By Carl Straumsheim. Faculty members at Texas university raise questions about whether they are being monitored after administrators show up in their course rosters. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Physics is often characterized as having a tough climate for women, of whom there are still relatively few working in the field (even compared to the other sciences). But the American Physical Society has made inroads in addressing the issue, offering site visits sponsored by its Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, for example, as well as by its Committee on Minorities. But what about the climate for lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual physicists? Faced with an absence of data on the matter, the society created an ad hoc committee to assess working conditions for these populations and establish recommendations based on its findings. Read more...

By Ellen Wexler. The Pell Grant program, which the federal government spent $34 billion on in 2014, has become a way to measure how well colleges serve the underprivileged. The more Pell Grant recipients a college enrolls, the story goes, the more they’re helping to increase college access. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Piracy been around for decades, but the sources of pirated music, movies and more have multiplied over the years, expanding beyond platforms such as Napster and the Pirate Bay. Today, many users search for copyrighted scholarly papers on Facebook, Reddit and Twitter or repositories such as Library Genesis (LibGen) and Sci-Hub. Read more...

By Ashley A. Smith. There are no easy answers for California's two-year college system as it faces an unprecedented decision to move to a new accreditor, while also debating how to change the current one. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Study suggests grad students may outperform faculty members in the classroom and may also benefit from time away from their dissertations. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. In Wisdom's Workshop: The Rise of the Modern University, forthcoming this month from Princeton University Press, Jim Axtell explains how the history of universities played out, from medieval Europe to modern America. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders -- and their supporters -- spar over their plans for historically black colleges, as President Obama's complicated legacy looms. Read more...

By Josh Logue. U of Illinois at Chicago says it can't deny the campaign space for a rally, but many on campus want to know what is being done to protect the rights of students and faculty members who want to attend to protest the candidate. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has affirmed a jury finding that Wayne State University failed to respond to pregnancy-based discrimination against one of its students. For failing to do so, Wayne State must pay $850,000. Read more...