By Jacqueline Thomsen. After a racially motivated shooting in Charleston earlier this month left nine black people dead, a nationwide conversation about the Confederate flag began. Politicians jumped on the bandwagon, major corporations removed merchandise displaying the flag from their shelves and the topic pervaded social media and news coverage. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to consider a case that could effectively make union membership dues optional for public employees. The vast majority of faculty members who are represented by unions are in public higher education, and such a shift could be devastating to the financing of their unions. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. In a deal announced Saturday evening by Virginia's attorney general, the college's current leaders agreed to relinquish control to a new president and a largely new board. Saving Sweet Briar, an organization of alumnae who have fought the planned closure of the college, has agreed to raise $12.5 million to continue operating the college in the 2015-16 academic year. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. After years of delays spurred by concerns from states and colleges, a new federal requirement that colleges obtain authorization from regulators in each state in which they are physically located is finally due to take effect. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. A U.S. Senate subcommittee on Tuesday passed a spending bill for health, labor and education programs that would increase funds for biomedical research and boost the maximum Pell Grant -- but slash spending on workforce training and AmeriCorps and block the Obama administration from implementing regulations relating to gainful employment for vocational programs and its college rating system. Read more...

By Paul Fain. ACT is phasing out Compass, a popular but controversial college placement test that colleges use to determine whether students need to take remedial courses. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. Business is booming in Brazil for DeVry Education Group, an Illinois-based, publicly traded for-profit education company.
DeVry reports that it enrolls more than 58,000 degree-seeking students in Brazil, plus another 53,000 students in test preparatory programs there. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. The American Association of University Professors voted Saturday to censure the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and three other institutions, while protesting planned changes -- pushed by Republican lawmakers -- to tenure and shared governance within the University of Wisconsin System. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. For years, advocates for colleges to do more to prevent and punish sexual assault on campus have cited a 2007 federal statistic that one in five female students experience sexual assault in college. President Obama and members of Congress have used the statistic, as have many others. But the statistic has been questioned for as long as it has been around. Read more...