Students, Colleges | featured news

Colleges increasingly are banning smoking or tobacco products altogether from campus. The University of Oklahoma, the University of Oregon and Montana State University are among those which have enacted campuswide bans this year. The University of California system announced in January that by 2014 all of its campuses would ban use or sale of cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

A senator's examination of for-profit colleges paints them as dropout factories, where billions of dollars are squandered on financial aid and the schools' emphasis is more on attracting students than educating them.

Facing weekend deadlines for action, congressional leaders have agreed to deals overhauling the nation's transportation programs without a Republican provision forcing approval of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, and avoiding a doubling of interest rates for new student loans, congressional officials said Wednesday....

Congressional bargainers seem near an agreement that would avert a July 1 doubling of interest rates on federal loans to 7.4 million college students and end an election-year battle between President Barack Obama and Congress, Senate aides from both parties said Friday....

In the political campaigns still taking shape, President Barack Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and lawmakers of both parties say they want to protect college students from a sharp increase in interest rates on federally subsidized loans....

President Obama kicked off a week of appeals to young voters on Saturday by urging Congress to maintain the interest rate on student loans, keeping the costs of college stable.

The former nursing student who the authorities say fatally shot seven people and wounded three others at a religious college had lined his victims up before shooting them, Oakland’s police chief said Tuesday. “This was a calculated, cold-blooded execution in the classroom,” Howard Jordan, the police chief, told CNN.

The federal student loan program seemed like a great idea back in 1965: Borrow to go to college now; pay it back later when you have a job.

We thought we’d dodged a bullet. When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that student loan debt had passed the $1 trillion mark my first thought was one of relief since our last child is graduating from college next month. Even though his tuition has almost doubled during his tenure as a student at the University of California, we were fortunate that he will be able to graduate without student loan debt. That may change in the future if he decides to complete a graduate degree, but my husband and I wiped our brows with a collective sigh of relief.

Dharun Ravi was an immature college kid who invaded his roommate's privacy. In New Jersey, that makes him a convicted felon who faces up to 10 years in prison. Locking up Ravi ultimately won't do much to stop bullying or fight homophobia.