About 23 percent of students who receive college credit while still enrolled in high school obtain an associate degree within two years, making them far more likely to do so than peers who do not earn college credit in high school, a new study shows. Read more...

The U.S. Education Department plans to provide guidance counselors and state agencies with more information about students who are filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, Obama administration officials said Wednesday at the department's so-called "Datapalooza" event. The goal is to boost the rate at which students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, complete the FAFSA. Read more...

By D.G. Myers. Earlier this month I stepped into a classroom to begin the last semester of a 24-year teaching career. Don’t get me wrong. I am not retiring. I am not “burned out.” The truth is rather more banal. Ohio State University will not be renewing my three-year contract when it expires in the spring. Read more...

By Bernard Lane for The Australian. Governments that are tight-fisted and keen to exercise control are least likely to preside over a higher education system of quality. In a paper on what sets apart strong national systems, the University of Melbourne's Ross Williams and colleagues point out that most countries with high output in teaching and research put in plenty of resources. The authors also stress the role of government policy and regulation that allows universities freedom to innovate, manage their affairs and attract talented staff. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Have the digital humanities gone mainstream? Sessions on the role of technology in humanities scholarship at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting last week may have made up less than 10 percent of the conference’s overall schedule (and almost everything seemed overwhelmed by the tumult over the Israel censure vote), but speakers and attendees alike said they felt the contents of those sessions had changed from previous years. While earlier conferences often discussed the potential of the digital humanities, this year’s meeting frequently featured traditional research methods alongside data visualization, gaming and text minin. Read more...

By Ry Rivard. Cooper Union trustees rejected a last-ditch effort to keep the New York City college free. Their vote Friday makes it all but certain, following months of controversy, that the college's legacy of free education will end for incoming students this fall. Opponents predict the $20,000 tuition will badly hurt the college, which was founded by industrialist Paul Cooper to educate the working class and has become a well-regarded training ground for artist, architects and engineers. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. The education software giant Blackboard delivered an endorsement of the "consumerization" of higher education on Wednesday, acquiring MyEdu, an Austin, Texas-based company that combines data, e-portfolios and recruitment tools to guide students through college and into the work force. The acquisition is small in scale but significant in scope, as it signals the direction in which president and CEO Jay Bhatt, who joined the Blackboard in 2013, intends to steer the billion-dollar company. Read more...

By Holly Else for Times Higher Education. An online education platform in Brazil could become a major player in the competition for massive open online course students by tapping into a key emerging market. Veduca was launched in March 2012 and provides online courses aimed at Portuguese speakers. The platform features video lectures from universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Princeton Universities in the United States and Oxford University in Britain, translated into Portuguese. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled more than 100 commitments from colleges and universities and millions of dollars in philanthropic donations aimed at helping more low-income students attend and complete college. The lengthy list of new promises doubles as the guest list to Thursday’s higher education summit hosted by the White House. In order to attend the daylong event, which will include remarks by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as well as discussions with top administration officials, college presidents were required to make new pledges, financial or otherwise, to helping low-income students. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. The Obama administration wants to produce new ratings that will allow prospective college students to identify institutions with high graduation rates, solid job placement records and generous student aid. But what if students just want to be happy?.
A study being released today documents the statistically significant impact of several Princeton Review rankings of colleges on quality-of-life issues. Read more...