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The article discusses the perception that as tuition is being introduced, or raised, at publicly supported university systems around the world, more people are embracing the concept that college rankings can help consumers get the best value. According to James P. Merisotic, president of the research group the Institute for Higher Education Policy, national college ranking systems have been established in at least 20 countries around the world, and more are expected in the future. Merisotic explains that most of these college ranking systems are compiled by newspapers or periodicals. The article reports that many of these college ranking systems use varying combinations of measures, including an institution's reputations, research output, resources, and student's test scores.

The article discusses actions by regional college accrediting bodies in the United States. The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools' Higher Learning Commission withdrew accreditation from Lewis College of Business in Detroit, a historically black two-year institution because of failure to provide information on its financial state and administrative procedures. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges' Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities placed Northern Marianas College on probation because of unstable leadership.

The article reports that the U.S. Academic Competitiveness Council has found that federal aid to education does not improve science and mathematics education. The group was led by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and was created by the U.S. Congress in 2005. The report found no correlation between improvement in student performance and the spending. The agencies receiving funding submitted reports but, upon evaluation, the committee decided that the activities had little scientific value. The report called for more assessment of student competencies and for more cooperation between the agencies.

The article reports that Ithaca College has suspended its use of the School for International Training, an independent provider of study-abroad programs. The move came after an Ithaca student complained about her treatment when she was studying in Kingston, Jamaica, in a program organized by the private nonprofit group. The School for International Training is one of four outside providers of study-abroad programs to Ithaca. College officials said that the suspension was temporary, and that they hoped to resume using the group after receiving adequate guarantees of the safety of future students.

The article reports that the United States Education Department has reached an impasse in negotiations with accreditors and college officials. The groups have reached a stalemate over two areas of controversy: government proposals to require accreditors to set standards for what students should learn and to make it harder for colleges to reject credits that transfer students earn at institutions without regional accreditation. Agreements have only been reached on two minor issues out of twelve areas of accreditation regulations the government wants to change.

The article reports that the University of Nebraska at Lincoln has sued the United States government to try to force it to respond to a petition the institution filed as part of the process of hiring a Bolivian historian. In June 2005, the university submitted a visa petition on behalf of the historian, Waskar Ari Chachaki, whom Nebraska had hired for as an assistant professor of history and ethnic studies, to begin that fall. The petition simply seeks to establish that Mr. Ari has the professional qualifications to apply for a visa for the job.

The article reports that accrediting institutions have successfully pushed back a proposal by the United States Education Department that called for the groups to set minimum standards of "student achievement" at the colleges they oversee. Accrediting groups have complained that the department has tried to impose broad requirements on them when federal recognition of the groups comes up for renewal. The changes came after the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education suggested the current accreditation system be dismantled.

The article reports that the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is trying to promote a strong accreditation system to improve teacher training and to ward off possible government moves to impose new public-school teaching standards. The system will involve one accreditor for all teacher-training colleges, a measure that caused criticism from those who claimed it favored the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education over a younger rival group, the Teacher Education Accreditation Council, which was created in 1997.

The article reports that the Indian government delayed approving the projects of dozens of Fulbright scholars for months and has rejected some projects without explanation, a practice that observers believe is an attempt to force the scholars to change their research topics. The research subjects that were rejected without explanation by the Indian government include studies of language ideologies in the schools of Mumbai, India's financial capital, to which millions of Indians from other states migrate, democratization in Kerala, and Muslim women's perceptions of the role of women in society.

The article reports that federal Judge J. Owen Forrester of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia made a ruling in a case between Hiwasee College a two-year Methodist institution in Madisonville, Tennessee, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which withdrew accreditation from the school due to lack of adequate financial resources. While Forrester rejected most of Hiwassee's arguments, he stated that a member of the accreditor's Appeals Committee that heard the college's unsuccessful challenge to its loss of accreditation had a conflict of interest and gave them ten days to respond.

The article discusses the document "Realizing the Rice-Chertoff Vision: A National-Interest-Based Visa Policy for the United States," which states that the United States government has failed to follow through on a joint announcement issued in January 2006, by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. In that announcement, called "The Rice-Chertoff Joint Vision: Secure Borders and Open Doors in the Information Age," the two secretaries promised, among other things, smarter screening procedures that would make the process of entering the United States faster and smoother for most visitors. The "Realizing the Rice-Chertoff Vision" is an attempt by foreign scholars, students and others to improve visa-approval procedures.

The article reports on an honors course titled "Modern Political Satire," offered at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The professor, Rachael Paine Caufield, warns students that they should be prepared to be exposed to materials that may offend them. Caufield briefly references historical satirists, but focuses on modern events, stating that satire can be effective only if its consumers have an understanding of the social and political context it attacks. Readings include "Thank You for Smoking," by Christopher Buckley, and Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." Assignments include a group presentation, several writing projects, and a creative satire project.

The article reports on a controversy over an unauthorized sign on a student center at the City College of New York. Two small, registered student groups use the center, identified by the sign as the "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center." The "Daily News" tabloid protested the sign, calling its namesakes terrorists. Morales was arrested on bomb-making charges in 1978 and Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard, was convicted of killing a New Jersey State trooper in 1973. Supporters consider the two to be heroes in the struggle for the rights of the poor and racial minorities, but university officials called the sign inappropriate and removed it immediately.

The article reports on the decision by Randolph-Macon Woman's College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to become a co-educational institution and change its name to Randolph College. Male students will be admitted for the first time in the college's history beginning with the fall, 2007, semester. Though students and others have protested the decision, school officials say admitting men is the only way to stem dropping enrollments and save the college. One retired faculty member objected to the chosen name, as she did not have a high opinion of John Randolph, for whom the college was named.

The article looks at actions taken by regional accrediting bodies. Bishop State Community College, a historically black two-year public institution in Mobile, Alabama, was placed on probation for six months. The accreditor cited violation of several standards, including those covering the integrity of student records, governance and administration, and educational programs. Huntingdon College, a United Methodist institution in Montgomery, Alabama, was removed from two-year probation after it convinced the accreditor that it had overcome its financial problems.

The article looks at how a group represented specialized accreditors has written to the U.S. Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, to protest what it sees as arbitrary and inconsistent moves by the Education Department to change the rules governing them. The letter of complaint was sent by Cynthia A. Davenport, executive director of the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors. The letter says the Education Department endeavored to force accreditors to adopt more stringent standards in areas such as facilities and student learning.

The article reports on the closing of Iraq's National Library and Archive, the country's largest depository of books and documents. Saad Bashir Eskander, the library's director general, said he decided to close the institution on November 21, 2006 after several staff members were killed and the building had increasingly come under fire. Reportedly, the institution and its collections experienced significant damage shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but after it was repaired, it became an important place for students and scholars in Baghdad.

The article reports that the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, a U.S. Education Department committee that oversees accreditation organizations, has barred the American Academy for Liberal Education from accrediting new institutions or programs for at least half a year. The decision, which still must be approved by the department's assistant secretary for postsecondary education, followed a determination that the small accreditor had been negligent in not setting minimum standards for what students must learn at the colleges it accredits. The committee did not accept the report's recommendation to re-recognize the academy for five years but instead chose to show its disapproval by putting off a decision until the committee's next meeting, in June 2007.

The article discusses a history course at Indiana State University that allows students to undertake original historical research. In the fall of 2004, the class produced a history of the black community of the Wabash Valley, including Lost Creek, a neighborhood of Terre Haute, Indiana, the city that is home to the university. The course stresses oral histories, and students have also interviewed local men with connections to the Holocaust, with one student's project eventually turning into a permanent exhibit at Terre Haute's Holocaust museum.

The article reports that thirty-two American students were named as Rhodes scholars in November 2006. The award covers all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford, in England. Six of the students were from Harvard University, with four from Yale University and three from Stanford University. Winners are chosen on the basis of criteria set down in the will of Cecil Rhodes, the British-born South African businessman, diamond-mining magnate, and colonizer of Rhodesia (now the states of Zambia and Zimbabwe).

The article looks at how the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) plans to hire an independent investigator to examine whether campus police officers used excessive force when they shot a student with a Taser stun gun. The officers repeatedly used the weapon on Mostafa Tabatabainejad, an American citizen of Iranian descent, after he failed to show his identification in a library. According to UCLA's acting chancellor, Norman Abrams, a veteran Los Angeles police watchdog, Merrick Bobb, will lead an investigation. Tabatabainejad has retained a prominent civil-rights lawyer, who stated his client would sue the university police for using brutal excessive force and for false arrest. Tabatabainejad believed he was being singled out because of his Iranian descent.

The article looks at how in an escalation of violence against Iraqi higher education, gunmen attacked the offices of a government education agency in Baghdad and abducted scores of male employees and visitors. A number of the hostages were freed in police raids. In response to the attacks Iraq's minister of higher education, Abed Dhiyabh al-Ajili, denounced lawmakers for not protecting the country's academics. After the abductions Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki went to the University of Baghdad and promised better security and no disruptions to education. A former dean of the University of Baghdad blames the attacks on the sectarian militias, especially the Mahdi Army, a group controlled by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The article reports that Brenda Jo Brueggemann resigned from her post as the acting chair of the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University (Washington, D.C.) in November 2006, a day after U.S. Senator John McCain also stepped down from the board. Both indicated they were disappointed by the board's decision to rescind the appointment of a new president, Jane K. Fernandes, in the face of determined protests by students, professors, and alumni. A letter written by McCain to the departing president I. King Jordan is highlighted, and it is explained that the two other members of Congress who serve on the board have no plans to resign. The overall impact of the controversy over Fernandes' appointment as it relates to the board is explored, and a response from Brueggemann is provided.

The article discusses the one percent increase in foreign students at U.S. graduate schools, reversing a three year trend of declining representation, according to a Council of Graduate Schools survey. Student visas were restricted following the 2001 terrorist attacks; those restrictions have been revised to help students seeking admittance to American schools. The majority of foreign graduate students in the U.S. are from China or India and are found mostly in science and engineering programs.

The article reports that a student-led protest against the choice of a new president for Gallaudet University intensified into a shutdown of the campus during the week of October 15, 2006. Tensions have simmered since May 2006, when the Board of Trustees announced that it had chosen the provost, Jane K. Fernandes, to succeed the longtime president, I. King Jordan, as of January 2007. Students began occupying Hall Memorial Building, the campus's main classroom building in early October 2006 and have since taken over buildings across the campus.

This article focuses on British anthropologist Alison L. Spedding, who opposes the international pressure on Bolivia, particularly from the United States, to eradicate a part of the country's coca cultivation. Her book "Kawsachun Coca: The Peasant Coca-Growing Economy in the Yungas and the Chapare," demonstrates coca's economic importance as a cash crop for Bolivian families. Spedding has lived in Bolivia for two decades. Since 1992, she has been on the faculty of the sociology department of Bolivia's main public institution, University of San Andres. Her research offers academic support to the position of Bolivia's president, Evo Morales. Spedding served two and a half years of a ten year prison sentence for having marijuana in her apartment, which she said was for personal use.

This article reveals that just months after an American judge ordered the closure of an international network of campuses called the American University of Hawaii, a small liberal-arts college in the former Soviet republic of Georgia that was part of the network won full accreditation from an American organization. The college continued to operate without controversy until last month, when educators and officials active in rooting out diploma mills discovered the connection between the network and the college.

The article reports on the case of Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Swiss Muslim scholar and tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, who is awaiting the re-issue of a visa. His previous visa had been revoked. The government has decided not to appeal a court ruling ordering it to either issue a visa or provide good reasons for not doing so. The federal court issued the ruling in June when a lawsuit was brought on Ramadan's behalf by the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors, and the PEN American Center.

This article reports that dozens of Iranian professors and alumni en route to a university reunion in California had their visas revoked after they landed in the United States in August 2006, and then were sent back home, according to news reports and a participant who attended the weekend gathering. Graduates and faculty members of Sharif University of Technology, a prestigious institution in Iran, held the reunion in Santa Clara, California. Attending the event were about 600 participants, most of whom were U.S. residents.

The article discusses reforms to the system of college and university accreditation as contained in the draft report of the U.S. Commission on the Future of Higher Education. The commission stopped short of calling for changes to the regional system. In an earlier position paper, issued in March 2006, the commission was considering the idea of establishing a national accreditation body to replace the six regional accreditors that oversee 3,000 U.S. institutions of higher education. The article mentions that the commission report does call for more public disclosure of accreditors' findings.

This article reveals that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed that Canadians coming to the United States to study or work be required to be digitally fingerprinted and photographed. The requirement has already applied to all other foreign students since 2003, under the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program.

The article reports on several actions of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges in June 2006. The association removed the Salvation Army College for Officer Training at Crestmont, in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California from probation. Also, the association placed the following colleges on warning status: Feather River Community College, Quincy, California; Hawaii Tokai International College, Honolulu; Lassen Community College, Susanville, California.

The article reports that Augsburg College has been fined $9,000 for violating government regulations on educational travel to Cuba. The small Lutheran college, in Minneapolis, appears to be the first higher-education institution to be fined as the Bush administration has moved over the last two years to restrict contact between Americans and Cubans. Augsburg was fined for four short trips it organized between January 2000 and June 2004 for religious and humanitarian groups. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control determined after an investigation that the college should have had a license to act as a "travel-service provider."

The article focuses on the Community Justice Program launched at San Andrés University, the top law school in Bolivia, to promote traditional justice while ensuring that it respects human rights. The program is part of the university's efforts to help the country's Aymara and Quechua Indian majority reclaim their cultural identity. It also aims to ensure that community justice does not affect the Bolivian law or international concepts of human rights. Evo Morales, the first indigenous person elected president of the country, said that traditional trials play a significant role in the prevention of corruption.

The article focuses on the challenges being faced by the Public University of El Alto, the youngest public institution of higher education in Bolivia, in its efforts to provide higher education to the underserved indigenous population of high Andean plain. In June 2006, far-left students have succeeded in forcing the university's rector, vice rector and another senior administrator to resign. Several of the institution's classrooms are damaged and its central library has only 500 books. The government established the university in response to violent demonstrations by local residents demanding their own institution.

The article reports that the decision of the University of Tehran to retire several of its faculty members has raised political concerns. Academics critical of the government claim the dismissals appear to be part of creeping efforts by the authorities to assert their control over the officially autonomous universities. June 2006 marked the one-year anniversary of the surprise election of a hard-liner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran's president.

The article presents information on a detainment of Greek professor John Milios at an airport in New York City. The professor was detained on his arrival at the airport, questioned for several hours about his political views, and then put on a flight back to Athens, Greece. He was scheduled to present a paper at How Class Works, a three-day conference attended by some 200 scholars from various countries and organized by Stony Brook's Center for Study of Working Class Life.

The article reports that a group of scholars and students sued the U.S. Treasury Department last week in an effort to force the Bush administration to rescind rules changes made in 2004 that have choked off most academic travel to Cuba. Academic institutions wanting to send students or scholars to Cuba must obtain a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The article reports that the U.S. is losing its position as the destination of choice for international students and must take determined action to reverse the trend. The report calls on the government to develop a strategy to attract foreign students and scholars, coordinate the actions of its various departments, and remove barriers that keep foreign students out.

The article reports that an international group of educators, higher-education experts, and publishers that met in Berlin, Germany, last month has come up with a set of principles for ranking colleges and universities known as "Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions." These principles are a response to the explosion of college rankings in many countries since "U.S. News" and "World Report" published the first such listings in 1983. College rankings, or league tables, as they are known in Great Britain, were at first widely dismissed in academe, but they appear to be popular with students and their parents. The Berlin principles are meant to serve as voluntary guidelines for groups that produce rankings. In a statement accompanying the list of principles, the group wrote that the purpose of the guidelines was to ensure that "those producing rankings and league tables hold themselves accountable for quality in their own data collection, methodology, and dissemination."

The article reports that the U.S. has announced that it would open the Fulbright Foreign Student Program to Libyan students, following its decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with Libya. The United States Liaison Office in Tripoli said it was seeking applicants for scholarships for two years of graduate study at American institutions in a variety of subjects. About 10 scholarships are expected to be awarded for study starting in the fall of 2007. In the early 1980s, 3,000 Libyans, mostly graduate students, were attending American higher-education institutions. Libya slid into isolation after being accused by Western governments for supporting terrorist groups. The country began re-emerging on the global scene in 2003 after it took responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan American plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, and then, after negotiations with the U.S., renounced weapons of mass destruction.

The article reports that foreign graduate students studying science or engineering at an American college would have an easier time staying on to work in the U.S. after graduation under provisions in two competing immigration bills making their way through the Senate. The language in the bills is intended to remedy the shortage of highly trained job seekers in technical fields. It would create a new type of student visa, called an F4, for foreigners seeking to enter the country to enroll in graduate programs in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.

The article reports that the Latin American Studies Association has announced that it intends to move its meetings outside the United States, after the administration prevented all Cuban scholars from attending this year's meeting, which was held in March 2006 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Decrying visa denials as a violation of academic freedom, the group's executive council said in a written statement that it had made the potentially costly decision unanimously. The statement declared that as long as the United States government's visa policy with regard to Latin American persists no congress would be held inside the country.

The article informs that four colleges in the United States have received Learning Award. An umbrella group of accrediting organizations has announced the first winners of its new Award for Institutional Progress in Student Learning Outcomes. The four winning programs or institutions, chosen from among 32 applicants, are James Madison University's Center for Assessment and Research Studies, the Community College of Baltimore County's learning and student-development division, the department of psychology at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.

This article presents information about a new scholarship program sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia for the students who want to study in American institutions. This program has proved to be a bonanza for American universities facing an overall decline in foreign-student enrollments, even as Saudi students struggle to secure visas from U.S. consular officials in their home country. The new program will underwrite the full cost of education and living expenses for 10,000 students who will have started their studies at American institutions between last summer and the end of this year. The program was introduced in April 2005 to improve the relations between the two countries.

The United States has denied visas to all 55 Cuban scholars who planned to attend a conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) this month in Puerto Rico. According to the association, known as LASA, the Cubans were informed of the decision three weeks before the conference was scheduled to start, on March 15, 2006. The State Department's decision is consistent with the U.S. government actions that have tightened restrictions against academic and other contacts between Americans and Cubans. The blanket visa denials were made under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the United States to keep out Cuban-government employees.

The article states that an Indian scientist Goverdhan Mehta, a professor of organic chemistry, gave up plans for the visit the U.S. after trying unsuccessfully to obtain a visa. The incident caused outrage in India and U.S. officials scrambled to resolve the dispute before U.S. President George W. Bush's trip to India. However, the scientist's decision to drop his travel plans left the U.S. with a public-relations embarrassment. Mehta is a former director of the Indian Institute of Science, a leading center of research and graduate education in Bangalore. Mehta was scheduled to speak at an international scientific conference in the U.S. and to deliver lectures at the University of Florida, where he was a distinguished visiting professor in 2001.

The article reports that the federal government of the United States has withheld the visa of Bolivian Scholar Waskar T. Ari, who was hired by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln as an assistant professor of history and ethnic studies. The scholar has been unable to take up his post due to this reason. The scholar earned a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University in the year 2005. According to Barbara S. Weinstein, history professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, the situation is quite disturbing. While speaking on behalf of Ari, she further speculated that there must be a reason of ethnicity behind not issuing the visa.

The article reports that Jimmy R. Jenkins, has been appointed president of another historically black institution, Livingstone College, in Salisbury, North Carolina. He resigned as president of Edward Waters College following a plagiarism scandal last year. Jenkins, who was hired by Edward Waters in 1997, is credited with rebuilding the Jacksonville, Florida, college's enrollment and pulling it out of financial trouble. In a controversial decision, the executive committee of Edward Waters's Board of Trustees went on to award Jenkins an undisclosed severance payment.

This article reports on a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenging a provision of the USA Patriot Act that was used to deny a visa to at least one prominent foreign scholar, Tariq Ramadan. The provision allowed the federal government to bar him, the ACLU asserts, solely because the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush disapproved of his political views. In August 2004, Ramadan, an influential professor of Islamic studies and philosophy whose home is in Geneva, Switzerland, was informed that the U.S. had revoked his visa, a step that prevented him from taking a tenured teaching position at the University of Notre Dame. In its complaint, filed in the federal district court in Manhattan, the ACLU said that the government is using the provision broadly to deny entry to people whose political views it disfavors.