In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama proposed ideas and issued warnings to national colleges and universities regarding the affordability of higher education, Inside Higher Education reported on Wednesday. Obama, who described higher education as an "economic imperative" that should be accessible to all families, said lowering student debt and increasing work study opportunities should be prioritized in state budgets, according to Inside Higher Ed. He subsequently praised community colleges for their low tuition rates and professional training. Obama's proposals were aimed to pique the attention of middle-income families who are likely to vote in the 2012 election, FinAid.org publisher Mark Kantrowitz told Inside Higher Ed.
Driven by economic difficulties and growing student populations, more public universities are partnering with private companies to build on-campus student housing, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. Institutions such as the University of California, Irvine, Arizona State University, the University of Kentucky and Montclair State University have pursued relationships with private firms, which can often finish residence hall building projects more quickly and cheaply than the universities themselves, according to The Times. While this strategy may reduce costs for the institutions, the savings are not always relayed to students, The Times reported. The cost of a room in The Heights, Montclaire State's recently-opened residence hall, for example, is approximately $1,000 more than a room in other campus residence halls due to its superior amenities, The Times reported. Private universities, with smaller student bodies and endowments that finance housing projects, are less likely to use private developers, according to The Times.
A team of physicists led by Dartmouth physics professor Ryan Hickox found that large galaxies observed today were active starburst galaxies in the early universe, Space.com reported on Wednesday. The team found that galaxies that began by showing high levels of star formation now constitute the largest galaxies. Their report provides the most accurate clustering measurements made to date for these types of galaxies and found that galaxies that are particularly close to one another exhibit great haloes of dark matter, according to the site. Starbursts in these galaxies only lasted for approximately 100 million years, a relatively short time, and came to an abrupt end, which Hickox and his team attributed to supermassive black holes, according to Space.com. The findings were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
