The undersigned higher education associations support narrowly tailored legislative efforts to rein in the abusive litigation practices of patent trolls. Universities have no sympathy for those who abuse the patent system to extract unjust and sometimes exorbitant settlements. Unfortunately, the Innovation Act is not narrowly tailored. It is instead so broad that it would have the unintended consequence of debilitating the U.S. patent system, which is critical to the nation’s economy. More...

The higher education community has anxiously awaited the release of more specific information about the Postsecondary Institution Ratings System (PIRS) since President Obama announced the proposal in August 2013. The goals articulated by the President – enhanced access to accurate, timely and actionable consumer information and strengthened institutional accountability for the receipt of public funds – are laudable ideals that we strongly support. Our concerns with PIRS, therefore, are not with the purposes motivating the effort, but instead with the feasibility of the approach and the serious danger of unintended consequences.
In view of the Administration’s stated goal of implementing PIRS by the start of the 2015-2016 academic year, we had hoped that the framework unveiled in December 2014 would provide a concrete and sufficiently specific presentation of the Department’s proposed approach to allow institutions to evaluate the plan’s strengths and weaknesses and to assess its likely impact. Unfortunately, the document released on December 19th is so incomplete, tentative, and amorphous, that it is impossible to offer the type of critique that this undertaking would otherwise require.
Download Higher Education Community Details Concerns about the Administration's Proposed College Ratings System

The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education has released a 45 year trend report that examines equity issues in American tertiary education. Among its highlights is an analysis of the low number, relative to other countries, of US students attending and graduating from colleges and universities. More...

More Guyanese need to be aware of, and understand the critically important role that is expected of our only national university in the cultural, economic, industrial, political and social development of Guyana, and why Guyana as a young developing nation must not allow our only institution of higher learning to fail. When the University of Guyana (UG) was established in 1963, three years before Independence, it was the intention of the founders that the institution would fulfil the following four stated purposes. More...