higher ed

The idea of a gap year, postponing the start of college, has become a bit more common in the U.S. and a handful of colleges and universities are now actually encouraging accepted students to take a year break before starting classes. While the experience is still out of reach for most students, more schools are expected to support and even help pay for gap years.

Wellesley College finds itself caught up in Chinese politics after an economics professor at Peking University lost his job and Wellesley professors tried to help him get it back. 

First there was Target. Then high-end retailer Neiman Marcus. Now, security experts say future cyber attacks are likely to come through college and university networks — networks that tend to have big, broad Internet pipes, with less protection.

Not too long ago, American students were required to study civics and geography – courses intended to make them better citizens of the world. In recent years, books like The World Is Flat pointed out the need for global awareness.

As part of WGBH’s ongoing look at the role of higher education in this country and the world, we will be asking big thinkers to assess the state of America’s global competitiveness. WGBH’s Kirk Carapezza recently traveled to New York City to talk with Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The number of nonacademic administrative and professional employees at U.S. colleges and universities has more than doubled in the last 25 years, vastly outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty, according to an analysis of federal figures.

Massachusetts is one of 45 states — and the District of Columbia — that have adopted new education standards that set out what students from kindergarten through 12th grade should know in English and math. The standards, supporters say, will lift schools like Boston's Jeremiah Burke High School out of their academic slumps, increasing the number of students who are ready for college and careers.

New federal standards known as Common Core have been promoted as a way to lift America's languishing achievement scores. But before the introduction of Common Core, Massachusetts was already recognized as the highest-achieving state in the country. Today, as schools phase in the new standards, some of the loudest critics of the new standards are based in Massachusetts.

What is the status of America’s promise of an equal shot at education for all – for descendants of slaves as well as first-generation immigrants? Where does the pressure to get into and through college come from?

A new provocative documentary film explores these and other questions by following two middle-class African-American boys from the time they enter kindergarten in one of the country’s most elite private schools through high school graduation.

Liberal arts majors earn more than professional majors during that time in their lives when they make the most money per year. That’s according to a new report out Wednesday from the Association of American Colleges and Universities whose findings, educators say, fly in the face of today’s popular perception. 

At the White House on Thursday, college presidents pledged to increase access for low-income minority students and to help them graduate without crushing debt. And initiatives adopted by some New England schools are gaining attention.