By Goldie Blumenstyk. THE stuff some colleges know right now about their students, thanks to data-mining of their digital footprints, boggles the mind. It may even seem a bit creepy.
Has their attendance slipped? Have they stopped logging in to read course packets or file assignments? Did they just drop the very class they needed for their major?
Tools developed in-house and by a slew of companies now give administrators digital dashboards that can code students red or green to highlight who may be in academic trouble. More...

By Sam Wood. Laurie Pickard wanted an education from a world-class business school. She didn’t want to pay the $168,000 for a degree from Wharton. So she found a way to get the education — though minus the sheepskin — for next to nothing.
Pickard is the creator of the No Pay MBA, and she is perhaps the first person to ever pursue a complete business education through massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the Internet. Read more...

By CCAP. First signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 as part of his Great Society campaign, the Higher Education Act’s original purpose was to solidify and expand the federal government’s involvement in higher education policy. Now up for its 10^th reauthorization in the coming months (most recently in 2008), it will likely receive much attention from postsecondary pundits as well as trade groups, professional organizations, public policy institutes, and invested colleges and universities. More...

By Steven Salzberg. Talk about trying to fly under the radar: announcing a deal during Thanksgiving week is a sure sign that someone—in this case the U.S. Department of Education—doesn’t want you to notice.
In the deal announced on November 20, a student debt collection company, ECMC Group, will buy 56 college campuses from Corinthian Colleges Inc., a for-profit university. More...

By Mike Wilkinson. Despite the successes at Michigan Tech, challenges loom for STEM education even as public interest in the importance of a STEM degree is clear.
“It’s at its highest point in 25 years,” said Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education and organizational change at UCLA.
That doesn’t automatically translate into getting enough students into quality programs for engineering, science or other STEM fields, Chang and others said. More...