By Julie Hare for The Australian. The governing bodies of Australian universities have an average of 43 percent female representation, compared to just 16.6 percent in the country's 200 companies, new analysis by The Australian newspaper reveals. A 2010-11 survey of American university boards by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges showed that men outnumbered women by more than two to one on both private college boards (69.8 percent to 30.2 percent) and public boards (71.6 percent to 28.4 percent). Read more...

By Michael Stratford. Higher One, the large but often controversial provider of debit cards on college campuses, has reached a preliminary agreement to pay $15 million to settle claims that its fees and marketing practices were predatory, the company announced Tuesday. The settlement, if finalized and approved by a court, would resolve a handful of class-action lawsuits filed in 2012 against Higher One by a dozen students at colleges across the country. A federal judge consolidated the lawsuits filed in five different states -- Connecticut, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois and Kentucky -- into one class action earlier this year. Read more...

By Ry Rivard. Georgia higher education officials are pushing to merge Kennesaw State University and Southern Polytechnic State University – and students at Southern Poly are pushing back. The merger, the fifth public college consolidation in Georgia since 2012, was announced Friday, to the surprise of many on both campuses. 
The University System of Georgia has already merged eight institutions in an effort to, among other things, save money. So far, countless hours have been spent on the mergers and historic institutions’ names have been wiped off the map. And, so far, the 31-campus system has saved only about 0.1 percent -- an estimated $7.5 million -- of its $7.4 billion operating budget. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. A federal college ratings system has the potential to curb access to higher education for disadvantaged minority and low-income students, several college leaders and student advocates told U.S. Education Department officials on Wednesday. Dozens of students, faculty members, administrators, parents and advocacy groups testified at a daylong hearing at California State University’s Dominguez Hills campus. The event kicked off a series of four public forums that the Education Department is holding this month to solicit feedback on how to develop a federal college ratings system, President Obama's top higher education priority. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. It’s no secret that American and British universities dominate the global university rankings, a fact that's prompted the proliferation of regional rankings that delve deeper into the pool of say, just Latin American or just Asian universities. The slicing and dicing of international university rankings has been happening for years, but three new efforts to rank universities in countries that haven’t historically fared well in the international league tables – the Middle East and North Africa region and the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries – have been announced in recent months. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. Students who are the first in their families to attend college face a set of disadvantages in terms of college enrollment, persistence and graduation -- a vexing problem, to be sure, since virtually nothing can be done retroactively to change their demographic realities. But are there attributes that commonly flow from being a first-generation college student that colleges can address? 
That possibility formed the basis of a session Monday at the Council of Independent Colleges' annual chief academic officers' institute here, where academic and student affairs administrators from dozens of mostly small private colleges discussed the concept of "cultural capital" and the extent to which their institutions can (and should) seek to build it in students. Read more...