A report being released today by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examines the lost opportunities for science and for U.S. competitiveness vs. other nations due to inadequate federal support for basic research. "The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit" explores a range of scientific issues and illustrates how funding has become more difficult to find. Read more...

Queen’s University Belfast is reconsidering its decision to cancel a conference about the murders at Charlie Hebdo, The Guardian reported. Patrick Johnston, the university’s vice chancellor, said in a statement that the university has commissioned a risk assessment for the conference that will inform any decision about it. Read more...

Bill Clinton is stepping down as honorary chancellor of Laureate International Universities, announced Laureate Education Inc., a for-profit that is among the world's largest higher education providers. Clinton concludes a five-year contract with the company. Read more...

Language that would have greatly restricted the right of faculty members at public institutions in Ohio to form unions has been removed from a 3,000-page budget bill before the state House Finance Committee. Faculty members and unions across the state panned the provision after its insertion last week, calling it a fly-by-night attack on collective bargaining. Read more...

A conference at Queen’s University Belfast on the January murders at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been canceled, Times Higher Education reported. Read more...

The Online Learning Consortium and MERLOT -- the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching -- have merged their two journals on online education. The new journal will be known simply as Online Learning, which is what the OLC renamed its journal after last summer's name change. Read more...

A group of three Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, this week introduced a resolution promoting debt-free public college. Several Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives put forward an accompanying proposal. Read more...

Publishing groups are praising a recent move by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to amend Syrian sanctions regulations to authorize U.S. citizens to engage in transactions related to the publishing and marketing of Syrian manuscripts, books, journals and newspapers. Read more...

Nonwealthy private colleges are often left out of the discussion about how low-income students can get access to and succeed in higher education, with policy makers putting most of their focus on the institutions that disproportionately enroll those students (community colleges and for-profit institutions) and those that they think should enroll more -- flagship public and wealthy private universities. Read more...

Since 2012, community colleges in Texas have experimented with an alternative approach to remedial math that the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin has developed. Rather than focusing on algebra, the New Mathways Project emphasizes practical math skills and basic quantitative literacy and statistics. Read more...