By David Halperin. In tomorrow's State of the Union address, President Obama will likely revisit his plans to hold America's colleges and universities more accountable for helping U.S. students train for real careers.  But while a stalemated Congress still blocks progress in many areas, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general just took a major step to help college students, especially veterans, single parents, and others struggling to support their families.
The house of cards built by the worst-performing higher education sector -- predatory for-profit colleges -- may at last be in peril of collapsing.  In the past few days, four of the biggest for-profit college companies -- Career Education Corp., Corinthian Colleges, Education Management Corp., and ITT Tech -- all filed disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying they were now under investigation by state attorneys generas. More...

By Kala Vijayaraghavan & Rica Bhattacharyya. It was a wave of sorts and SP Kothari was part of it. The year was 1982, and Kothari, armed with a degree in chemical engineering from BITS Pilani and a management degree from IIM-Ahmedabad, felt the west calling.
He did what many other bright and brilliant Indians were doing at the time for such a passage. "In the 70s, 80s and much of the 90s, the only way to emigrate to the US was higher education," he says. "Many of these students, without even knowing a whole lot about academic careers, joined PhD programmes in the US—these programmes paid full scholarship." Read more...

By Linda Borg. House Speaker Gordon D. Fox and House Health, Education and Welfare Committee Chairman Joseph M. McNamara have introduced legislation to create a pilot program that would allow students to replace tuition with a plan that allows them to pay a percentage of their income upon graduation.
The "Pay It Forward, Pay It Back" bill (H7201) is based on a similar program in Oregon, and is meant to provide a more affordable higher education option while steering students toward the fields where local employers need more skilled employees.
"This is a bold, innovative idea that would address two of our state's major challenges -- the rapid rise of college costs and the skills gap -- at once..." said Fox, D-Providence.
The legislation directs the Department of Education to create a three-year pilot program at one or more of the state's colleges by June 20, 2015. Instead of paying tuition and fees, students in the program would sign a contract to pay a percentage of their gross income to the state or their college or university after graduation for a specified number of years. The program would be available only to Rhode Island residents, and students would be required to graduate on time in order to remain eligible. More...

Par Marc Landré. Michel Sapin vient de sonner la fin de la récréation sur les contrats de génération dans les entreprises de plus de 300 salariés qui ont tardé à négocier un accord ou un plan d'action...
Concrètement, les entreprises qui sont en train de finaliser leur accord ont «jusqu'à fin février» pour le conclure et l'envoyer aux services du ministère. Celles qui n'ont pas entamé de démarche ont quatre semaines pour réagir, faute de quoi la première étape de la sanction prévue par la loi sera enclenchée. À savoir une mise en demeure, préalable au recouvrement «sans délai» d'une pénalité équivalente à 1 % de la masse salariale qui interviendra un mois plus tard. Soit fin mars. Voir l'article...