Not all talk is cheap. Especially not if it comes from the mouths of professors, former corporate executives, or Washington insiders who understand the workings of the $20-billion for-profit higher-education industry and how impending tougher regulations might affect it. Then the talk can be worth hundreds of dollars an hour, thanks to the growing…

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…

Censored papers on bird flu, which could help terrorists, have critics wondering if academic scientists can police their own work. The near-publication has brought out general critics of the federal panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, and the voluntary self-policing approach that it embraces instead of regulation. Members…

The University of Louisville's former dean of education, Robert D. Felner, faces a criminal trial on charges that he and an associate diverted most of a $694,000 earmarked federal grant into their own bank accounts. Louisville officials have announced an administrative overhaul that will, they say, help prevent any future misbehavior with grants.…

Distance educators won't have to become FBI-style investigators, installing cameras in the homes of online students and scanning fingerprints to ensure that people are who they say they are. At least not yet. The recently reauthorized Higher Education Opportunity Act requires accreditors to monitor steps colleges take to verify that an enrolled…

The federal government could take a cue from its regulation of charitable organizations in monitoring the freewheeling fiscal habits of big-time college athletics, a leading tax lawyer says. The author reports on the ideas offered by John D. Colombo, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, for monitoring big spending on college…

A newly compiled analysis by the U.S. Department of Education and obtained by "The Chronicle" shows that 114 private nonprofit degree-granting colleges were in such fragile financial condition at the end of their last fiscal year that they failed the department's financial-responsibility test. Colleges that fail the test are subject to extra…

New regulations for the Family Rights and Privacy Act (Ferpa), which governs the privacy of student records, become effective this month. Announced by the Department of Education in December 2008, the regulations empower colleges to act appropriately and decisively to protect the health and safety of students and others. They also signify a new…

The Employ American Workers Act was added to the stimulus bill in February by U.S. Senators Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Bernard Sanders, an Independent from Vermont. It prohibits financial institutions that receive federal bailout money from hiring foreign workers if they have recently laid off American workers in similar jobs or…

The complexity of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (Fafsa) has been well documented and exhaustively discussed: At six pages and 120 questions, it is longer than even the 1040 tax form, with its two pages and 76 questions (not including schedules). The Fafsa's length and unfamiliar language--terms like "emancipated minor" and…

After a month of celebrating the largest boost in federal spending on scientific research that most of them have ever seen, university presidents are increasingly tuned to the possibility of a downside. The new money--primarily from a $21.5-billion jump in research-and-development spending in the economic-stimulus law--is certainly welcome,…

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…

This article reports that if there's a silver lining in the dark cloud hanging over campus budgets, it may be that colleges' investment losses could ease Congress's demands for mandatory endowment payouts, at least in the short term. In part that's because colleges tend to spend greater portions of their assets when endowments dip, even if overall…

What does it take to run an international-education office? A detailed understanding of obtuse federal regulations, the ability to recruit foreign students on a shoestring budget, and a talent for creating study-abroad programs that are both academically rigorous and highly popular. That was the message in dozens of sessions last week at the…

While the past several decades have brought federal regulations that are designed to make animal research more humane, ethics courses still form only a patchwork across colleges. The amount and types of ethical training available to students vary widely by program and the culture of an institution. Now discussions about animal-research ethics that…