By Kaitlin Mulhere. Ten years ago, a report from a National Academy of Sciences committee sounded an alarm about the barriers that young biomedical scientists face in launching their research careers. If improvements aren’t made, the report warned, there could be dire consequences to the future of biomedical research in the U.S. Read more...

By Jared Owens for The Australian. Australia's education minister has walked away from an election commitment to audit “ridiculous” grants by the Australian Research Council and reassign their funding, amid warnings about the politicization of research grants. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. Several dozen higher education groups said Friday that the U.S. Department of Education was lowballing an estimate of how much its proposal to tighten regulation of teacher preparation programs would cost colleges and states. Read more...

By Paul Fain. Drexel University last January earned praise for expanding a transfer program that brings the university’s faculty members to local community colleges. But Drexel is phasing out the program less than a year later.
As The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported, the university will no longer offer bachelor’s degrees on the campuses of two Pennsylvania community colleges and one located across the Delaware River, in New Jersey. Read more...

By Paul Fain. Like most colleges, online institutions are under pressure to improve their graduation rates. Some are getting more selective about which students they admit, turning away those who appear less likely to complete. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. The idea of shared governance probably conjures different notions for trustees, administrators and faculty members. But let’s say it’s a spectrum, with faculty advocates who want a say in major (or minor) institutional decisions while hoping trustees and administrators will stay out of the curriculum on one side. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Kathleen Casey, an assistant professor of history at Virginia Wesleyan College, thought teaching a course on the history of American leisure time – what she called a “history of fun” – would be a good way to reach non-majors and other students who weren’t particularly enthusiastic about history. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. An article (abstract available here) in this month's PS: Political Science & Politics suggests that some female professors may be putting themselves at a disadvantage by ... being good teachers. The article is based on a survey of 600 political science faculty members who were asked if they had ever been honored for their teaching. Just over one-third (34.5 percent) of the faculty members had received such an honor. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Conventional wisdom (backed by many research studies) holds that students benefit from smaller classes. They receive more personal attention from instructors, who can spend more time evaluating each assignment turned in and can spend more time with each student. Many rankings systems reward colleges for small class sizes. Many potential undergraduates judge colleges on the availability of small classes. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Ever since a 2012 study found that a majority of high-achieving, low-income high school seniors don't apply to a single competitive college, educators and policy makers have been debating what to do about "undermatching," as the issue has come to be called. Read more...