By William G. Tierney and Julia C. Duncheon. Remedial education in higher education has become a target for reformers. Lawmakers in Florida have made remedial classes in math, reading and English optional for students entering community colleges in fall 2014. The placement tests to assess these skills will be optional as well. 
Meantime, Tennessee and Connecticut have passed legislation making it easier for students to bypass remediation and enroll directly in courses that lead to graduation and completion of a major. And California State University has lowered its math and English placement test cutoff scores, requiring fewer students to do remedial coursework. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. The death of the learning management system has been routinely predicted over the last few years, but if a new market forecast is to be believed, commercial vendors have little to fear. The industry will continue to expand over the next five years, though most of the growth will come from outside the higher education sector. According to a report by the market research and consulting company MarketsandMarkets, the industry is anticipated to post a year-over-year growth rate of about 25 percent for the next five years, expanding from $2.55 billion today to $7.83 billion in 2018. Read more...

By Libby Page. Students who get involved in campaigns at university pick up impressive skills and learn to adapt to the unexpected. It's not every day that you meet an international development minister at the houses of parliament while dressed as a sweet potato. For Billy Hill, a third-year history student at the University of Birmingham, this was another day as a student campaigner. Hill's campaigning not only gave him memorable experiences, but led to his first job. More...

By Stephen Burgen. Rebellion in ruling party forces U-turn on plan that could have left thousands of students on Erasmus programme without funding. The Spanish government has abandoned plans for deep cuts to an European scheme that allows degree and post-graduate students to study abroad.
The education minister José Ignacio Wert was forced to back down after a rebellion in his own party, the governing Partido Popular, and has agreed that the 10,000 students already on the Erasmus scheme will receive the grants they were promised. More...

Spain's poorest students who had already made their plans will now receive some funding after all. Erasmus would approve. "I wish to be called a citizen of the world," wrote the humanist Erasmus in 1522, a sentiment that inspired the Erasmus programme of EU scholarships, which funds university students to study for up to six months elsewhere in Europe as part of their course. Three million students have taken part in the scheme since it was launched (amid controversy, of course) in 1987. More...

By Ketan Kishor Parmar. The government pushes privatisation and growth while holding international students like me back, says Ketan Kishor Parmar. In her speech at September's Conservative Party conference, Theresa May cited with pride that the annual number of overseas student visas issued by the UK government had been cut by more than 115,000. More...

By Liz Lightfoot. With first degrees commonplace, a postgraduate course helps job hunters stand out from the crowd. Today's jobs market is highly competitive and a postgraduate degree can command a premium with employers, especially if it includes work experience. A survey of destinations six months after graduation – carried out by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu) – found that postgraduates were more likely to have found employment and be working in a professional role than those with only a first degree. More...