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By Mary Beth Marklein. Average sticker prices at the nation's four-year public universities rose 2.9% this year, the smallest annual increase in more than three decades, suggesting that the steeper increases over the past few years "did not signal a new era of accelerating prices," says a report out Wednesday. Still, the smaller rates of increase this year — across public, private non-profit and for-profit colleges — are tempered by recent declines in federal grant aid, it says. More...

Although critics disparage the college rankings as flawed and elitist, a growing number of students seem to be relying on them to help with their college picks. That was the conclusion of a new survey by Art & Science Group. The higher-education consulting firm polled high school students about college rankings three times -- in 1995, 2002 and last winter -- and found that the importance of rankings in students' college decisions has climbed considerably since the first two surveys. More...

A Beaverton lawmaker has suggested a plan to give some Oregon high school graduates free tuition at a community college for two years.

The Statesman Journal newspaper reported that the tuition break would allow students to enter a two-year degree program or take college credits that would transfer to a university. More...

The economic prosperity of any nation is inextricably tied to the education of its citizens. In the United States, obtaining a higher-education credential is a pursuit that many now consider a civil right and an essential pathway toward achieving the American dream of upward social and economic mobility. The United States has fallen from being the world's leader in the percentage of citizens holding higher-education credentials to 16th among the leading 34 industrialized economies in the world. Last year, the U.S. was ranked 12th. In math scores, U.S. students rank 25th compared to their global counterparts. This comes at a time when studies show that in less than six years, 67 percent of all new jobs providing livable wages will require at minimum a post-secondary credential. More...

By Alex Stambaugh. There’s a common belief that the more expensive a university, the better quality of the education. But some school leaders, such as Purdue University President and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, are trying to debunk the idea by changing the way schools are rated.
Daniels, who joined Chuck Todd for Tuesday’s The Daily Rundown, said that despite skyrocketing education costs, “people are waking up to the fact, in higher ed at least, that higher sticker prices don’t tell you anything about the quality.”
He proposed instead that school ratings should look at the real quality of an education using scientific data gathered qualitatively and quantitatively from knowledge tests and the success of its graduates in the work place.
“The next frontier is to start measuring the growth of students while at Purdue in a scientifically credible way so we can say to the world and say to future students, ‘Come here, you’ll learn a lot,’” said the university president. More...

By Karen Farkas. Doodling and passing notes in class have been replaced by texting, sending e-mails and checking Facebook.
More than 90 percent of college students admitted they use digital devices for non-class activities during class, according to a recent survey, reported in Inside Higher Ed.
Less than 8 percent said that they never do so. The study is based on a survey of 777 students at six colleges and universities. Barney McCoy, associate professor of broadcasting at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, conducted the study, published in the October issue of the The Journal of Media Education.
Most of the students were undergraduates, and graduate students were less likely to use their devices for non-class purposes. Undergraduates reported using their devices for non-class purposes 11 times a day, on average, compared to four times a day for graduate students. More...

By Stephen J. Lee. UND’s leaders have been cramming for three years for a three-day test coming up this week. Five members of the Chicago-based North Central Association’s Higher Learning Commission will spend Monday through Wednesday on campus, administering the anything-but-pop quiz.
It’s a test pretty much nobody flunks and UND is marking its 100th such year being accredited by the association, an independent corporation which measures more than 1,000 institutions of higher learning in 19 states. But it’s a mandatory, if minimum, requirement said UND President Robert Kelley, not least because federal financial aid flows only to accredited schools. Such a comprehensive review comes every 10 years, and Kelley said UND officials have been working for several years to make sure the colors will be flying and will be green and white. More...

By Sara Israelsen-Hartley. Heila Cruz sits at her desk on the back row, hands gently resting on her green and blue binder as she waits for class to start. It's a recent Thursday night and the Taylorsville high school LDS seminary building is slowing filling with 163 students — all of them over the age of 30 — who are meeting for the first time tonight as part of Pathway, an online college-preparation program through BYU-Idaho that is reaching students of all ages and all demographics, all across the world. More...