The Texas Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would require public colleges to meet several performance standards in order to increase tuition rates beyond the rate of inflation. Performance-based funding formulas, while controversial, are becoming more popular among state legislatures. The bill in Texas, which now goes to the state House for consideration, likely will draw national attention. Read more...

While there has been no official announcement, President Obama has selected the University of Chicago as the host of his presidential library, The Chicago Tribune and USA Today reported. Their reports followed other news reports that President Obama has picked a location in Chicago, but not necessarily one of those proposed by the University of Chicago. Read more...

Parents who are saving money for their children to attend college said they are earmarking 10 percent of their total savings for that purpose, according to a new report from Sallie Mae, the student lender. But the average amount parents said they have set aside for college has declined by 25 percent since last year, to $10,040 from $13,408. Read more...

The U.S. Census Bureau announced Tuesday that it will keep a question in one of its major surveys, the American Community Survey, about the field of study of those who have an undergraduate education. The bureau had proposed removing the question, but in an announcement in The Federal Register, the agency said that it had heard from many researchers concerned about eliminating the question. Read more...

The authors studied the career paths of 224 law firm partners after their prominent firm failed and found that while as a group the partners were likely to accept new positions of lower status elsewhere, their individual success largely depended on where they'd earned their law degrees. Read more...

Many scholars whose research might take them to Cuba have cheered the Obama administration's moves to loosen the rules on travel to the country. But professors at public universities in Florida will have to keep waiting. A Florida law bars public university professors or students from travel to any country in the Western hemisphere that is on the U.S. government's list of nations supporting terrorism. Read more...