Highlights From September 28, 2007

The recommendations of the commission assembled by the education secretary are apparently encouraging colleges to document their performance.
Margaret Spellings, the education secretary, says the discussion spurred by her commission's report is long overdue. "Are we done? Heck no," she says. "We haven't even started." (Photograph by Dennis Brack, Black Star)

A study asks what students learn, for better or worse, in the process of applying to college.

Borrowing from how they analyze business, two economists at the College of William and Mary have devised a new method of comparing colleges' graduation rates.

Looking to increase enrollments, European universities are challenging America's dominance in the foreign-student market.

At Wheaton College in Massachusetts, a semester-length orientation makes new faculty members feel welcome indeed.

New software for digital books updates a hallowed tradition of scholarship, the margin note, and lets readers comment on the comments.

The University of California at Irvine hired, rejected, and rehired a dean for its new law school in short order, raising questions about outside political interference.

The NCAA expects to process more cases of rules infractions than ever this year, a result of increasing competitive pressure.

Although the number of scholars from minority groups has increased markedly in the past decade, some experts expected the numbers would be even higher by now.

To infer anything about a person's character or sensibility on the basis of physical racial characteristics is legally suspect. Yet that is what "diversity hiring" practices require us to do, writes Jennifer Dalton.