By Carl Straumsheim. The 2015 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology, available today, provides a snapshot of how faculty members feel about social media and how it relates to their professional and personal lives. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. The political and public policy landscape is increasingly dotted (one might say littered) with those who view the purpose of higher education as about preparing people for the workplace, from governors questioning whether their state universities are producing too many graduates in anthropology or other liberal arts disciplines to Education Department officials whose college data tool focuses heavily on economic outcomes. Read more...

By Paul Fain. The U.S. Department of Education today announced an experimental pathway to federal aid for partnerships between colleges and nontraditional providers, including ones that run skills boot camps or offer unaccredited online courses. Read more...

By Paul Fain. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking information from a national accreditor about the for-profit colleges it oversees, which include several controversial chains. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will next year launch the first of what could be several pilots to determine if pieces of what it has provided face-to-face can be delivered through massive open online courses. Read more...

By Ashley A. Smith. Every few weeks, it seems, a new investigation is launched into one of the larger for-profit colleges in the country. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Collective bargaining negotiations are often drawn out and contentious, but the process now unfolding within the Connecticut State University system promises to be particularly unpleasant, based on an administrative wish list that includes unprecedented proposals -- such as that tenured faculty members may be assigned involuntarily to another campus, without the guarantee of continued tenure there. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013, Peter Higgs, of Higgs boson fame, said he doubted he would have gotten a job, not to mention tenure, in today’s academic system. The professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh said he simply wouldn’t have been “productive” enough, with academe’s premium on publication metrics. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. A California appeals court has ruled, 2 to 1, that public colleges and universities do not have a general legal obligation to protect adult students from violent acts by other students. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Shootings at two universities Friday morning each left a freshman dead. The shootings came a week after a lone gunman killed nine people and injured seven more at Oregon's Umpqua Community College in the third-most-deadly mass shooting ever to occur on a college campus. Read more...