Higher Education Quick Takes

In today’s Academic Minute, Claudia Buchmann of Ohio State University explains the growing gender gap that exists on college campuses. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.

St. Mary's College of Maryland, a public liberal arts college, is likely to face a budget shortfall of about $3.5 million after commitments from incoming freshmen came in short of what the college expected, The Washington Post reported. Aiming for a class of about 470, the university has received commitments from only about 360 students so far. Administrators said the college is trying to attract more applicants and enroll students off the waitlist, as well as figure out how to cope with the lost tuition revenue. Administrators said they are not yet sure why the college saw a decrease in commitments after receiving a 14 percent increase in applications, but are looking into it.

WASHINGTON -- Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is using an unusual tactic to promote a bill she proposed on student loan interest rates: asking for "citizen co-sponsors" for the legislation. The bill, one of many proposals put forward in recent weeks to stop the interest rates for subsidized student loans from doubling as planned on July 1, would reduce student loan interest rates to 0.75 percent for a year -- the rate at which the Federal Reserve lends to major banks.

President Obama and House Republicans want a market-based rate for student loan interest; some Senate Democrats would prefer to extend the current subsidized loan interest rate of 3.4 percent while they work to reauthorize the Higher Education Act.

So Warren's measure isn't likely to pass. But as the first stand-alone legislation from the closely watched freshman senator, it has generated considerable interest online. "If Congress doesn't act by July 1, our students will pay nine times more than big banks," Warren said in an e-mailed appeal to supporters sent via a liberal political action committee, Democracy for America. "Our students are the engine of our economic future, and they deserve at least the same deal as Wall Street."

A prominent Harvard University historian, Niall Ferguson, has been apologizing for statements he made that John Maynard Keynes didn't care about future generations because he was gay and did not have children. The chair of the Committee on LGBT History, a national group, on Tuesday issued a statement encouraging Ferguson to read more gay history, and calling on Harvard to use the Ferguson controversy to play more of a role in gay history. "Harvard should show leadership here by, at a minimum, hosting a major conference about LGBT history and encouraging Ferguson to attend. It is also high time that Harvard makes a new tenure-track hire in LGBT history. The incident has underscored the value of teaching and researching LGBT histories. This confronts ignorance about LGBT people, lives, and communities, and in the process, builds a more accurate historical record overall," said the statement, published at the History News Network.

In an e-mail message to Inside Higher Ed, David Armitage, the chair of history at Harvard, said: "We do not currently have a tenure-track position specifically focused on gay and lesbian history but we did request a post in the modern history of gender and sexuality (jointly with Harvard's program in women and gender studies) long before the recent debate arose. We already have great strength in this field, with Afsaneh Najmabadi, Nancy Cott, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in our department, but we very much hope to extend our reach in this area, alongside many other pressing priorities for our department."