Practical Internships in Southwestern Conn.

Fairfield University and the nearby city of Bridgeport, Conn., announced a new internship program that promises to tie the Jesuit university and gritty industrial city closer together.Already, nearly 100 of the Fairfield's faculty and staff and more than 1,100 of the university's alumni live in Bridgeport, and the Webster Bank Arena in the city is home court for Fairfield Stags basketball. The int...

DC Shuttle: Bill Would Require In-State Tuition for all Vets at Public Campuses Regardless of Residency

In-state tuition for veterans. On Tuesday, House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Jeff Miller (R-FL) and Ranking Member Michael Michaud (D-ME) introduced the GI Bill Tuition Fairness Act (H.R. 357) in the House of Representatives. The bill would require public universities to charge in-state tuition to veterans in order to qualify to receive veterans' education benefits. The law would go int...

Harvard Expert to Follow Christ at Smith, Banker to Head McCormack

Comings and Goings ... Child development expert Kathleen McCartney, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, was named the 11th president of Smith College, effective July 1, 2013. McCartney represents Harvard on the founding board of edX, the online education consortium created by Harvard and MIT. She'll succeed Carol T. Christ, who has been Smith president since 2002. The Unive...

Honoring MLK on New England Campuses

As part of its celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Eastern Connecticut State University will present a 12-part series looking back on the life of the man considered the greatest civil rights leader of the past century. Had he lived, King would have turned 84 this year. The series, which contains a greeting by Eastern President Elsa M. Núñez, was researched, w...

IHEP, NEBHE Reports Start Making Sense of Student Aid

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) in January issued a white paper, Making Sense of the System: Financial Aid for the 21st-Century Student, recommending more than a dozen federal policies to help students access postscecondary education and ultimately earn valuable degrees and credentials. Based on surveys and focus groups with leaders in business, higher educ...

Kiplinger’s Take on Public “Values” in NE

Kiplinger announced its 2013 list of the top 100 values in public colleges and universities. Five New England public colleges and universities are ranked among the top 100, with slight variations in rankings for in-state and out-of-state students. The University of Connecticut is ranked 25th for in-state students and 22nd for out-of-state students; University of Massachusetts Amherst, 62nd and 4...

LEEF Season in Maine and NH: Announcing Workshops at Bates and Dartmouth

The Leaders in Energy Efficiency Financing (LEEF) Network will gather sustainability leaders from colleges, healthcare institutions, municipalities and other nonprofits to explore "Investing in Energy Efficiency" during workshops in January at Bates College in Maine and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The LEEF Network, a regionally based program of the Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI), b...

DC Shuttle: Bill Aims to Stop For-Profits’ Bounties to Recruit Vets; GAO Explores 529s

Veterans' education. On Wednesday, the Senate passed the Improving Transparency of Education Opportunities for Veterans Act (H.R. 4057), as amended, by unanimous consent. The current bill comes from negotiations in both the House and the Senate committees related to veterans' affairs and veterans' education. The legislation would attempt to reduce waste of GI Bill funds by requiring the Veterans A...

A Scholarly Look at Higher Ed Prices

The American Scholar is one of the most thoughtfully edited magazines published today. The journal has been published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. Its title (which seems too hoity-toity for me to allow fellow train riders to see) was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s speech, “The American Scholar,” delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard nearly 100 year earlier. ...

DC Shuttle: NIH Issues Plans for Biomed Research

Last Friday, the National Institute of Health (NIH) approved a broad implementation plan for a set of initiatives intended to strengthen and shape the biomedical research workforce based on the recommendations of the NIH Biomedical Workforce Working Group. The plan calls for institutions to create individual development plans for all research trainees and to track outcomes for all research trainee...