02/03/2016: Geography Matters, by Ellen Wexler, Inside Higher Ed - "Every state should have a good inventory of their deserts," Hillman said. "They should know exactly what colleges are operating in these areas, to what extent they're serving their communities." And after that, Hillman thinks policy makers should look at how they fund their colleges in education deserts, perhaps switching from performance-based models to equity-based models.

02/02/2016: You Don't Need an Ivy League Degree to Make a Lot of Money in These Fields, by Jillian Berman, MarketWatch - Graduates of top-tier schools who major in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) don't earn much more than graduates of schools that are easier to get into, according to research from Michael Hilmer, an economist at San Diego State University, and Eric Eide and Mark Showalter, economists at Brigham Young University. But for students who major in business or liberal arts, where you go to school matters -- business majors from top schools make 12% more than those from midtier schools and 18% more than their colleagues from bottom tier schools, for example.

02/01/2016: Why EQUIP Really Matters, by Daniel Pianko, Inside Higher Ed - The Department of Education is finally offering the catalyst for our generation of education innovators to continue the tradition of new institutional forms. The source of hope is the awkwardly named Education Quality Through Innovative Partnerships (or EQUIP). At its heart is a refreshing challenge to innovators: How would you reimagine the university of the future without the strictures imposed by the Higher Education Act and Title IV?

01/30/2016: How Recent College Graduates are Faring - in 3 Charts, by Jillian Berman, MarketWatch - An analysis of government data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Friday adds to the growing body of evidence that young, college-educated workers are faring better than they were a few years ago. The New York Fed plans to update much of this data quarterly as part of an interactive graphic.

01/29/2016: Why Educating Well-off White Students is No Longer Enough, by Tara Garc�a Mathewson, EducationDive - New Jersey City University President Sue Henderson and CUNY professor James Muyskens have made their case for education equity in a new op-ed for University Business that looks at the nation's demographics and the needs of the economy.

01/29/2016: The Educational Strategy That's Turning Students Into Unimaginative Robots, by Darlena Cunha, Quartz - "This idea that STEM is the only way is backwards," he [Jamie Gillooly] tells Quartz. "We produce a bunch of droids that way. Students get very little chance to write or express themselves. Everything we do is now knowledge-based."

01/28/2016: Lowering The Bar For The New GED Test, by Amy Kamenetz, NPR Ed - Tens of thousands of GED test takers who barely missed the cut may soon receive a diploma, after the company that oversees the test said this week it's lowering the minimum passing score.

01/28/2016: Employers as Accreditors, by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and USA Funds want employers to have more say in the accreditation process, and even to create an alternative, complementary form of quality assurance that would be employer driven.

01/27/2016: Colleges With at Least 25 Percent Latinos Have Doubled, by Emily DeRuy, NationalJournal - n the past two decades, the growth in Hispanic-serving institutions has grown, but not kept up with demand.

01/27/2016: Wanted: Nursing Instructors, by Ashley A. Smith, Inside Higher Ed - Community colleges continue to face severe shortages, so much so that some students must wait six years to enroll in nursing.

01/27/2016: Three Predictions About the Future of Higher Education, by Jeffrey J. Selingo, The Washington Post - Number 3. States might be getting out of the business of higher education, but most public institutions still depend on taxpayer dollars.

01/26/2016: Growing Numbers Of Chinese Teens Are Coming To America For High School, by Josie Huang, NPR, Code Switch - Zhang belongs to a growing population of Chinese teens leaving the test-driven, high-pressure world of schools back home for the U.S. - more than 23,000 at last count, according to the Institute of International Education. Their goal is to better their children's chances of getting into an American college; a degree earned in the U.S. carries a lot of weight.

01/26/2016: My Major, Myself, by Olga Khazan, The Atlantic - Business students are not agreeable, art students are neurotic, and other findings from a recent meta-analysis.

01/26/2016: Six Steps to Building High-Quality Open Digital Badges, by Gina Howard, The EvoLLLution - Open digital badges are changing how individuals' credentials are recognized as publicly viewable artifacts that not only contain claims to learning, but also provide evidence of that learning.