Author: Reporter

Setting off another high-stakes dispute between the Trump administration and Harvard University, the U.S. Department of Commerce threatened this summer to take control of the Ivy League institution’s patents arising from federal funding.  At stake are patents that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber that took aim at the university’s patent portfolio, accusing Harvard of failing to “live up to its obligations to the American taxpayer.” The letter said the Commerce Department would begin “an immediate comprehensive review” of whether Harvard’s federally funded research complies with…

Most clicked story of the week The U.S. Department of Education is warning students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid if they’ve expressed interest in colleges with relatively poor student earnings outcomes. The disclosure, based on College Scorecard data, is intended to “empower prospective students to make data-driven decisions before they are saddled with debt,” according to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Number of the week: 3.6% The increase in operating costs colleges saw in fiscal 2025, according to the Commonfund Institute’s Higher Education Price Index. Inflation in the higher ed sector is “elevated above what…

Gabby Ramirez, The Daily Cougar As the popularity of generative artificial intelligence grew at the start of the 2020s, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini offered information and…

It doesn’t take much to trigger parent anxiety around school transportation. In an era when consumers can track packages, food deliveries and rideshare drivers in real time, parents expect the same visibility for their child’s school bus—and grow anxious when that’s not possible. When districts can’t provide that visibility, transportation coordinators often face a flood of parent calls inquiring about delayed buses, confused pickup or drop-off locations, safety scares and reports of concerning behavior on the bus. Each inquiry requires minutes of investigation—time that quickly adds up and pulls staff from core responsibilities while parents wait for answers that should…

Alexandria, VA, December 9, 2025 — iSpring Solutions, a leading provider of innovative learning management solutions, has been awarded the Gold medal in the Best Advance in Learning Management Measurement/Business Impact Tools category at the 2025 Brandon Hall Group Learning and Development Technology Awards. This recognition highlights iSpring LMS’s ability to directly link employee training to measurable business outcomes. Unlike traditional LMS platforms that primarily focus on content delivery, iSpring LMS enables companies to manage the entire learning process end-to-end while delivering clear value to employees, managers, and business leaders. The platform combines personalized learning experiences, gamification, offline mobile access,…

by Debbie Hogan, The Hechinger Report December 15, 2025 Student-athletes across the U.S. are now participating in National Signing Day, when some top high school recruits will officially commit to play for an institution in exchange for six- or seven-figure signing bonuses.   That’s on top of name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts student-athletes can sign that allow them to monetize their personal brands. There’s a lot of money on the table with signing bonuses, NIL contracts and the recent changes in revenue-sharing. But it should not just be about the money.   Although the money can be life-changing, it raises the…

by Kelly Field, The Hechinger Report December 15, 2025 MACCLESFIELD, England — Ishan Goshawk, an apprentice with global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, donned a lab coat and safety glasses and entered a room filled with robots.  His first stop was a machine programmed to fill dozens of tiny vials with a compound he needed for an experiment. Everything seemed in order, so Goshawk went to check on a second robot, a gleaming apparatus that, he noted, cost half a million pounds (about $620,000). When the first robot finished filling the vials, Goshawk would bring them here, to test how efficiently drug compounds…

One of the unexpected gifts of the pandemic was the clarity it brought. We need to care for ourselves in more substantial and intentional ways if we want to show up fully in the world. For me, that realization sometimes came uncomfortably, as I reflected on just how often I was drained and exhausted.  While I supported students through a first-year seminar course called Becoming More Resilient, designed to help students navigate the challenges of the pandemic with a little more ease, I realized I hadn’t yet found a similar framework that resonated with me.  After moving through some challenging seasons of blurred boundaries and little time…

December 14, 2025 Community development group named backbone agency to implement ‘Housing in Paterson One Square Mile’ plan Posted in: University Paterson One Square Mile (OSM), a comprehensive, cross-sector collective impact initiative guided by Montclair State University, today announced a significant expansion of its work by selecting LISC New Jersey (LISC-NJ) as the lead organization for its strategic housing component. The Paterson OSM initiative encompasses multiple integrated projects focused on equitable outcomes in housing, health, and economic opportunity, and has designated LISC-NJ to guide the implementation of its community-led strategic action plan, “Housing in Paterson One Square Mile: A Foundation…

Jared Gould, MTC In 1968, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich released The Population Bomb, confidently predicting that “hundreds of millions of people will starve to death” in the 1970s…