president obama

With just over a week left in office, the Obama administration continues to crackdown on the for-profit college industry. The U.S. Education Department says hundreds of programs have failed to meet its gainful employment rule.

When you factor in the size of a school’s endowment and its ability to offer financial aid, it turns out, incoming full-time freshmen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are paying more than their counterparts at Harvard. That’s according to the latest federal figures released by the Department of Education.

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.

On Thursday at the White House, more than one hundred college presidents will meet with President Obama to discuss ways they can enroll more low-income minority students.  The plan is to help those students graduate on time, without massive debt loads. 

Being named one of the 25 best colleges by U.S. News & World Report gets an institution 6 to 10 percent more applications than it would otherwise receive, the research, published in the journal of the American Educational Research Association, shows. Making the top 20 for academic quality in the Princeton Review pushes up the number of applications by 2.3 percent.

It's been two weeks since President Obama proposed his sweeping plan to make college more affordable. Now, low-income students and their advocates are urging Congress to support it.

The president wants to create a college rating system that ties federal financial aid to colleges' performance outcomes, including their ability to increase access for nontraditional students.

Reactions to Obama's plan to rank colleges have been mixed.

President Obama is preparing to hit the road on a two-day college bus tour that will take him across upstate New York and Pennsylvania to discuss the high cost of higher education.

In a letter emailed to supporters on Wednesday, the president promised "real reforms that would bring lasting change" to the way colleges and universities run their business.