Some colleges are encouraging undergraduate research as a means of exciting students and improving the quality of undergraduate education, while increasing numbers see it as a way of reversing the projected shortage of faculty, especially in minority groups. (MSE)

The House Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education heard testimony about both the positive aspects of intercollegiate sports and overcommercialization and corruption. The information gave legislators little sense of the federal government's role in overseeing college sports. (MSE)

Public colleges have become aggressive and sophisticated fund-raisers and feel it is time the corporations notice that public institutions educate a large share of the corporate workforce and conduct research vital to business. At the same time, private colleges have had a decrease in corporate donations. (MSE)

Among the problems faced by unorthodox colleges are prevention of stagnation and attracting faculty members who share the institution's vision of undergraduate education. Representatives of 16 colleges at a "Meeting of Innovative Colleges" suggest that innovative programs have often taken on institutional lives of their own, making further change…

Courts are reinterpreting and legislatures are revising sunshine laws that require public access to the records of administrator search committees and board meetings. Colleges are obtaining new exemptions to the existing legislation, against much criticism. (MSE)

When a group of concerned citizens placed the sole bid on the auctioned campus of a closing college, the school rejected it as inadequate despite uncertainty about further prospective buyers. (MSE)

The confusion among weary Chinese students protesting government policies is mirrored in the top levels of government, where an intense power struggle is occurring. (MSE)

Researchers and college administrators say fraud by researchers is rare and that continuing Congressional hearings and widespread publicity have seriously damaged the political influence of academic research. They fear increased regulation of federally supported work, loss of support for federal financing, and Congressional attempts to validate…

The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education is a consortium of two- and four-year colleges that coordinates development of course designs used by 37 public and private institutions. Programs emphasize collaborative teaching, thematically grouped courses, and writing across the curriculum and have been well received.…

North Seattle Community College has developed a program on "The Self Across Cultures in Psychology and Literature," constituting a student's full semester's workload. They attend two lectures, two seminars, and two writing workshops a week and read Western and non-Western texts, exploring themes by writing about them. (MSE)

Dollar totals of funding for Pell Grants and veterans' education benefits and grants awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services, National Science Foundation, National Air and Space Administration, and National Endowment for the Humanities for research are listed by state or territory. (MSE)

While some universities have had success establishing venture funds to market research with commercial potential, Cornell University has formed an alumni panel to evaluate new university technologies for those with promise for new products, spin-off companies, and profits. Members with connections in venture capital will arrange financing and…

As costs rise and companies discontinue coverage of college students under parents' policies, students are choosing to forego insurance rather than pay for it themselves, so suggest speakers at the American College Health Association's annual meeting. Colleges offering group-insurance policies to students are also having problems renewing them.…

After suppression of protesters, Chinese officials demand that student leaders turn themselves in or face punishment. American colleges and scholarly organizations condemn massacre. Chinese students in the U.S. and abroad decry the slaughter and worry about going home. (MLW)

Pornography has become an issue of wide-spread concern outside academe and is the focus of disputes over censorship, feminism, and sex. The feminist claim that pornography is not a First Amendment issue, but a civil rights one, is discussed. (MLW)