Multiyear study of community-college practices asks: What helps students graduate?

Community colleges are brimming with programs and policies designed to help students complete their studies. Practices like requiring orientation and establishing early-academic-warning systems have sprouted since 2009, when President Obama announced that he wanted to make the United States the best-educated country in the world by 2020. Now the questions for the nation's community colleges are: Which of the practices work and why? And perhaps most important, how do colleges expand them to cover all students?

South Korea: Lower-than-expected tuition fee reductions anger students

Only half of South Korea’s universities have met an end of January deadline to notify the authorities of their tuition fee levels for 2012, with the majority falling far short of the 15% fee reductions asked for by the government. The lower-than-expected fee reductions have prompted fears of renewed student protests.

No money down!

With public university administrators continually arguing for tuition increases to counter state appropriations cuts, it seems far-fetched that their budget problems could be solved by eliminating student tuition and fees altogether. But that’s the idea put forth by a group of students from the University of California at Riverside, who in January proposed a new funding model for the University of California system that seeks to solve two of the system’s biggest problems: unpredictable and large decreases in state appropriations, and the steady increase in tuition costs.

Ontario students protest tuition rebate – the same day many get rebate cheques

Call it ironic timing: Hundreds of students rallied at Queen’s Park Wednesday to slam the government’s new $430 million tuition rebate for not being open to all – the same day the first 70,000 rebate cheques landed in students’ bank accounts.

Sway: WikiLeaks, universities and 'soft power'

The diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks articulate the importance of the academy in the 'great game' of international politics.