The University of Wisconsin System is moving to suspend a rule that requires sick employees to turn in doctors' notes as campuses prepare to handle the swine flu. The Board of Regents is expected to vote Friday to suspend the doctor's note requirement for employees with the flu or flu-like symptoms this academic year...

If researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point receive a multimillion dollar infrastructure grant, it could propel their work in paper recycling and deinking forward and be a boon to the paper industry. Members of the paper science and engineering staff applied for the National Science Foundation grant in late August. Their proposal is for about $5 million, which would help build new equipment and renovate the current equipment. They should hear back from the NSF in January...

The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater cannot sue a former dean accused of misusing school money because it waited too long and failed to prove any purchases were for his personal benefit, a judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller last week threw out the university's countersuit against former College of Letters and Sciences Dean Howard Ross. The judge ordered a trial on Ross' claims that he was singled out by a racist auditor and later demoted because he is black...

University of Wisconsin officials are offering support and guidance to community members after a student’s suicide Tuesday evening in the Lakeshore dormitories...

Various campus organizations provided UW-Madison students with food and information about conserving energy, protecting natural resources and appropriately disposing waste Tuesday at a “Smart Cookout” on Library Mall. Nathan Pinney, a UW-Madison Ph.D. candidate and director of UW Energy Hub, who co-sponsored the event, said the goal of the cookout was to unite student organizations on environmental, energy and conservation issues at UW-Madison...

The teacher education program at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside will continue for now, after receiving conditional approval from the state. The program had been examined by the Department of Public Instruction earlier this year after an anonymous complaint to the state alleged that some students had been licensed to teach without completing the required work. In a letter to new Chancellor Deborah Ford, State Superintendent Tony Evers said the university had met the department's request for evidence and for a plan to bring its program back into compliance with state rules. Full approval may come when the plan is completed, he wrote...

Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are both seeing their first cases of the H1N1 virus.College kids have barely moved in and already the flu is a problem. There are several cases at UW-Madison and dozens more have reported having symptoms...

If you were going to come up with a list of organizations whose failures had done the most damage to the American economy in recent years, you’d probably have to start with the Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies that brought us the financial crisis. From there, you might move on to Wall Street’s fellow bailout recipients in Detroit, the once-Big Three. But I would suggest that the list should also include a less obvious nominee: public universities...

In a prosperous year, the University of Maryland, College Park might receive 300 appeals from students who believe they're not receiving enough financial aid. In the first eight months of 2009, the university has received 1,500 appeals for more money.
This staggering increase is only one example of the recession-fueled pleas that are deluging financial aid offices at colleges around the state...

The trickiest part of teaching with electronic textbooks is getting everyone on the same page—or to the same part of the digital text. That's what a professor in the honors college at Arizona State University found last month at the start of an experimental class with Amazon Kindle e-book readers...

...Today, we need a new "Compact for American Places" that would engage all higher-education institutions in the continued pursuit of Justin Morrill's grand idea. A number of writers over recent years have called for a renewed commitment of land-grant universities to their communities—or for a new "covenant," in the words of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities' Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. They have cited issues like the breakdown between the country's rural and urban domains, the plight of family farms, and the disruption of regional economies in a flat world...

The cost of goods, services, pay, and benefits in higher education rose 2.3 percent for the year ending June 30—a figure that is nearly a percentage point higher than the Consumer Price Index for the same period but less than half the 5-percent rate that colleges experienced in the 2008-9 academic year. The Commonfund Institute, which calculates the annual Higher Education Price Index figure and released it on Wednesday, said administrative salaries and fringe-benefit costs showed the biggest increases...

Ten years ago this month, after the summer of American Pie and The Blair Witch Project, roughly 94,000 students arrived as first-time freshmen at 21 American flagship public universities. Four years later, 49 percent of those students had graduated from the institution where they began. Two years after that, an additional 28 percent had done so, for a total six-year graduation rate of 77 percent. At less-selective public universities, the numbers are even worse...All of those rates will need to improve—a lot—if the nation is going to come remotely close to the Obama administration's goal of restoring America's position as the country with the highest proportion of college graduates in the world...