"Any love-hate relationship must have its share of pain, so the academic world, in its obsession with college rankings, is suitably dismayed by news that an elite college, Claremont McKenna, fudged its numbers in an apparent bid to climb the charts," the New York Times reports. "Dismayed, but not quite surprised."

"The president spoke directly to colleges in his State of the Union address: 'If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down,'" Policy Analyst Julie Margetta Morgan writes for the Center for American Progress. "Using federal aid to incentivize savings at colleges is not a new concept - Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) proposed doing so back in 2003."

The Comprehensive Transition Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities Expenditure Report is the tool for reporting the use of the Federal Pell Grant, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, and Federal Work Study funds for eligible students with intellectual disabilities enrolled in an approved program. Interested persons are invited to submit comments on or before April 3, 2012.

"With public university administrators continually arguing for tuition increases to counter state appropriations cuts, it seems far-fetched that their budget problems could be solved by eliminating student tuition and fees altogether," Inside Higher Ed reports. "But that’s the idea put forth by a group of students from the University of California at Riverside, who in January proposed a new funding model for the University of California system that seeks to solve two of the system’s biggest problems: unpredictable and large decreases in state appropriations, and the steady increase in tuition costs."

Feb. 2, 2012 - The Columbian reports on NASFAA President Justin Draeger's public affairs lecture series at Washington State University Vancouver. "American higher ed is being privatized, Draeger told The Columbian -- not in terms of public versus private schools, but in terms of who’s paying for college."

"Senate Republicans pushed back against President Obama's college-affordability agenda at an education-committee hearing Thursday, expressing doubts about the administration's plans to reward colleges and states that hold down tuition and maintain their higher-education budgets," the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "'I don't believe the government's role is to pick winners and losers,' said Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, explaining that he was uncomfortable 'shifting the determination of affordability to Washington.'"

"It’s not just graduates who are staggering under the weight of their educational loans," Business Week reports. "Parents, too, are borrowing record amounts to put their kids through college, jeopardizing their retirements."

"Vermont’s two U.S. Senators, Patrick Leahy (D) and Bernie Sanders (I), Wednesday joined in introducing legislation to stop student loan interest rates from doubling this summer," Loan Safe reports. "In 2007 Congress passed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which reduced the fixed-interest rate on Stafford Loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent, helping millions of American students better afford college education."

"Score two for online consumer advocates — or, as they might be called, Occupy Online," the New York Times reports. "On Thursday, three months after Bank of America backed down from imposing a $5 monthly debit card fee in response to an online Change.org petition that collected 300,000 signers, Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest private student-loan provider, changed its fee policy in response to an online petition."

"With public university administrators continually arguing for tuition increases to counter state appropriations cuts, it seems far-fetched that their budget problems could be solved by eliminating student tuition and fees altogether," USA Today reports. "But that's the idea put forth by a group of students from the University of California at Riverside, who in January proposed a new funding model for the University of California system that seeks to solve two of the system's biggest problems: unpredictable and large decreases in state appropriations, and the steady increase in tuition costs."