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By Andrea Watson. Environmental sustainability is the theme of Mitchell Thomashow’s latest book, The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, (MIT Press). The former president of Unity College came to the environment-focused Maine campus in 2006 with the plan of adopting sustainable changes. In his book, he talks about why colleges are good places to practice sustainability. Read more...

By Paul Fain. One way community colleges can help more students graduate is by eliminating the option of registering late for courses, research has found. But this move, which is a key part of college completion reforms, can also stir up controversy and hurt enrollment numbers. Last month the College of Southern Nevada began requiring that students sign up for a course no later than the night before it begins. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. More than 150 U.S. colleges have pledged to increase their study abroad participation rates as part of a new national initiative, Generation Study Abroad, being spearheaded by the Institute of International Education. The initiative has the exceedingly ambitious aim of doubling American study abroad enrollment, to about 600,000, by the end of the decade. According to IIE data, just under 10 percent of American undergraduates currently study abroad during the course of their degrees. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. President Obama on Tuesday sent Congress a budget request that would keep most student aid and basic research programs level-funded; the 2015 plan also included several ambitious new higher education proposals. But the new proposals stand little chance of passing a gridlocked Congress that is gearing up for the midterm elections this fall. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. The College Board today announced major changes to the SAT, including a substantial revision to the writing test that was added in 2005 in the last major overhaul of the admissions test. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Lot of research says that having kids puts women at a disadvantage on the academic job market, especially in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. But a new study suggests that kids are equally, and in some cases more, hazardous to men’s academic career prospects. “Pathways in STEM: Do Gender and Family Status Matter?” is based on survey data tracking the first jobs of math and science Ph.D.s upon graduation. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. The most independent and self-motivated students entering college are more likely to expect they will take a fully online course as undergraduates, a new survey says, but the vast majority of students still connect higher education with the traditional residential experience. The 2013 Freshman Survey, conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, suggests that more than two-thirds, or 69.8 percent, of entering freshmen are using online instructional materials such as massive open online courses and video lectures on their own time, compared to less than half, or 41.8 percent, as an assignment in a high school class. Read more...

By Allie Grasgreen. The 2013-14 academic year marks a half-decade since the economic recession hit, but concerns about the costs of attending college are influencing incoming freshmen more than ever, a new survey shows. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. If it seems very Silicon Valley, that’s because it is. Stanford University’s Faculty Senate approved on Thursday two new joint-major programs that will allow students to study English and computer science or music and computer science starting in the fall. Nicholas Jenkins, associate professor of English and director of CS+X, as the joint major program is called, said it will likely attract humanists who want a competitive edge on the job market; computer science-minded students who want to be engaged in the humanities; and third group of students: digital natives for whom computer science and the humanities don’t seem “at opposite ends of the spectrum at all, but continuous.” Read more...

By Andrea Watson. Americans who received bachelor's degrees in 2008 were roughly twice as likely to be unemployed after a year than were their peers who graduated in 1993 and 2000, the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics said in a report Thursday. Mostly to blame, the researchers said: the recession. Read more...