By Josephine Potuto. The collegiate athletic model is under attack. A Greek chorus chants the refrain: college athletics are professional athletics; college athletics are divorced from campus life; college athletes are students in name only.  Second verse same as the first. Read more...

By Patricia McGuire. This year should be the one when higher education at last comes to our collective senses about celebrity commencement speakers. The bread-and-circuses spectacle that commencement has become on too many campuses demeans the true purpose of the ceremony. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Princeton University Press hopes to molt from a publisher of print into an organization with a wide variety of ebooks and apps. One such offering, due out this summer is BirdGenie -- Shazam for birds. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. To the many professors who say that student course evaluation data play too big a role in promotion and tenure decisions, a new study might come as both good news and bad. On the one hand, faculty evaluations seem to be getting more holistic, with deans gathering data from an increasing number of sources to assess professor performance. On the other hand, student evaluation results are playing a role in promotion and tenure decisions at more and more colleges. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. The Obama administration is now free to move ahead with plans to more tightly regulate campus debit cards and require more aggressive state oversight of online education programs after a federal panel on Tuesday failed to reach agreement on those issues. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. Let's stipulate up front that Bob Shireman is anything but an objective observer of for-profit higher education. For much of President Obama's first term, he made life a living hell for colleges in the sector through his aggressive pursuit of new regulations designed to ensure they were preparing their graduates for "gainful employment." Read more...

By Clea Caulcutt for Times Higher Education. Nothing better illustrates the difficulties in understanding how higher education works in Paris than the term “Sorbonne.”
Historically associated with the original University of Paris, the name is now carried by three of its successor institutions – Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle University and Pantheon-Sorbonne University – which share classrooms in the historic site of the Sorbonne in the city’s Latin Quarter. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The U.S. isn’t producing enough highly skilled graduates in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields to meet the country’s workforce needs. To remain competitive in an increasingly globalized world the U.S. needs to step up its own production of STEM graduates and amend its immigration policies to better recruit the best and the brightest from abroad. Read more...

By Paul Fain. A growing number of startups want to play the matchmaker role between community colleges and employers. One of them, WorkAmerica, makes an unusual offer as part of their pitch: students get a legally binding job offer before they enroll at one of the company’s partner colleges.
“No student should enroll in a vocational job program without having a job guarantee,” said Collin Gutman, WorkAmerica’s CEO and co-founder. “We get jobs for people before they start a college class.”
The recently launched company is based here. Read more...