College costs/prices

5 foundations back new group to propel state efforts to get more people into and out of college with credentials.

A year after politicians and pundits started talking about three-year degrees, more colleges are starting programs or considering them.

If the late Pat Tillman’s legacy is that of selflessness, then it seems fitting that the foundation created in the professional football star-turned-soldier’s name would ask the same of the veterans it serves.

Of his 16 years as president at Berea College, Larry Shinn has found the last year to be the most contentious, challenging, and potentially transformative. While grappling with budget deficits, Shinn has fended off student critics who say he makes too much money and taken shots from faculty members for a controversial plan that would dismantle existing departments.

To top it all off, Shinn’s former provost is calling on his old boss to resign.

“We went through a very messy process,” Shinn says.

It's been a politically popular move for lawmakers to bail out prepaid college tuition plans that are now going broke, but doing so raises some potentially troubling questions of equity. Indeed, these bailouts could have the net impact of forgiving investment losses for middle- and upper-income families at the expense of low-income people, higher education researchers say.

No one likes rising textbook prices, but the bills may be even more painful to pay when it looks like a professor is cashing in on students. That's the sentiment at George Mason University, where students are grumbling about a professor who requires students to buy a book she helped to write, highlighting an ongoing debate about faculty profiting off their pupils.

WASHINGTON – As the U.S. Department of Education prepares to finish revising regulations intended to weed out abuses of the federal financial aid system, for-profit higher education’s major advocacy group has chosen to push back.

WASHINGTON -- A long recession and a wavering job market have brought for-profit higher education institutions into the public eye as never before. Big advertising budgets have given them name recognition. Dramatic enrollment growth (fueled by increasing amounts of federal financial aid) and assurances to students that a degree or certificate is the path to a comfortable job in a specific field have brought them scrutiny.

DENVER -- State support for higher education tends to be cyclical -- a fact that's been comforting to many who study or teach at public colleges and universities that have been facing budget cuts these past two years.

At a time when tenure track jobs are drying up and faculty pay is mostly stagnant, some fear the latest threat to the professoriate will actually be realized years from now. As budgets tighten in states across the country, a number of legislatures are re-evaluating the popular pension plans that have been a key benefit for faculty.