By Andy Thomason. December 19, 2014. The Education Department releases a draft version of the plan. More...

By Beckie Supiano. There has been a proliferation of consumer information meant to help prospective students choose a college. A number of those tools seem to take it for granted that prospects will embark on a broad, national search. They assume that prospective students are shopping around, just as they might for a car or some other big-ticket consumer item, and that they’re willing to pick up and move anywhere in the country. More...

By Katherine Mangan and Beckie Supiano. President Obama’s controversial college-ratings plan has spawned 16 months of intense debate, much of it centering on one key question: What measures would factor into the ratings?
On Friday the Education Department released a "framework" outlining what the system might eventually look like. The new information is unlikely to quell the controversy: It’s heavy on possibilities and light on details. More...

By Paul Voosen. Though it may not feel like it when you see the latest identity-affirming listicle shared by a friend on Facebook, we are a society moving toward evidence. Our world is ever more quantified, and with such data, flawed or not, the tools of science are more widely applied to our decisions. We can do more than observe our lives, the idea goes. We can experiment on them. More...

By Kelly Field. The college-ratings plan that the Education Department is releasing on Friday can best be described as incremental.
The plan, the product of more than a year of discussion and debate, is less a proposal than a progress report—an update on metrics the department is considering using in its system. More...

By Katherine Mangan. Quick fixes aren’t enough to boost lagging completion rates, says a new report.
More than a decade of efforts to propel low-income and underserved students through community college have fallen short because states and colleges haven’t made systemwide commitments to strategies like streamlining degree requirements, accelerating remediation, and financially rewarding colleges for raising graduation and persistence rates, according to a report being released on Thursday by Jobs for the Future. More...

Quick fixes aren’t enough to boost lagging completion rates, says a new report

By Katherine Mangan

More than a decade of efforts to propel low-income and underserved students through community college have fallen short because states and colleges haven’t made systemwide commitments to strategies like streamlining degree requirements, accelerating remediation, and financially rewarding colleges for raising graduation and persistence rates, according to a report being released on Thursday by Jobs for the Future.

Rankings published today by Research Fortnight magazine, analysing data from the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), show the top universities in the country for research excellence. Check out which institutions made the top 10 and where they were in 2008. Read more...

Results from the Research Excellence Framework (REF) setting out standards of research at UK universities, shows that Oxford is still the best institution for research. Use our searchable league table to find out where your university ranks. Read more...

By Amy King. Access to adult education is limited in this country; people need to shout about the opportunities it can bring to mature learners, says Amy King. Read more...

By Graeme Paton. A study by the Sutton Trust says that "not all degrees are created equal" as figures show Oxbridge graduates with economics qualifications are Britain's highest earners. Read more...