Programs(March 5, 2012) - On Tuesday, the House voted 303 to 114 to pass legislation (H.R. 2117) repealing two recent Education Department regulations, with 69 Democrats voting for the bill. As part of its program integrity proposal, the Education Department included a definition of a credit hour for the purposes of distributing federal student financial aid...

CT Mirror - Education reform: next stop, grading teacher prep programs (March 7, 2012) -The State Board of Education voted Wednesday to create a panel that is to develop a formula by next April on how to grade the state's teaching colleges ...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Tuning In to Dropping Out (March 4, 2012) - Rick Scott, Florida's governor, created a firestorm recently when he suggested that Florida ought to focus more of its education spending on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and less on liberal arts...

Inside Higher Ed - Friday Fragments (March 1, 2012 ) - I have to admit enjoying Senator Santorum's assertion that Satan controls higher education in America. To be fair, there is some evidence for his claim. If you've ever tried finding a student parking space around noon on a Tuesday in September at a major public university, you know that Satan has major influence in the world of parking deck architecture. And the proliferation of graduate programs in an era of decreasing full-time faculty jobs definitely carries the cloven hoofprints of Big Red...