The Education Department's Office of Inspector General has released a report that evaluates the department's capacity for handling increased volume in the federal direct-loan program. The inspector general found that the department appeared to have access to sufficient resources to assist colleges in making a transition to direct lending from the federal bank-based loan program, which President Obama and Congressional Democrats propose to eliminate. The report says that the department will have to put in place effective systems for monitoring contractors, on...

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools cannot consistently ensure the quality of academic programs it reviews without clearly defining what constitutes a credit hour, according to a report issued on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education's inspector general. The accrediting organization, which assesses colleges in 11 states, responded that the variety of experiential, online, and distance courses that institutions now offer makes it impossible to define a single, common standard for credit hours. "The traditionally accepted definitions of semester credit hours and quarter credit hours based almost exclusively on seat time can no longer be applied to half of the credits now being awarded by our higher-education institutions," the association wrote in answer to the report.

The number of researchers, on the rise worldwide, skyrocketed in developing countries, jumping by 56 percent from 2002 to 2005, according to a new report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Over all, the ranks of researchers in the world rose from 5.8 million to 7.1 million in the five-year span, while their numbers in developing countries grew from 1.8 million to 2.7 million. The findings, which include both academic and private-sector scientists, reflect efforts by many developing countries, particularly in Asia, to use innovation and education to spur economic growth.

Trustees and administrators of the South Orange County Community College District, in California, are facing a federal lawsuit filed by students, professors, and recent graduates that accuses them of frequently leading prayers at ceremonial events on two campuses in the district, in violation of the First Amendment and court rulings against school prayer, according to the Orange County Register. The suit alleges that one campus, Saddleback College, routinely opened events with prayers and showed a faculty-training video, called God Bless the U.S.A., that included religious imagery and compared American soldiers to Jesus Christ. A professor at Irvine Valley College, another campus in the district, is also a plaintiff. A lawyer for the district said that offering an opening prayer...

Members of Towson University's marching band will celebrate Thanksgiving Day this year in a special way -- as the only college band scheduled to perform in Macy's parade in New York City. According to today's Baltimore Sun, the band will strut its stuff before an audience predicted to approach 50 million, rain or shine, on a day that will start with a 2 a.m. wake-up for a 4 a.m. rehearsal. The band, which was picked two years ago to perform, helped pay its way to the Big Apple ($757 a head) with help from parents, the university's development office, and the Towson Macy's. It's a moment in the limelight that, like the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff band's show in President Obama's inaugural parade,...

President Obama signed an executive order today to create a Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and named two university leaders to guide it: Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, as chair, and James W. Wagner, president of Emory University, as vice chair. The panel will advise the president on bioethical issues related to national polices on science and technology.

Connecticut prosecutors have charged three lacrosse players at Sacred Heart University with "conspiracy to commit first-degree sexual assault," but a lawyer for one of the accused athletes says the accusations are a gross exaggeration, the Associated Press reported. The lawyer said all three men have been suspended from the team and university. The university declined to comment specifically on the case but said its policy calls for automatic suspensions when such accusations are made.

Canada needs to develop national standards to measure the quality of its higher-education system, according to the Canadian Council on Learning. In a report released today, the nonprofit organization points out that Canadians appreciate their public system but find it almost impossible to judge the quality of various institutions, partly because of jurisdictional differences. Education is a provincial responsibility in Canada, and colleges and universities can have different purposes, customs, and operations, depending on the province. The report says Canada would be likely to attract more foreign students if it had a set of national standards that indicated quality assurance....

The Ph.D. Project, a program designed to raise the number of minority business-school professors, recently helped its 1,000th student complete a doctoral degree in business. Shalei Simms, who earned a Ph.D. in management from Rutgers University at Newark, is an assistant professor of management at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The Ph.D. Project was created in 1994, when there were 294 minority business professors with doctorates in the United States. Along with its 1,000 alumni, the program also works with 400 doctoral students in universities across the nation.

The University of California at Berkeley announced on Monday that it would review police actions during a large protest on Friday, responding to accusations that the police used unnecessary force in trying to control a crowd that had gathered outside a main academic building, Wheeler Hall, to assail a 32-percent tuition increase approved last week by the Board of Regents amid widespread protests that culminated in arrests. "Any tactics to exercise crowd control on campus must provide a safe platform for...