After months of waiting for action on a bill that would revamp the federal student-loan system, Congress appears to be moving at an accelerated pace, with possible budget cuts now being identified to reflect savings that are lower than originally expected.

President Obama announced on Friday a three-day postponement of his planned trip to Asia next week, as lawmakers make plans to finish up...

The University of California must pay a total of $38-million to thousands of former students who say the university illegally raised their fees after it had promised not to do so, a judge ruled on Wednesday.

The judge, John E. Munter of the Superior Court of San Francisco, ruled that the university had breached an implied contract when it raised fees for about 2,900 professional-school students who...

The Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota voted unanimously on Friday to approve a new policy that toughens the system's standards governing financial conflicts of interest in scientific research.

The regents acted after high-profile cases raised concerns about such conflicts. One such case was that of David W. Polly Jr., the university's chief of spinal surgery, who lobbied Congress in 2006 for $460,000 to study military combat injuries without revealing that he was paid...

The organization founded by Steven Spielberg that has collected and archived video testimonies from nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors and liberators is preparing to auction off commercial rights to the patented technology it developed for indexing and searching vast libraries of video.

The Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, which...

Three women who say they experienced sexual and racial harassment on their jobs at Alabama State University have filed a federal lawsuit against the institution. They have named John F. Knight Jr., a top university administrator and state legislator, among the defendants.

The complaints date back to 2008, when all three women worked in the Office of the Special Assistant to the President. Mr. Knight was special assistant to the president and executive director for...

Ever since economists started trying to keep tabs on poverty, they've done so by measuring income....

Updated: 11:50 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

Congressional Democrats have begun private discussions on cutting down their $87-billion student-loan bill, largely accepting the political reality forced by new estimates of the legislation's cost and savings.

The talks began in recent days, after a new analysis last week by the Congressional Budget Office showed that President Obama's proposal to end...

In a case that sheds light on how bitter personal feuds can drive the actions of faculty members, a jury has ruled that an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University brought false charges of gender discrimination against two colleagues he had viewed as obstacles to his gaining tenure.

The verdict, issued late last week, came in a lawsuit filed by the two other faculty members in an Iowa district court. The jury held that the associate professor, Daniel A. Krier, had...

Days after Virginia's attorney general ignited a controversy by telling public colleges and universities they had no authority to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, the state's governor issued an executive directive on Wednesday advising all state employees that employment discrimination is prohibited under state and federal law.

In a letter last week, the attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a Republican, advised the state's public universities and colleges that...

Eight Chronicle reporters and editors won awards on Wednesday from the Education Writers Association for articles published in 2009. The prizes recognized their work on two large projects, one on the life of adjunct professors and the other on the rise of Asian higher education at a time of retrenchment in the United States.

The latter project, "Asia Rising/America Falling," received first prize for a...

The Los Angeles Community College District established on Wednesday an inspector general's office and a whistle-blower program for its $5.7-billion construction-bond program, one of the nation's largest college expansion projects.

Even as college construction has slowed, the 140,000-student district has been able to build new facilities at a breakneck pace, supported by a series of...

Bill Tomlinson, author of Greening Through IT, discusses with the Tech Therapists the ways...

Australia is moving to mend damage done to its higher-education sector by tightening regulations that have enabled some low-quality vocational colleges to prey upon international students looking for an easy path to immigration.

A government-commissioned review released Tuesday urges more support for international students, coupled with stronger mechanisms...

The National Science Foundation is re-evaluating its approach to helping minority college students, proposing a consolidation of programs that currently assist specific racial and ethnic groups.

The new direction was set out by the Obama administration in its budget recommendation for the 2011 fiscal year, which calls for the outright elimination of three NSF programs: the Historically Black Colleges and...

More than a year after he took office promising to put a welcoming new face on U.S. foreign policy, President Obama has left allies in higher education increasingly puzzled over one glaring omission.

Cuba.

Mr. Obama took several steps last year toward improving U.S. relations with Cuba, allowing relatives of Cubans to travel, communicate, and send money back to their home country. But he stopped short of ending a policy imposed by President George W. Bush in 2004 that...

College men participate in campus activities at disproportionately low rates, but deliberate efforts to recruit them can help, according to the findings of a two-year study of 14 institutions that was presented here on Tuesday at the annual conference of Naspa—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

"We didn't want to find out how to force men to volunteer. We wanted to find out how to get them to willingly volunteer," said Gar E. Kellom, who led the study and...

Nebraska's community colleges reached an agreement on Tuesday to resolve a long-simmering dispute over governance and the allocation of state funds, a state senator who helped mediate the dispute announced.

The dispute reached a high point of acrimony last year after one of the colleges was kicked out of the association that manages the institutions, and it in turn sued the other five.

The college that filed the lawsuit, Metropolitan Community College, in Omaha, contended that...

More than half of young adults, including college students, are worried about their current economic situation, and many do not approve of President Obama's handling of the economy, according to the results of a recent survey.

A report on the findings, "Survey of Young Americans' Attitudes Toward Politics and Public Service: 17th Edition" says that students at four-year colleges diverged from young adults over all on a range of opinions. The students were more likely to say that it's...

Since 2007, U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has used Congressional hearings and other means to raise questions about endowment spending by colleges. While he's not now pressing for legislation for a mandatory payout, in an interview last week with The Chronicle, Senator Grassley made clear that even in a recession, he still expects universities to stick with an ethic of responsible spending for the benefit of students. Following are edited excerpts from that...

Besides providing access to higher education, colleges must do more to help more students finish, Hilary Pennington, director of special initiatives for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said at the American Council on Education annual meeting here on Monday.

Colleges should be accountable if their students fail to graduate, Ms. Pennington said, speaking at a plenary session. "Once we cash a student's tuition check, we must accept responsibility for their success."...

The Obama administration promised on Monday expanded enforcement of civil rights in education, saying that gender and racial discrimination still hinders far too many students from grade school through college.

In an initiative tied to the 45th anniversary of the civil-rights marches in Selma, Ala., Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited that city and announced plans to open "compliance review" investigations at more than 30 school districts nationwide and six...

Nearly 5,000 campus officials here this week at the annual conference of Naspa—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education are hashing out not only vital issues in their field but also the future of their professional association.

At a forum on Monday afternoon, the group's president, J. Michael Segawa, fielded financial and organizational questions about the possible consolidation of Naspa with ACPA—College Student Educators International. The two major...

The Obama administration wants research data to drive more of its higher-education policy...

More than a third of all college faculty members took a pay cut during 2009-10, and overall faculty pay showed no salary increase, according to a report released this week. The results are in contrast to those in the recent past, when professors' pay increased nearly 4 percent per year.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, which conducts the annual survey, says only faculty members at private doctoral institutions saw a salary increase of any...

Jonathan D. Spence, an expert on Chinese history and culture and a professor emeritus at Yale University, will deliver the 2010 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Monday.

The humanities endowment calls the annual lecture, which carries a $10,000 honorarium, "the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the...

Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., planned to announce on Monday that it was no longer considering applicants' financial need in admissions decisions. The announcement comes in a year that has so far brought mixed news on colleges' affordability efforts. Two prominent colleges have...