Harvard

The U.S. Department of Education is dismissing a claim that Harvard shows bias against Asian-American applicants, because a similar lawsuit has already been filed in federal court.

Three years ago, Harvard University and MIT embarked on a unique experiment when they launched a nonprofit called edX. The start-up promised a free online education, with university-level classes for anyone living anywhere across the globe.

The world's wealthiest university is getting a lot wealthier. Harvard University has received its largest gift ever: a $400 million dollar donation from hedge fund manager John Paulson to expand its campus across the Charles River. 

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust is offering to meet with student activists and environmentalists if they end their blockade of her office and stop disrupting university business.

For the past five days, the student-led group Divest Harvard has been blocking Massachusetts Hall, Harvard’s oldest building, demanding the university sell off fossil fuel stocks in its $36 billion endowment. The goal, organizers say, is to address climate change.

Having universities divest from fossil fuels is a feel-good measure that would do nothing to address the problem of global climate change. Instead, we should be focusing on efforts to push for strong government action.

While only 22 U.S. colleges and universities have actually agreed to sell their shares in oil and coal companies, more than 50 have committed themselves to efficiency projects on campus through a special financing method called green revolving funds, including Harvard University.

Students woke up Monday morning on the ground outside of Harvard University's oldest building. They had spent the night there, protesting the university's choice to invest part of its endowment in fossil-fuel companies.

A new MIT-Harvard study released Wednesday finds nearly 40 percent of learners who take open online courses are teachers. That finding has researchers wondering whether they can better design online courses once predicted to upend students' experience to meet teachers' needs.

Last year, WGBH's On Campus reported that despite low completion rates researchers at MIT and Harvard insist that online courses still have value:

The U.S. Department of Education has found Harvard Law School mishandled cases of sexual assault. The Department says the Law School did not appropriately respond to at least two student complaints. In one of those cases, the Law School took over a year to make its final decision.

Harvard is significantly boosting its computer science faculty at a time when increased demand for the major continues to reshape higher education.