Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Matt Murphy. Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposed budget for next year includes a sizeable new investment in public university campuses, but may fall short of what would be required to freeze student tuition and fees for a second year despite his administration’s confidence that it is sufficient. Patrick’s fiscal 2015 plan calls for an increase of $68.4 million in spending on higher education, including a $36.9 million bump for the University of Massachusetts and its five campuses. The proposed funding level, however, falls about $2.5 million short of the $518.8 million budget for UMass that lawmakers, the administration and university officials agreed to last year and codified in the current budget as a condition for freezing tuition and fees. More...

By Matthew Lloyd-Thomas. Along with thousands of other colleges and universities, Yale continues to express major concerns over President Obama’s proposed college rating system. In a letter last week, over 20 associations of higher education institutions strongly criticized the rating system, which is a central plank of Obama’s higher education agenda. The letter comes only three weeks after over 100 college and university presidents pledged, at a White House summit, to work with the Obama Administration to expand access to higher education for low-income students. Although Yale did not help draft the letter, the University is a member of eight of the associations that wrote the letter and shares many of the authors’ concerns about the ratings system, according to Yale’s Associate Vice President for Federal Relations Richard Jacob. More...

By Jim Hightower. There's a growing army of the working poor in our U.S. of A., and big contingents of it are now on the march. They're strategizing, organizing and mobilizing against the immoral economics of inequality being hung around America's neck by the likes of Walmart, McDonald's and colleges. Wait a minute. Colleges? That can't be. After all, we're told to go there to go to college to get ahead in life. More education makes you better off, right? Well, ask a college professor about that — you know, the ones who earned Ph.Ds and are now teaching America's next generation. More...

Princeton University is raising the price of an Ivy League education along with the amount of financial aid available to students.
The school's trustees approved boosting undergraduate tuition by 4.1 percent to $41,820. Room and board will cost $13,620.
The trustees also approved an 8.5 percent increase in undergraduate financial aid to nearly $132 million.
The school says approximately 60 percent of undergrads receive financial aid.
Princeton says the projected average grant for undergraduate students on financial aid in the Class of 2018 to be admitted in the spring will be $42,700. Read more...

By Laura Pappano. Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline.
IT BOTHERS MATTHEW LAHUE and it surely bothers you: enter a public restroom and the stall lock is broken. Fortunately, Mr. Lahue has a solution. It’s called the Bathroom Bodyguard. Standing before his Buffalo State College classmates and professor, Cyndi Burnett, Mr. Lahue displayed a device he concocted from a large washer, metal ring, wall hook, rubber bands and Lincoln Log. Slide the ring in the crack and twist. The door stays shut. Plus, the device fits in a jacket pocket. More...

The journey from identifying a promising idea to building a thriving business relies on many components, such as talent, mentorship, capital, access to infrastructure, and connections to industry. As the Q4 2013 Index demonstrated, universities are in a unique position to aggregate these components to support the creation of new companies. Higher education institutions attract top talent to the state, offer vital programs, and cultivate valuable relationships with leading executives and venture capital firms.
To gauge the performance of Illinois universities in facilitating start-ups, the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC) conducted its first annual University Entrepreneurship Survey, which examines the role of educational institutions in launching new ventures by supporting research, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship centers. More...

By Rob Moritz. Geography for many attending a state college or university in Arkansas is more than just a course. It sometimes determines one’s educational future.
For years, state colleges and universities have offered online classes, as well as some completely online degree programs, mostly at the masters level in education. But despite their convenience, the location of the school is still a major impediment for many when considering a higher education because of finances, employment schedules or family obligations, among other things. See more...

By Peg Tyre. Last month, 80 college and university presidents convened at the White House to discuss ways to get more capable low-income students to and through top colleges. It’s an important topic — especially as concerns sharpen over slowing rates of social mobility in the United States. A college education continues to be the most reliable ladder that allows poor children to climb to the middle class and higher. Economists say a child born in the bottom quintile of the income distribution has just a 5 percent chance of moving up to the top quintile without college. The chance of making it to the top nearly quadruples if the child gets a college degree. But currently, the proportion of children from low-income families who obtain a college degree is low — around 9 percent — compared with 50 percent of children from affluent families. More...