A magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck southern Maine on Tuesday night, according to the United States Geological Survey. Tremors from the quake were felt by students across the Dartmouth campus. The quake occurred at 7:12 p.m., with its epicenter just west of Hollis Center, Maine. Its effects were felt as far south as Boston, including at Harvard University. Many students were unsure if the trembling they felt was from an earthquake or a more localized, mundane source. The quake was originally measured as a magnitude of 4.6 but was later downgraded by the USGS.
Harvard University launched two new online courses on Monday, with each attracting more than 30,000 students, according to The Harvard Crimson. The free courses are offered through edX, a nonprofit virtual learning initiative created by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year. In edX's first semester, Harvard, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley are offering online courses. Harvard's two online classes, Computer Science 50x and Public Health 207x, mark the university's first attempts at offering free courses to the public. EdX president and MIT professor Anant Agarwal said he anticipated more than a dozen new offerings for the spring term to be released in the coming weeks, The Crimson reported.
The Obama administration's changes in the repayment program for federal student loans will disproportionately favor high-income graduate students with large debts as opposed to those of lower socioeconomic standing, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. An analysis by the New America Foundation found that low-income borrowers will see their monthly payments decrease by $20 dollars or less, while high-income borrowers may have up to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt forgiven after 20 years. In 2010, the income-based repayment program for federal student loans was changed so that borrowers would pay 5 percent less of their discretionary income per month and could obtain loan forgiveness five years sooner, The Chronicle reported. The Obama administration has moved up the start of the program from 2014 to as early as this year.
