By Alissa Gulin. What do beekeepers, marching band members, engineers and choir singers all have in common?
They all raised money for various projects through Launch UMD, a new crowdfunding platform at the University of Maryland, College Park. The website works just like Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms that enable individuals or groups to solicit online donations for specific projects. Donations can come from anyone, but only members of the university community — students, employees, alumni, parents — can seek to raise money. More...

By Alyssa Ayres. This week the Institute for International Education (IIE) released the latest survey data on foreign students, study abroad and U.S. higher education. The survey, Open Doors, comes out annually and draws on data collected from around 3,000 U.S. colleges and universities. Indian students are a strong presence on U.S. campuses, contributing an estimated $3.3 billion to the U.S. economy as IIE reports, using U.S. Department of Commerce data. This year, the number of Indian students in the United States surpassed the 100,000 mark, ticking up to 102,673, keeping India the number two country of origin for foreign students in the United States. More...

By John W. Schoen. It may be good news for students and parents, but slower tuition increases are putting renewed budget pressure on public colleges and universities.
Just as the lingering impact of Great Recession fades, roughly half of public universities say they don't expect tuition to even keep up with inflation, according to a survey by Moody's Investors Service. More...

By Susannah Snider. Listing a school first on the FAFSA indicates that a student is more likely to enroll, say experts. College applicants can demonstrate their desire to attend a school by visiting campus, interviewing with admissions counselors and following up on their applications. But they may not know that colleges can gauge their intent to enroll through a little-known method – analyzing an innocuous, nonfinancial question on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. More...

By James S. Russel. Closed for six years, the Harvard Art Museums reopen here Sunday after a radical overhaul by the architect Renzo Piano. He saved only the shell of the chaste, red-brick Fogg Museum and its interior courtyard, extending it upward in sheets of glass and elegant trusswork. Galleries wrap the new public space, but so do a materials lab, an art-conservation suite and a study center, where students, faculty and visitors can learn from the collection of 250,000 objects. More...

By Kathleen Megan. The state's largest union representing Community College faculty and staff voted Saturday not to endorse the state's "Transform CSCU 2020" plan in its current form. Delegates from the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges -- known as "The 4C's" -- met Saturday and adopted a resolution that was passed last week by the Faculty Advisory Committee to the state Board of Regents for Higher Education. More...

By Kimberly Hefling. The number of foreign exchange students studying at U.S. colleges and universities is at a record high, with nearly one-third coming from China.
A report by the Institute of International Education, in partnership with the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, said nearly 900,000 international students were studying in the U.S. during the 2013-14 school year, up 8 percent from a year earlier. More...

By Nona Willis Aronowitz. A decade ago, then-18-year-old Sophia Stoll resolved that she wanted to go away for college. The working-class New Yorker enrolled in a private Catholic university outside of Pittsburgh, but by her junior year, she’d realized that the media and technology program didn’t suit her goals. Stoll dropped out, worked odd jobs for a year back home, then transferred to SUNY-Fredonia. But she ended up suffering from extreme anxiety, she says, and withdrew after a semester. More...

By Matthew Saccaro. With colleges spending billions on lavish housing developments, it's easy to think that all students are living large. The sad reality? Student homelessness in higher education is a larger issue than most realize, with tens of thousands across the country homeless. More...