By Andy Thomason. Looking for some reading material on for-profit colleges in Florida? The Miami Herald has you covered, and then some. The newspaper just released the results of an extensive investigation into the sector’s presence in the state, complete with some eye-opening findings. More...

By Andy Thomason. Will the partnership between edX and Arizona State University to “reimagine” the freshman year live up to the hype?
That’s the question being passed around in higher-ed circles on Thursday morning. Under the plan, Arizona State will offer its freshman-year general-education requirements in MOOC form. Students who complete the courses and want to use them as college credit can do so at a price of $200 per credit. More...

By Andy Thomason. Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday introduced resolutions to “ensure that students have access to debt-free higher education.” The Washington Post reports the push comes amid a broader effort by the Democratic Party to promote college affordability as a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign — and to push the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, to propose a national plan for debt-free college. More...

By Andy Thomason. The U.S. Education Department has budgeted more than $4 million to build its controversial college-ratings system, Inside Higher Ed reports. The department’s contract with RTI International shows that it has already paid the company at least $1.8 million to construct a website and test ratings models. The contract also shows that the system might allow colleges to annotate or provide context to their evaluations. More...

By Andy Thomason. Few top English departments require students to study Shakespeare in depth as part of their majors, according to a new report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The report, “The Unkindest Cut: Shakespeare in Exile 2015,” says that only four colleges out of a sample of 52 require students to take a course focused on Shakespeare as part of an English major. More...

By Andy Thomason. One-third of the work force used to build New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi was not subject to the institution’s enhanced labor protections, an independent investigation has found. But the long-awaited results of the inquiry also state that the college’s commitment to the standards was “real, implemented in good faith, and, to a large measure, effective.” More...

By Andy Thomason. Fresh off the announcement that she would run for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton visited a community college on Tuesday as part of her days-old campaign in Iowa. More...

By Andrew Mytelka. Female faculty members at the University of California at Los Angeles medical school’s research center on Alzheimer’s disease worked in “a climate of conflict, tension, hostility, and mistrust” and faced “unprofessional, demeaning” treatment, reports the Los Angeles Times, citing a letter that describes the results of an external investigation. More...

By Andy Thomason. Next time a sketchy call for papers shows up in your inbox, don’t be so quick to hit delete. Someone might be trying to tell you a secret.
That’s thanks to three former students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab who 10 years ago called attention to so-called “predatory publishers” by creating a tool that generated real-sounding but ultimately meaningless papers. More...

By Andrew Mytelka. Sexist hiring practices are commonly blamed for the underrepresentation of women in many fields of academic science, but new research suggests that such an assumption is wrong. In the research, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, male and female faculty members in four fields under study preferred to hire female applicants, by a two-to-one ratio, over male applicants with identical qualifications and life situations (single, married, divorced). More...