By Megan O'Neil. Blackboard Inc., whose learning-management system is used by more than two-fifths of nonprofit colleges in the United States, said on Wednesday that it would acquire the student-centric web platform MyEdu.
Jay Bhatt, Blackboard’s chief executive, declined to disclose the purchase price. He described the acquisition as “small” compared with others that Blackboard has made in the past several years, but “extremely strategic.” Read more...

By Rebecca Schuman. Changes are afoot among us part-time adjuncts who shoulder a hefty majority of college instruction in the United States. We have, for now, the attention of Congress. We've got our own snappy hashtags! And we're methodically organizing ourselves into unions, in my town and yours. Administrations are noticing, and are none too pleased. Sometimes, they go to impressive lengths to prevent a vote. Other times, they just issue veiled threats, saying they're "concerned" about faculty "ceding their individual right[s]" to the Service Employees International Union, an "outside organization" unfamiliar, "in all frankness," with "the enterprise of higher education." More...

By Kim Kozlowski.State universities and advocates for increased aid to higher education Wednesday hailed Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget that proposed the largest state funding increase in 14 years.
Snyder wants to use part of the state’s $971 million three-year surplus to finance a 6.1 percent or additional $80.3 million for Michigan’s 15 public universities, though the money would be tied to several performance measures and a 3.2 percent cap on tuition increases. More...

By Matt Murphy. Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposed budget for next year includes a sizeable new investment in public university campuses, but may fall short of what would be required to freeze student tuition and fees for a second year despite his administration’s confidence that it is sufficient. Patrick’s fiscal 2015 plan calls for an increase of $68.4 million in spending on higher education, including a $36.9 million bump for the University of Massachusetts and its five campuses. The proposed funding level, however, falls about $2.5 million short of the $518.8 million budget for UMass that lawmakers, the administration and university officials agreed to last year and codified in the current budget as a condition for freezing tuition and fees. More...

By Matthew Lloyd-Thomas. Along with thousands of other colleges and universities, Yale continues to express major concerns over President Obama’s proposed college rating system. In a letter last week, over 20 associations of higher education institutions strongly criticized the rating system, which is a central plank of Obama’s higher education agenda. The letter comes only three weeks after over 100 college and university presidents pledged, at a White House summit, to work with the Obama Administration to expand access to higher education for low-income students. Although Yale did not help draft the letter, the University is a member of eight of the associations that wrote the letter and shares many of the authors’ concerns about the ratings system, according to Yale’s Associate Vice President for Federal Relations Richard Jacob. More...

By Jim Hightower. There's a growing army of the working poor in our U.S. of A., and big contingents of it are now on the march. They're strategizing, organizing and mobilizing against the immoral economics of inequality being hung around America's neck by the likes of Walmart, McDonald's and colleges. Wait a minute. Colleges? That can't be. After all, we're told to go there to go to college to get ahead in life. More education makes you better off, right? Well, ask a college professor about that — you know, the ones who earned Ph.Ds and are now teaching America's next generation. More...

Princeton University is raising the price of an Ivy League education along with the amount of financial aid available to students.
The school's trustees approved boosting undergraduate tuition by 4.1 percent to $41,820. Room and board will cost $13,620.
The trustees also approved an 8.5 percent increase in undergraduate financial aid to nearly $132 million.
The school says approximately 60 percent of undergrads receive financial aid.
Princeton says the projected average grant for undergraduate students on financial aid in the Class of 2018 to be admitted in the spring will be $42,700. Read more...

By Laura Pappano. Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline.
IT BOTHERS MATTHEW LAHUE and it surely bothers you: enter a public restroom and the stall lock is broken. Fortunately, Mr. Lahue has a solution. It’s called the Bathroom Bodyguard. Standing before his Buffalo State College classmates and professor, Cyndi Burnett, Mr. Lahue displayed a device he concocted from a large washer, metal ring, wall hook, rubber bands and Lincoln Log. Slide the ring in the crack and twist. The door stays shut. Plus, the device fits in a jacket pocket. More...