Entries in On Campus by Kirk Carapezza and Mallory Noe-Payne

Summer melt. That's what college counselors call it when high school students make a tuition deposit at the end of their senior year, but don't start their freshman year in college. It's a major problem in the U.S., especially for low-income, first generation college students. Now, a Boston-based nonprofit is taking a tech-savvy approach to combat summer melt.

Employers in America are having a crisis in confidence when it comes to college graduates and their preparation for the workplace. The latest Gallup poll shows only 11 percent of U.S. business leaders ‘strongly agree’ college graduates have the skills they need to succeed. That’s why our On Campus team traveled to Germany, where a different approach to higher education is yielding strong results.

It's a stressful time of year for students who are preparing to make their college decisions. But the next step - figuring out how much it's all going to cost - can be even more stressful. Now there's a new effort to make that complicated process a little simpler.

If you’ve been on a college campus lately, you might have noticed a few amenities - fancy welcome centers, golf courses, and saunas. Of course, these things cost money and therefore tuition and fees. But are they responsible for rising tuition?

The federal government is poised to forgive college loans for thousands of students who attended Corinthian Colleges, the now defunct for-profit giant under investigation for misleading students about graduation and employment rates. Many of these students not only have loans, but are also unable to find jobs.

Even though it's been weeks since a major snowstorm, New England’s college campuses still lay buried under a deep layer of snow and it doesn't look like it will disappear before Opening Day at Fenway. The weather, though, hasn’t deterred prospective students from taking campus tours in Boston.

In the final part of our series on German higher education, WGBH's On Campus reports on Germany’s tracking system, where kids are divided up by ability at a young age. The system seems to work well in Germany, but would face strong opposition in the United States.

Despite the high cost of college in this country, most Americans will choose to go to school here. But there is a growing number of students who are getting their degrees in other countries, like Germany, where their taxpayers pick up the tab. WGBH's On Campus team recently traveled to Cologne to explore this higher ed defection, and the implications for the United States.

In Germany, Europe's leading economy, taxpayers fully subsidize the cost of college. Our search to understand how German universities keep costs down and quality up begins in the Rhineland.

The Education Department Friday released its much-anticipated plan to rate colleges. Starting next school year, the Department will rate more than 5,000 colleges and universities as high-, low- or middle-performing schools.