Higher Education News

Mr. Hayward, who holds a Ph.D. in American studies, describes the three-year post as an "experiment." His goal is to help students become better thinkers.

Though most said they were not familiar with the new pontiff, one said, "This is a person who appears to understand the role of the university rather well."

Faculty members are voting this week on John E. Sexton's leadership, but they're divided over whether the president will change his ways.

With attention focused on legislation for 2014, House and Senate lawmakers are still trying to craft spending measures for the 2013 fiscal year, already nearly half over.

The honors, from the Education Writers Association and the Society for News Design, include three first-place prizes.

Photo by djwtwo on Flickr.

March 14 (3/14), is only a few days away, which means it’s time to celebrate pi, everybody’s favorite irrational mathematical number (the 14 is also Albert Einstein’s birthday). Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and it’s an irrational number, so it can’t be expressed as a simple fraction of two integers. 3.14 is just the beginning of pi, which goes on for infinity.

This STEM-themed holiday is an ideal time to plan some Pi-filled activities for your classroom or for children at home. Here are our five great tips to celebrate math on Pi Day.

1. Prove Pi exists by measuring the circumference and diameter of circular objects around the classroom or house and solving for the equation: circumference = (pi) x (diameter).
2. See how many digits of the number Pi you can recite. A Japanese man in 2005 memorized pi to 83,431 digits.
3. Write a Pi-ku, a math version of the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic haiku. A Pi-ku of course, follows a 3-1-4 syllabic pattern.

For example:
Math is fun
When
Mixed with some pie

4. Bake a Pi-themed pie. Whether savory or sweet, eating deliciously circular pies is a highlight of every Pi day.
5. Impress your friends by learning the song, “Mathematical Pi,” set to the tune of “American Pie”; or sing Pi Day carols.

Margaret Yau is a student at the University of California, San Diego, and an intern in ED’s Office of Communications and Outreach

The sequester will have severe consequences for some student-aid programs, university research, and college-prep efforts, but the details still aren't clear.

For students at one community college, life hinges on small moments, and breaking points come at every turn.

Scholars of children's issues at the scandal-shaken university plan to hire a dozen faculty members who can do the type of research that has been lacking.

The retired law professor has reinvented himself as a go-to resource for colleges in trouble over sports.

International diversity in the world of research papers has grown significantly and will continue to do so, a study shows.

As jobs get harder to find, Ph.D.'s are spending big bucks for new services designed to help them, but seeing little return on their investments.

McGill's choice is Suzanne Fortier, president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Read about that and other job-related news.

The 2.1-percent rise was slightly higher than last year's, while the gap between increases at public and private institutions narrowed.

In March 2012, ED’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) announced the release of an innovative FAFSA Completion Tool to help guidance professionals, school administrators and practitioners both track and subsequently increase FAFSA completions at high schools across the country. Prior to publishing this data, the only source of data on FAFSA completions that high schools had were from self-reported student surveys, which were highly unreliable.

Through the FAFSA Completion Tool, educators have real-time access to reliable data to track FAFSA submission and completion and gauge their progress in increasing FAFSA completion. Key studies have indicated that FAFSA completion correlates strongly with college enrollment, particularly among low-income populations.

Last month, FSA updated and enhanced the FAFSA Completion Tool by revealing FAFSA submission and completion totals for the current year, as well as FAFSA submission and completion totals for the same time last year. With this addition, the FAFSA Completion Tool—updated biweekly during the peak application period—now provides every high school in the country whose students have completed five or more FAFSAs with information about how many applications were submitted and completed for the 2013–14 application year as well as comparison data from the 2012–13 FAFSA application year.

Last year’s data provides a baseline by which school districts can gauge their efforts, set goals to improve on last year’s performance, and subsequently increase FAFSA completion within their school district.

Last year, the Tool provided FAFSA submission and completion data for the senior classes at over 24,000 high schools in all 50 states, Washington, DC, and all U.S. territories. More than 30,000 visitors accessed the data throughout the spring of 2012 to inform their local FAFSA completion strategies and overall college access initiatives. There are indications the Tool has contributed to raising FAFSA awareness across the country with more than 500,000 seniors having submitted a 2013–14 FAFSA through the end of January this year. This represents a nine percent increase compared to early submissions during January 2012.

For more information on the Tool and to search updated FAFSA Completion Data by High School for the senior class of 2013, visit StudentAid.gov/fafsa-hs-data.

Todd May
Federal Student Aid

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