Posts Categorized: News

DC Shuttle: Obama Moves to Ease Student Loan Debt

On Wednesday, President Obama announced a new proposal to ease the burden of student loan debt. The "Know Before You Owe" initiative will allow students with multiple government-backed loans to consolidate them into one loan under the federal Direct Loan program with an interest rate reduction of 0.25% to 0.5%. The administration estimated that about 5.8 million students could be eligible for loan...

Economists to Hold Conference at UNH at Manchester on “Millennials, Baby Boomers and New England’s Future”

Demography is destiny, especially if you are in higher education. Consider: There are 200,000 fewer children in New England today, compared with 10 years ago—a 6% decline. The number  of married couples with children has declined by 10% since 2000—and they now account for fewer than one in five New England households. The number of single parents has grown by 9% since 2000, but t...

DC Shuttle: HELP Committee Advances Reforms to No Child Left Behind

On Thursday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 15-7 to advance legislation to replace the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal education law, with three Republicans joining Democrats in support of the bill. The legislation would replace NCLB's requirement that all students achieve proficiency in math and reading by 2014 with a mandate that states adopt "c...

DC Shuttle: Congress Still Trying to Fix No Child Left Behind

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) released his draft of legislation to update the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law on Tuesday. The legislation frees states from NCLB's strict requirement that all children be proficient in reading and math by 2014, a standard which the Department of Education has estimated that 80% of schools woul...

DC Shuttle: Congress Holds Hearing on Stemming Brain Drain of Foreign Grads

The House Education and Workforce Committee's Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training held a hearing Wednesday on the benefit of encouraging foreign graduates of U.S. universities to remain in the U.S. Employment visas are currently restricted to 140,000 annually, with no more than 7% going to any single country. Supporters discussed various possible strategies for preventing the b...

Higher Ed Prices Still Going Up: NEBHE Releases 2011 Report on Tuition and Mandatory Fees at Public Postsecondary Institutions

NEBHE released its 2011 report on tuition and mandatory fees at public postsecondary institutions available online. In an effort to inform the decision-making of state policymakers as well as public higher education leaders and trustees, this report provides details of public postsecondary tuition and mandatory fee rates for the past five years, collected during the summer of 2011.Questions about ...

Among Comings and Goings, Pennington Leaving Gates Foundation; New Ed Commish in Conn.

Hilary Pennington, who has led the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success efforts for the past five years,  emailed her colleagues that she was leaving the foundation. Before joining Gates, she was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and CEO of Jobs for the Future, which she co-founded. Inside Higher Ed reports that Tom Dawson, a senior policy offi...

Filmmaker Michael Moore to Speak at Bunker Hill CC

Academy Award-winning filmmaker  Michael Moore will speak at Bunker Hill Community College's Health & Wellness Center Gymnasium on Thursday, Sept. 15, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Moore's latest book, Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life, is scheduled to be released in mid-September. The event is free but seating is limited....

Salman Rushdie to Open ECSU Arts and Lecture Series

Award-winning author Salman Rushdie will open Eastern Connecticut State University’s 11th Annual Arts and Lecture Series on Tuesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m., in the university's student center. Rushdie is the author of 10 fictional novels inspired by his homeland of India, including The Satanic Verses, which led the spiritual leader of Iran to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie's execution.Other sp...

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: NEBHE Collaborates with New England HERC to Introduce Constantly Refreshing “Joblink” for Higher Ed

As part of its mission to tie higher education to the economic well-being of New England, NEBHE has partnered with the New England Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (NE HERC) to provide access to recruitment and employment resources to address faculty and staff hiring needs.The mission of the NE HERC, which was founded in 2006, is to advance the efforts of member institutions to recruit ...