By Scott McLemee. The most distracting thing about costume dramas set in any period before roughly the turn of the 20th century -- in my experience, anyway -- is the thought that everything and everyone on screen must have smelled really bad. Read more...

By Patrick O’Connor. It’s been a little over a year since Michelle Obama brought school counselors and the important work they do into the spotlight as never before. Read more...

By W. Kent Barnds. For today’s enrollment manager, it’s nearly impossible to go a week without someone forwarding an article about another college trying a new way to describe the difference between its listed sticker price, the actual cost of attendance and the institution’s discount rate. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s call on Monday for a greater focus on student outcomes at colleges was an effort to pivot away from discussions that he said are focused too narrowly on the burden of student loan debt -- discussions administration officials feel are crowding out the debate over structural flaws in America’s higher education system. Read more...

By Paul Fain. Students who participate in federal work-study are more likely to graduate and get a job after college. But those who get the biggest academic benefits from the program -- low-income students at public colleges who would have worked anyhow -- are the least likely to receive the federal grants. Read more...

By Paul Fain. Most people in higher education agree that the old-school college transcript fails to adequately capture what students learn and do during their time in college. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. Virtually every college, company, advocacy group and other party that commented on proposed new federal rules on campus financial products by last week's deadline asserted that it had students' best interests at heart. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. For some academics, the social network Reddit is becoming less of a guilty pleasure and more of a credible platform to discuss academic interests with people whom they otherwise would not have had a chance to debate. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. The University of Memphis has been mostly silent in the last month as conservative bloggers and publications have criticized Zandria Robinson, until recently an assistant professor of sociology at the university. Read more...