Today's News

Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general, is seeking information from three universities about high-ranking financial-aid administrators who owned stock in a lending company that was included on the universities' lists of preferred student-loan providers.

The Office of Management and Budget has unveiled a database containing details on 13,496 earmarks included in the fiscal year 2005 appropriations bills. The database will serve as a base line against which the budget office can judge Congress's progress in reducing the number and cost of earmarks.

Articles

The Education Department wants to know: Are colleges benefiting improperly from the lenders they put on their preferred lists?
Nicole Porter, student-services specialist at Gateway Community College, says that most of the gifts colleges receive from lenders are trivial, such as the pens and post-its on her desk. (Photograph by Don Stevenson)

A Purdue scientist's claim to have achieved a new kind of fusion has sparked a furious reaction among his critics.

• CONGRESSIONAL ATTENTION: A U.S. House of Representatives committee has questioned the credibility of the university's investigation into possible research misconduct.

In Brief

TIES THAT BIND: Iowa Republicans say two new Democratic members of the state's Board of Regents are too close to the governor.

POLICY CHANGE: An official from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges will take over the Government Performance Project at the Pew Center on the States.

LEGACIES DO WORSE: Children of alumni who are given preference in college admissions underperform to a greater degree than minority students admitted under affirmative action, a report says.

BUDGET PRIORITY ANNOUNCED: Leading Democrats in the U.S. Senate have said they will push for a $300 increase in the maximum Pell Grant.

GRADUATION SPEAKER: President Bush will give commencement speeches at three colleges this spring.

LAWSUIT OVER HOSPITAL PLAN: A union has challenged the legality and potential effect of a plan to privatize SUNY Upstate Medical University's teaching hospital.

PLAN TO REBUILD: The Louisiana Legislature approved a plan to provide millions for a new teaching hospital at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, in New Orleans.

IN BRIEF: A roundup of higher-education news in the states.

LANGUAGE CZAR: The U.S. Education Department needs an official "with clout" in charge of improving Americans' grasp of foreign languages, says the National Research Council.