A team of students from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie took first place at this year's Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The team beat out 11 other teams from around the country — including St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. — at Saturday's event held at Purdue University in Indiana. The UW-Stout team took home a trophy and a $1,000 cash prize, said team captain Andrew Behnke...

...The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a cover story in April 2008 headlined “Wisconsin’s flagship is raided for scholars,” which sparked a new round of grumbling that UW-Madison was unable to keep its best and brightest from highly regarded rivals. The Chronicle is a major news source in the academic world, and the story was viewed as a blow to the university, validating fears that the school was gaining a reputation as a minor league feeder system for higher education’s heavyweights. Conventional wisdom might suggest little has changed. Due to the record-breaking state budget hole that had to be filled last summer, UW-Madison is receiving $34.9 million less from the state this year than last, dropping the portion of its budget supported by state funds below 19 percent for the first time. In lieu of promised raises, mandated furloughs over the next two years will cut faculty salaries by 3 percent. Yet today, UW-Madison is on the offensive. And surprisingly, the school is winning more recruiting battles than it’s losing...

For the fourth consecutive year, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside has been named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. Given by the Washington, D.C.-based Corporation for National and Community Service, UW-Parkside was recognized for its commitment to volunteering, community-based learning and civic engagement...

The college radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside rocked so hard this month that federal agents shut it down. School officials and the student group that runs WIPZ 88.5 FM are trying to adjust their broadcast equipment so that they can get back on the air without running afoul of the Federal Communications Commission. The talk shows, educational programming and music on the station were silenced last week when those agents warned school officials that the station's broadcast signal was too strong for a station that does not have a license...

The University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan Foundation will host its Fundraising dinner and social and celebrate the campus' 45th anniversary on Wednesday, April 7, at the Highland House Restaurant in Sheboygan...

A Milwaukee nanotechnology start-up has completed a licensing agreement with the UWM Research Foundation. NanoAffix Science LLC plans to commercialize technologies for creating custom nanoparticles that were developed by Junhong Chen, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the school said Tuesday...

...But we think the Virent story is also a good example of how universities, in collaboration with business, can build better mousetraps. Virent was formed in 2002 to commercialize ideas developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison - one of dozens of companies that have spun out of the university in recent years...But the Virent story shows what's possible when lab smarts of the university are blended with the financial savvy of business. There is a lesson here for the Milwaukee region as it works to develop a more nimble and robust economy.

A University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student died March 24 following complications from pneumonia. Scott Meylink, 31, was a political science major and a graduate of Edgewood High School in Madison...

With the law now on the side of University of Wisconsin-Parkside faculty, unionization could be in the offing for professors and academic staff. To gauge interest, the University Committee is meeting at 3:30 p.m. Thursday solely to discuss the issue. The six-member committee functions as the de facto executive board for the faculty senate...

UW-Stout's graphic communications management program has received a software donation from Fujifilm North America Corp. in Hanover Park, Ill. The software is Taskero Universe ColorPath Verified, and will be used in the new Color Management and Control Laboratory...

During a 2008 visit to Finland's TAMK University, Bryan Beamer realized how similar it is to the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where he is a professor. TAMK, like UW-Stout, focuses on applied learning. Mainly because of that connection, Beamer couldn't be more pleased and excited that his application to become a prestigious Fulbright scholar at TAMK was approved for 2010-2011...

Education officials are finalizing the rules for Gov. Doyle’s “Wisconsin Covenant” program that would give college grants to needy students who perform well in school. The idea is to get more students to pursue some form of post-secondary education by having them pledge -- as early as middle school -- to take college prep classes and do community service. In return, the state would provide need-based tuition grants. Shannon Loredo is the director of the Wisconsin Covenant Foundation. She says the program gives students a clear path of what they need to do to get into college, and it builds a community of support around the students...

President Obama signed legislation on Tuesday to expand college access for millions of young Americans by revamping the federal student loan program in what he called “one of the most significant investments in higher education since the G.I. Bill”...

Bigger grants for college students who need them. Relaxed payment terms for students with loans. More money for community colleges and historically black institutions. The law that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday could mean big changes for hard-pressed students and colleges as the government becomes the primary issuer of student loans. But just whom will that affect and how?...

President Obama signed legislation on Tuesday that ends the bank-based lending system for student loans and pours tens of billions of federal dollars into higher education. At the signing ceremony, which was held here at Northern Virginia Community College, the president also announced that Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an English instructor at the college, will lead a community-college summit at the White House this fall. The president thrust community colleges into the limelight last summer when he called on them to produce five million more graduates by 2020 and proposed a $12-billion plan to improve and expand the institutions. But the student-loan bill provides just a portion of the money Mr. Obama had sought...

The Obama administration has asked a federal appeals court to uphold a race-conscious admissions system at the University of Texas at Austin, aiming to stymie a lawsuit that conservatives hope will spur the Supreme Court to limit affirmative action at public colleges...

Patrick White was vice president and dean of the faculty at Saint Mary's College in Indiana, a women's college, before he became president of Wabash College, one of the four remaining four-year colleges in the United States that educate only men....White and his fellow presidents all spoke with great concern about the state of male America. And even if they feel pleased with their efforts to reach young men, all suggested that the United States is in trouble if it doesn't find a way to reach more men. The presidents stressed the importance of linking values to the educational experience -- and said that they believed young men need (and want) more structure than they may realize is the case...

Private colleges are spending more on grant aid than ever before, according to the results of a survey released on Wednesday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. After years of stability, the average tuition-discount rate for full-time freshmen entering college in the fall of 2008 rose to 41.8 percent, up from 39.1 percent in the previous academic year...

Given the difficult economy, large corporations are laying off workers or simply not hiring. As a result, entrepreneurial ventures are becoming more popular than before. In response, many universities—including my own, the University of California at Davis—are teaching entrepreneurship not as a study of a heroic few, but as a set of skills that every student should acquire...