"Doing well by doing good" is the business mantra of the for-profit-college industry. But one does not have to look far to find people who question the slogan's sincerity or the very legitimacy of that model. And that was even before reports of some companies' abusive student-recruiting practices and questionable educational standards fed a public…

James M. Fadool, an associate professor of biology at Florida State University, got a federal grant of more than $300,000 to study eye defects using zebra-fish. Some of that money went to pay another researcher, $1,536 biweekly, to assist with the research and manage the lab where the fish were kept. But an audit by the Office of Inspector General…

Numbers suggest certainty, and when it comes to campus crime, everybody wants answers. Enacted nearly two decades ago, the federal Clery Act requires colleges to send the government detailed reports annually, describing their policies and tallying their total crimes. But even as campus security has become a national concern, some scholars of the…

This article reports that new federal ethics rules are creating headaches for colleges--and heartburn for their lobbyists. The rules, enacted last year in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, require colleges and lobbyists to report their political contributions and certify that they have complied with a new ban on gifts to members of…

Nearly 400 colleges across the United States are about to be asked to disclose intimate financial details of their operations to the Internal Revenue Service. This article reports on a highly detailed financial questionnaire designed by the IRS for the first phase of its Colleges and Universities Compliance Project, which is part of a continuing…

Accreditation and public safety are vital issues for colleges, but rarely do they put the two together. The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators is trying to change that. The group, known as Iaclea, started accrediting colleges' police and public-safety departments last year, holding them to a strict set of standards.…

Compliance officers investigate, report on, and oversee the correction of behaviors that fail to comply with the law. At colleges they monitor a vast array of regulatory requirements in areas as diverse as health care, scientific research, immigration, labor law, and environmental safety. Until recently the strongest argument in favor of a…

The government agency responsible for enforcing gender equity in college sports is falling down on the job, according to a report released by the National Women's Law Center. Over the past five years, the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights -- the administrative guardian of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that…

Discusses how a new law on tracking registered sex offenders has college officials pondering how widely to publicize the presence of such people on their campuses. (EV)

Describes how Graham B. Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, wants to end the dispute over file sharing on college campuses. One of his suggestions involves a deal with the music industry. (EV)

Describes how the director of the Office of Human Research Protections has an amiable approach that emphasizes cooperation in oversight of studies with human subjects, but isn't afraid to suspend programs that violate federal regulations. (EV)

Describes how the Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action in the University of Michigan cases have college officials scratching their heads. (EV)

This paper discusses a Lawsuit filed against Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and the legal settlement between the defendant and the plaintiff. The fund, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Dow Jones & Company had been operating more than 20 programs for minority high-school students to pursue careers in newspaper journalism. The organization…

A regulation issued by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires facilities-based Internet services providers who operate their own equipment, including colleges, to make their Internet systems compliant with a statute known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (Calea) by April 2007. However, the FCC does not…

Reading First is a $900-million-a-year project that offers states grants to improve reading instruction for children in kindergarten through third grade. However, Reading First is now awash in allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest. The Education Department's inspector general issued a report that declared that the program's…