By Steve Kolowich. Course-management systems have become crucial to the everyday operations of colleges so gradually that many users may not think about it all that much. That is, until the lights go out.
A number of institutions had a rude awakening this week, when Desire2Learn, which makes a course-management system used by many colleges, saw what one top official described as the biggest malfunction in the company’s history.
Desire2Learn was moving its clients’ data from the servers of one “cloud” storage provider to another, when sometime on Tuesday a technical glitch triggered errors and outages across its entire network of higher-education, public-school, and corporate clients. Read more...

By Justin Pope. After two strong years, college and university endowments lost ground slightly during the fiscal year ending last June 30, with their investments declining 0.3 percent on average, according to a new study.
U.S. stock markets have risen around 10 percent since then, and many global markets are also higher, so recent performance is likely stronger.
Endowments are the assets owned and invested by universities, who typically spend about 4 to 5 percent of their values annually to support things like financial aid, faculty salaries and other expenses — and then try to replenish the payouts through fundraising and investment returns. Read more...

By Whitney Burdette. Colleges and universities depend largely on donations, and if one estimate holds true, giving to higher education institutions is on track to exceed the watermark set before the 2009 recession.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education found in a survey that giving to colleges and universities grew by 5.5 percent in 2012. The survey also predicts additional growth of 5.8 percent in 2013, exceeding "the high watermark set just prior to the recession," according to CASE President John Lippincott.
"This is very good news," he said in a news release.
Donations to higher education institutions reached a record $31.6 billion in the 2007-2008 school year before dramatically declining the next year, thanks in part to the economic downturn. However, giving began to increase again in 2010, reaching $30.3 billion in the 2010-2011 academic year, according to the Voluntary Support of Education report issued by the Council for Aid to Education. Read more...

By John Morgan. Hefce uneasy over University of Law deal and process for private applicants. John Morgan reports.
The government decision to approve the UK's first for-profit university was hurried through to help meet a deadline in its sale to a private equity firm, a document obtained by Times Higher Education suggests.
According to a paper given to THE under the Freedom of Information Act, the University of Law's application for university title was approved by correspondence without a full board meeting of the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
The move helped to meet a deadline set by the government so that the institution's £200 million sale to Montagu Private Equity could be completed. University title was a crucial part of the sale package. Read more...

By Graeme Paton. More pupils from top private schools are winning places at elite universities despite a Government drive to widen access to higher education, according to research. More than three-quarters of applications made by pupils from Britain’s best independent schools last year resulted in the offer a place, it emerged.
The success rate was up from just over seven-in-10 in each of the previous two years.
Some 95 per cent of applications to one Russell Group university – Exeter – led to the award of a place, while numbers were well over 80 per cent at other leading institutions.
The disclosure – in data published by two of the leading private school organisations – comes despite the introduction of tough new targets designed to force top universities to take in more pupils from “under-represented” groups. Read more...

By Jonathan Fowlie. Six British Columbia universities will today ramp up their push for an increase in government funding, releasing a report that shows the province's economy will soon be facing a shortage of thousands of university and college graduates.
The report comes as both the B.C. Liberal government and the New Democrat opposition have been jockeying to make skills training a key issue during the coming election campaign - a debate that so far has focused more on apprenticeships and trades training than on the need for more university graduates.
But in an interview Monday, presidents from two leading universities said the report to be released today projects that by 2016, the province's largest skills shortage will not be in the trades, but instead in jobs requiring either a university or college degree. Read more...

By Tyler Kingkade. Three U.S. Senators unveiled legislation Wednesday to reverse a 2005 change in bankruptcy laws that makes it nearly impossible to have private student loan debt discharged.
The Fairness for Struggling Students Act of 2013 is cosponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Jack Reed (D-Ill.). For Durbin, a high-ranking Democrat, it's the return of legislation he authored in the previous session of Congress.
Student loans are the largest form of consumer debt, topping $1 trillion nationally, but they're the only type not eligible for bankruptcy. Rich Williams, a former higher education advocate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, described private student debt as "a special circle of bankruptcy hell reserved for dads who avoid child support and tax evaders." Read more...

By Ellie Ashford. People go to a community college to help secure a well-paying job, but there’s often a mismatch between students’ goals and what employers in their communities need.
This is one of the challenges addressed by the American Association of Community Colleges’ 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges. The commission's landmark report, Reclaiming the American Dream, found “an overabundance of both adult and younger students planning to enroll in low-demand fields and a corresponding shortage of students planning to enroll in high-demand fields paying a family-supporting wage.”
However, a growing number of two-year colleges are tackling that issue by better aligning educational programs with the local labor market, strengthening student advising services and creating alternative, flexible programs to get students onto a productive career path. Read more...