Obama to seek changes in Pell Grants
President Barack Obama’s budget plan would cut $100 billion from Pell Grants and other higher education programs over a decade through belt-tightening and use the savings to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550, an administration official said.
Open courseware on every campus by 2016?
Just as colleges and universities have adopted online classes over the past decade, students can expect free open courseware of some kind at every campus in the U.S. in the next five years, a University of California-Irvine official said during a recent forum on open courseware.
Charges against Muslim students prompt debate over free speech
When administrators at the University of California, Irvine, decided to suspend the Muslim Student Union for a quarter over the disruption of a speech last year by the Israeli ambassador to the United States, most thought the latest controversy on campus had ended, reports the New York Times.
Nokia, Microsoft in pact to rival Apple, Google
Technology titans Nokia and Microsoft are combining forces to make smart phones that might challenge rivals like Apple and Google and revive their own fortunes in a market they have struggled to keep up with, the Associated Press reports.
Community colleges are uneasy as ax hangs over state aid for health benefits
The Legislature’s initial state budget proposals calling for the closing of four community colleges caught many lawmakers off guard. But what largely escaped their attention–the slashing of health benefits across all such institutions–is what concerns community college officials the most, the New York Times.
Ala. university recovering a year after shootings
It’s been a year since a Harvard-educated professor opened fire during a faculty meeting in a conference room at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, killing three colleagues and wounding three others. Ever since, those staff meetings have been held elsewhere.
Special Report: In Saudi Arabia, a clamor for education
Saudi teenager Abdulrahman Saeed lives in one of the richest countries in the world, but his prospects are poor, he blames his education, and it’s not a situation that looks like changing soon, Reuters reports.
Feds reverse course on open education mandate
The departments of Education and Labor have heeded calls from online education experts to change a mandate in a $2 billion grant program that opened last month, meaning grant applicants will have much broader choices in how to share their web-based learning tools freely among educators.
After a false dawn, anxiety for illegal immigrant students
In December that bill, known as the Dream Act, passed the House, then failed in the Senate, reports the New York Times.
Obama to push for new ed-tech agency
President Obama will request fiscal 2012 funding for an educational technology agency within the U.S. Department of Education (ED) that would bring resources and funding to schools and colleges, while some ed-tech advocates warn that the government’s support might not reach teachers and professors.