By Ry Rivard. In areas with multiple law schools -- like Washington, Phoenix and northern Florida -- the transfer market has lately exposed the contentious underbelly of legal education. The transfer market has become particularly active in recent years as overall law school enrollment has fallen dramatically. Read more...

By Kaitlin Mulhere. Science and research advocates welcomed President Obama's 2016 budget proposal Monday, which would give the National Science Foundation a "vigorous, healthy budget," according to its director. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Following a year of upheaval concerning the size of the distance education market and who quantifies it, the Babson Survey Research Group's annual barometer of the students taking online courses contains few surprises.
The survey was never meant to make it this far, codirectors I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman point out. What was intended as a “single snapshot” of the distance education market of the early 2000s is now in its 12th annual edition. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. College and university chief information officers are unsure of what to make of the Federal Communications Commission’s hard line on blocking personal wireless hot spots and whether it applies to higher education. Nearly a year after the issue emerged, the agency still has yet to clarify. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. This year’s freshmen traded some of the hours they would normally have spent hanging out with friends or partying during their senior year in high school for time on social media, a survey of those students shows. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Elite colleges admit students in a way that will fail to diversify higher education -- and the current use of affirmative action has little impact, according to a new book by Lani Guinier. Her new book, The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America, has just been published by Beacon Press. In it she argues that current admissions systems are based on tests, rankings and prestige -- in ways that undermine American democracy. And she argues for replacing what she calls "testocratic merit" with a new "democratic merit." This shift would place more emphasis on the good to society of educating a diverse group of people than on identifying the people with the best credentials (as currently defined by society) for admission. Read more...