Last week, 9th of January, Obama introduced his new plan for free community college during his visit to Tennessee. Obama reportedly commented on this: “For millions of Americans, community colleges are essential pathways to the middle class. I want to make it free.”
A video preview to the initiative was posted earlier on the White House Facebook page. More...

By Cheryl K. Chumley and Jessica Chasmar. Duke University has decided to reverse its plan to sound the Muslim call-to-prayer from a chapel bell tower on campus after receiving a wave of backlash from Christians who called the plan unfair.
“Duke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus for all of its students,” said Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs and government relations, a local CBS affiliate reported. “However, it was clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.” Read more...

By Jim Rogers. I do not believe many Americans would claim that secondary education in this country today stands as the best in the world. Indeed, most seem to agree that American primary and secondary education today is pretty hopeless. But those same people will insist, in the same paragraph, that American tertiary education is unequaled. Read more...

By Regina Deil-Amen. President Obama's plan to make the first two years of community college free would finally reward rather than punish students who are frugal about college costs. The majority of our nation's students, almost 60 percent, begin their postsecondary education in a community college, which is the most inexpensive college option, with an average annual tuition of $3,260. More...

By Jen A. Miller. Customer experience, big data, ‘the business of education’ is in the spotlight for 2015 at colleges and universities. The calendar flipping over into 2015 doesn't mean a new academic year for most American college and university students, but it does mean a new beginning for higher-education CIOs.
We asked four CIOs about what they're looking forward to in the new year, what changes are in store on their campuses, and how they see the role of the higher-ed CIO evolving. More...

By Fawn Johnson. We don't know how it will be paid for. We don't know how much it will cost.
White House officials didn't have a lot of details last week about President Obama's proposal to offer free tuition to community colleges. They didn't know how much it would cost. They don't know where the money would come from. They don't know if Congress is interested. More...

By Janell Ross. Tuition is only part of the problem at two-year institutions.
Late last week, President Obama announced a sweeping community-college tuition plan that drew on the usual superlatives. The plan has already been described as a "moon shot" that could universalize the first two years of college and denounced as yet another part of the president's latent socialist agenda. Others have labeled it an unfunded pipe dream. More...

By Brian C. Mitchell. In a recent blog in the Washington Post, Max Ehrenfreund suggests that private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids. He asks: "Is it worth unloading your life's savings or having your child take on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans?" More...