Category: Higher Education/System

The college-ratings plan that the Education Department is releasing today can best be described as incremental.

After nearly a year and a half of public debate over its proposed college ratings, the Obama administration on Friday provided the first glimpse into how it will structure such a system, including the criteria it will use to judge colleges.

In a report due out on Friday, the Obama administration will offer its first public glimpse of a planned system for rating how well colleges perform, saying it plans to group schools into just three broad categories — good, bad and somewhere between.

Marquette University has suspended with pay and barred from campus the tenured professor who criticized a graduate student instructor in a personal blog, pending an investigation into his conduct.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents named business school professor Mark Mone as the UW-Milwaukee’s next chancellor on Monday.

The University of Virginia is renegotiating its contract with fraternities, which were suspended after a Rolling Stone article described a frat house gang rape. Even though that article has been called into question, U.Va. is sticking with its vow to make changes — and that includes President Teresa Sullivan’s plan to crack down on excessive and underage drinking at frat houses.

CNN — Women not enrolled in college faced more cases of rape and sexual assault than those on campus for the period of 1995-2013, a new Department of Justice report shows.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents weighed possibilities for a new waste, fraud and abuse hotline presented by the Audit Committee in a meeting this week.

Noted: The university began exploring the possibility in earnest in recent months after the Legislature approved a pathway for the creation of a police force for Marquette similar to those maintained at public schools including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and UW-Madison.

The past two years have brought unprecedented public focus on the issue of sexual assault on campuses. The issue is hardly new, but a combination of factors — more women speaking out about being attacked, media attention, heightened scrutiny from the White House — has changed the discussion. The reaction to “A Rape on Campus,” an article published in Rolling Stone last month, reflected this changed environment.

Sweeping cost-saving measures are on the horizon for the University of Wisconsin System and its campuses that could affect everything from how student fees and capital projects are approved to how many credits are required to graduate.

University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross is launching a broad plan to find savings, streamline academic requirements and re-examine the need for elective courses.

A dispute is brewing between University of Wisconsin System campuses that have comprehensive engineering programs and campuses in northwestern Wisconsin that want to add engineering programs due to demand from businesses in that part of the state.

WASHINGTON — The second White House college summit held Thursday was bigger and focused on a broader range of institutions than the inaugural January event.

The University of Wisconsin System is considering the creation of a hotline to report waste, fraud or abuse by employees or schools.

Some college leaders have dismissed the White House’s Summit on College Opportunity—the second installment of which takes place on Thursday—as a dog-and-pony show focused more on drawing attention than on stoking action. But all of the more than 100 institutions that scored invitations to the first summit, held in January, had to pledge to do something to expand college access for needy students.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is once again gathering hundreds of college presidents here today for a second White House-run summit that will promote new commitments to help low-income students.

Despite decades of research, hundreds of campus task forces, and millions invested in bold experiments, college drinking remains as much of a problem as ever.

The UW System announced Nov. 24 it will embark on an innovation-fostering initiative aimed at increasing student retention and graduation rates.

A foreign University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student suspected of rape has managed to flee the country and flee from justice, even though a Milwaukee County judge took his passport. And it’s not the first time it’s happened.

The University of Toledo found a student responsible for his role in the stabbing death of his roommate, but he wasn’t expelled from the school or charged criminally.

UW-Eau Claire is the only University of Wisconsin System school to have a Rhodes winner other than the flagship UW-Madison, which has had 31 winners.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia heads into an extraordinary meeting of its governing board on Tuesday struggling to find its footing, after a reported frat house gang rape rocked the university’s vaunted reputation and genteel self-image, and unleashed complaints that it had mishandled and concealed sexual assaults for years.

For the record, public events at UW System facilities can’t be closed to the public.

For decades, the school has welcomed a large contingent from around the world — at least compared to its peers. They mix with American-born students who hail mostly from surrounding rural communities.

Noted: Students in the Master Class — who hail from Marquette, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, UW-Madison, the Milwaukee School of Engineering, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Mount Mary University — arent the only ones to get in on the ground floor, or even lower, of the project.

On a crisp fall evening, dozens of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students rallied in the streets for Take Back the Night, the annual march to protest sexual and domestic violence.

Harvard University was hit with a federal lawsuit this week, alleging that its admissions policies discriminate based on race and ethnicity, particularly against Asian-Americans. Filed in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts by the Students for Fair Admissions, the lawsuit compares Harvard’s treatment of Asian-American applicants today to the way it considered Jewish applicants years ago. And it suggests ways Harvard could go about creating racial and ethnic balance in its student population, including eliminating what the lawsuit terms legacy preferences.

If you go to HarvardNotFair.org, you’ll find yourself on a page that says this: Were You Denied Admission to Harvard? It may be because you’re the wrong race.

The memory of her autistic son — who thrived at Edgewood College in a program for students with developmental disabilities — has led a Middleton woman to make a $500,000 gift for a new residence hall at the school.

The finalists are Gail Hackett, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; Mark Mone, UW-Milwaukee’s interim chancellor; and William “Mike” Sherman, senior vice president and provost and chief operating officer at the University of Akron.

SAN FRANCISCO — Over the protests of hundreds of angry and chanting students, a panel of the University of California Board of Regents gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a plan to raise tuition 27.6 percent over five years, turning aside a last-ditch effort by Gov. Jerry Brown to block it.

University of Wisconsin-Superior officials announced on Wednesday morning that the school will enter negotiations with a private company that would take over custodial and grounds services for the school.

The University of Wisconsin System has announced the three finalists vying to become UW-Milwaukees next chancellor.

Two lawsuits filed Monday ask federal courts to block Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from considering race in admissions as the suit charges they are.