In response to calls for affordable higher education from President Obama on down, Blackburn College has created a free tuition program for students with the greatest need.
Blackburn President John Comerford announced the program Saturday at his on-campus inauguration as the school’s 16th president.
“Higher education faces a continual call for greater accessibility and affordability for students seeking college degrees,” he said. “This call for action has been heard from President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and our own elected state officials.” Read more...

By James Goodman and Sean Lahman. As the cost of attending college in the Rochester area has climbed, the amount of financial aid schools give to students has grown at an even faster rate — by tens of millions of dollars in recent years.
But for students such as Jerome Nathaniel, it isn't enough.
Nathaniel got more than $20,000 in financial aid from the University of Rochester in three out of his four years as a student. Now, the student from Brooklyn has a degree, a job and about $45,000 of student loan debt.
Colleges play an important role in making their often hefty price tags more affordable for students by offering financial assistance to those struggling to pay. This assistance is especially important for students at private colleges, such as UR and Rochester Institute of Technology, where tuition can be a particularly difficult reach for students of modest means. More...

In the Indiana higher education community, a world meant to promote free thinking and debate, a seemingly lower-level question of how university officials weigh in on hot-button issues is being pondered.
Indiana University President Michael McRobbie took the unusual step last week of throwing IU's official support behind an effort to keep the state's ban on gay marriage out of the constitution.
On Monday, the leaders of DePauw University in Greencastle and Wabash College in Crawfordsville made the same decision to join Freedom Indiana, a newly formed organization opposed to the proposed same-sex marriage amendment.
"Equality, compassion and respect for individuals have long been the bedrock of Indiana University's educational mission, and the lack of tolerance implicit in HJR 6 (the amendment) runs counters to IU's deeply held values," McRobbie said in a statement announcing the university's stance. More...

By Roger Benjamin. Measuring critical thinking skills for success in the workplace. Because today’s bachelor’s degree no longer conveys sufficient information about the skills graduating seniors possess, there is a market failure that affects employers, students, and colleges. Too many deserving students do not get an interview with potential employers because employers don’t have the appropriate data to find the prospects they need.
Colleges don’t know which students to promote for which kinds of jobs, nor do they understand what kinds of specific skills employers are looking for. In reality, we do not have an effective or efficient market to better serve employers, students, and colleges.
To correct this market failure, we need to level the playing field for all participants. More...

By Nitya Rajan. Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai has signed two agreements with the British Council to ensure training for 16,500 of the country’s estimated 45,000 English teachers and to support the Ministry of Higher Education’s goal to move Kabul’s public universities towards an English curriculum.
As foreign troops begin their mass exodus in 2014, Afghanistan is focusing on education including English language teaching as one of the the cornerstones that will ensure the country’s development. More...

By Devon Haynie. Beware of accreditation mills, which provide a false sense of legitimacy. Back when Lauren Marrett wanted to be an art major, she didn't care much about whether her school was accredited or by whom. It was the quality of her art portfolio that mattered, she thought, not the reputation of her college. She enrolled in a for-profit online college lacking regional accreditation. But six months into her schooling, she started to get nervous about how employers would view her school. More...

By Motoko Rich. Amid growing alarm over the slipping international competitiveness of American students, a report comparing math and science test scores of eighth graders in individual states to those in other countries has found that a majority outperformed the international average.
But the report, to be released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics, an office of the Education Department, showed that even in the country’s top-performing states — which include Massachusetts, Vermont and Minnesota — fewer students scored at the highest levels than students in several East Asian countries. More...

91% of respondents rated their experience as ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’ or ‘Excellent’ in a post-course survey of the massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by the University of London International Programmes on the Coursera online platform. 91% of respondents rated their experience as ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’ or ‘Excellent’ in a post-course survey of the massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by the University of London International Programmes on the Coursera online platform.
The four free online courses offered, which began in June this year, were: Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps, English Common Law: Structure and Principles, Malicious Software and its Underground Economy: Two Sides to Every Story, and The Camera Never Lies.
An impressive 210,000 students signed up to the courses from countries all over the world, including the United States, India, Brazil, Spain and Canada, among many others. More...