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Rutgers University and Pasadena City College both now have confirmed commencement speakers -- following controversy about the actions of administrators in handling past invitations to speak. Rutgers was scrambling because Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, withdrew on Saturday amid growing student and faculty protests over her selection. Rutgers announced that Thomas H. Kean, a former New Jersey governor and former president of Drew University, would appear. Read more...

Congressional Democrats on Tuesday announced legislation to allow existing student loan borrowers to refinance their debt at lower interest rates. Read more...

Stanford University, which has the fourth-largest endowment of any American college, will stop directly investing in coal mining companies. The university announced its limited divestment plan Tuesday citing decades-old investment principles that tell Stanford’s trustees to make as much money as they can but also give trustees the option to avoid investing in companies that “create substantial social injury.” The burning of coal is considered a major contributor to global climate change. Read more...

Boston College is offering to return to the interview subjects oral history recordings that were made about "the Troubles," a period of intense protest and violence in Northern Ireland from the 1960s until the 1980s. British authorities (with backing from their U.S. counterparts) fought in U.S. federal court to obtain the recordings for use in possible prosecutions, and in the end obtained some recordings that many believe led to a recent detention for questioning. Read more...

The cost of borrowing money from the federal government to pay for college will increase in the coming academic year. Interest rates on most federal student loans are now set to rise following Wednesday’s sale of 10-year Treasury notes, the government debt to which rates are tied. Read more...

The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed President Obama’s choice for the Education Department’s top official overseeing higher education.
By a voice vote, lawmakers approved the nomination of Theodore R. Mitchell as under secretary of education. Mitchell, who most recently led a “venture philanthropy” fund focused on K-12 education, assumes the post previously occupied by Martha J. Kanter, who left the department last year to join the faculty of New York University. The role has been filled on an interim basis by Jamienne S. Studley, the deputy under secretary of education. Read more...

Graduate faculty members at Rutgers University at New Brunswick have once again rejected administrators' plans to create more online degree programs through a partnership with Pearson. Last October, faculty members in the Graduate School blocked any new programs from being approved, objecting to Pearson's share of tuition revenue -- 50 percent -- and an "obscenity clause" in the contract that Pearson later clarified. Read more...

Ball State University has promoted a professor accused last year of proselytizing during a course called "Boundaries of Science," The Star Press of Muncie, Ind., reported. Last year, the university investigated and said it would be working with Eric Hedin, now an associate professor of physics and astronomy, to make sure that his courses were science-based. The news came after First Amendment watchdog groups informed the university that students had reported Hedin was using "Boundaries," an honors science class, to teach Christan values. Read more...