Inside Higher Ed - Different Course, Different Price (April 25, 2012) - As the dust settles over Santa Monica College's halted two-tier pricing plan, community colleges around the country are adopting other forms of differential tuition...

Inside Higher Ed - Growth and Cuts (April 25, 2012) - Online enrollment at community colleges continued to rise in 2011, but at a slower pace than in years past, according to a new study by the Instructional Technology Council, an affiliate of the American Association of Community Colleges...

Community College Times - AACC Calls On Colleges To Redesign, Reinvent And Reset (April 23, 2012) The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) this weekend released a highly anticipated report on the challenges facing community colleges and a blueprint on addressing them, which can be summed up in three words: redesign, reinvent and reset...

Inside Higher Ed - Privatization Without Angst (April 23, 2012) - "My own college behaves much more like a private college these days than a public." Stephen M. Curtis, president of the Community College of Philadelphia, told fellow community college leaders here Sunday that this statement was true of his institution and many others...

Inside Higher Ed - Call to Action, Again (April 23, 2012) - Community colleges have their work cut out for them. America's social mobility and economic prosperity depend to a large degree on their success, and the colleges must do a much better job of meeting this challenge - all while facing money problems and preserving their missions...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Education for All? 2-Year Colleges Struggle to Preserve Their Mission (April 22, 2012) - The open-door policy at community colleges is unique in American higher education. It allows all comers-a retired grandmother, an Army veteran, a laid-off machinist-to learn a skill or get a credential. That broad access-the bedrock of the community-college system-has prepared hundreds of millions of people for transfer to four-year colleges or entry into the work force...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - As Government Support Shrinks, Community Colleges May Start Looking More Like Private Institutions (April 22, 2012) - As less federal, state, and local money flows to community-college coffers, institutions are becoming more dependent than ever on tuition and fees-and gradually assuming some of the characteristics of private colleges. That provocative notion was the focus of a panel discussion here on Sunday afternoon at the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - Community Colleges Not Up to 21st-Century Mission, Their Own Report Says (April 21, 2012) - Calling the American dream imperiled, the American Association of Community Colleges issued a report on Saturday intended to galvanize college leaders to transform their institutions for the 21st-century needs of students and the economy...

Inside Higher Ed - Banking on Success (April 18, 2012) -Technical colleges in Texas are poised to up the ante on performance-based state funding, linking 45 percent of their operating budget to the employment rates and salaries of alumni...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Before We're Up to Our Necks in Aggregators, Let's Get Out Our Net Value Calculators! (April 20, 2012) - Since last October, Net Price Calculators (NPCs) have become a fact of life for American colleges and universities. Some are doing the bare minimum to comply with the federal mandate by adopting the generic, federal NPC template. Others have developed more robust, custom-designed NPC's that are more accurate in the information they present...

New England Journal of Higher Ed - Heap of Debt: Will Student Loan Interest Rates Go Up? (April 24, 2012) - Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, auto loans and mortgages, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Department of Education. For the first time, student loans taken out in 2011 exceeded $100 billion with total student loans surpassing $1 trillion. Mounting student debt has forced many students to drop out, resulting in the low college-completion rates...

CT Mirror - Courtney On Front Lines Of White House Fight Over Student Loans (April 23, 2012) - Like thousands of Connecticut college students who graduate this spring, Vittoria Colao's hopes of a new life are weighed down by the burden of huge college loans.v Colao, 21, says she owes more than $30,000 in loans, money she borrowed to pay for four years at St. Joseph College in West Hartford. More than $15,000 of that debt, Colao said, is in federally subsidized Stafford loans...

CT Board of Regents - ConnSCU Students Honored At 15th Annual College Academic Day at State Capitol (April 18, 2012) - Twenty-one students, each representing a campus of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (ConnSCU) system, were honored today by the Connecticut General Assembly during the 15th Annual College Academic Day celebration at the State Capitol...Manchester Community College, Jesse Ryan Parrott...

Hartford Courant - Winners Announced At CT Collegiate Business Plan Competition In New Haven (April 20, 2012) - The Entrepreneurship Foundation held their Spring Semester Connecticut Collegiate Business Plan Competition today at the New Haven Lawn Club...*Best Written Plan for a Personal Business ($500): Hebron-based Artistic Projection specializing in visual promotion using projection onto large surfaces. Team leader: Manchester Community College student Gregory Stevens...

Record-Journal - Wodatch earns honors at Anna Maria College (April 19, 2012) - The accolades piled up this week for Wallingford's Kevin Wodatch, a junior outfielder at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass. A former Sheehan and Manchester Community College baseball standout...

CT Mirror - Top Dems Join Rally Against Malloy's Education Plan (April 24, 2012) - Gov. Dannel P. Malloy once enjoyed the support of the state's large teachers' unions, but union leaders turned to other leading Democrats Tuesday in an effort to block the governor's proposals to reform public schools...

Inside Higher Ed - Mandatory Monogamy for Adjuncts? (April 25, 2012) - This story in IHE generated quite the firestorm yesterday, and for good reason. Apparently, the Education School at the University of Southern California has decided to ban certain adjuncts from teaching at any other college or university as a condition of employment...

Inside Higher Ed - One Course at a Time (April 24, 2012) - A few years ago, my college started a January intersession in which students take a single course for two weeks. It was a runaway hit; enrollments have grown every year, course completion rates have hovered around 90 percent -- off the charts by community college standards -- and faculty feedback has been overwhelmingly positive...

Washington Post - 'Mr. President, public education in the U.S. is on the wrong track' (April 24, 2012) -The night of your election, in Grant Park, you said, "I will listen to you especially when we disagree." We are all committed to the best educational future for the children of America. Yet, as the nation prepares for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), school board members and top educational thinkers overwhelming urge abandoning the current "command-and-control" federal educational oversight...

Inside Higher Ed - A 'Place' for Higher Education (April 23, 2012) - As an aspiring environmental psychologist at the University of Michigan in the 1970s, I received an NSF-funded undergraduate grant to study the use of outdoor spaces on campus...