About 50 to 100 protesters took over a prominent building at the University of California at Berkeley this morning and barricaded themselves inside, The Daily Californian reported. The action, one day after the system's Board of Regents approved a 32-percent increase in tuition, culminated several days of protests over the impact of the state's dire finances on university campuses. Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau sent an e-mail message urging employees working in the building, Wheeler Hall, which houses several academic departments, to avoid it until further notice. Protesters have also started a

The University of Nebraska's Board of Regents, despite heavy lobbying by religious groups, narrowly voted today to uphold the expansion of research on human embryonic stem cells as permitted by the Obama administration. The regents voted, 4 to 4, on a proposal to observe limits on stem-cell research imposed by the Bush administration, and a tie vote meant the resolution failed.

The federal judge overseeing the Google Book Search case has given preliminary approval to the revised settlement submitted late last Friday by the parties to the lawsuit. The new version is "within the range of possible approval," according to a court order issued yesterday. The order also set February 18, 2010, as the date for a final fairness hearing on the deal.

In the aftermath of an audit that raised questions about spending practices at Kansas State University, the institution's president, Kirk H. Schulz, reported to the Kansas Board of Regents today on what his administration has done to ensure that sound business and management practices are in place. The regents had commissioned the audit as an exit review upon the retirement of Mr. Schulz's predecessor, Jon Wefald. Among other findings, the review flagged $845,000 in questionable payments. According to the Associated Press, Mr. Schulz said that compensation for the university's football coach accounted for most of that,...

The Education Department has made efforts to create risk-based ways to monitor grants for fraud and abuse, but more work needs to be done, says a report from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found that the department's staff members need more financial expertise and training in order to accomplish their work, and that information on grant recipients should be shared systematically throughout the department for monitoring to improve.

About 22 percent of economic-stimulus funds have been paid out by the federal government, the Government Accountability Office reported today, but the job-creation data posted on the Web site Recovery.gov to highlight the effect of the $787-billion legislation, officially the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, has "significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed." As suggested in a Chronicle article two weeks ago, state education departments have had difficulty reporting their data correctly, in part, the GAO said, because there was not a clear definition of "full-time equivalent" jobs, the measure states were supposed to use to measure job creation.

Faculty members at the University of Connecticut Health Center voted this week by a two-vote margin, 223 to 221, to unionize, the Hartford Courant reports. This is the first vote on the issue since the faculty twice defeated union bids, in 1999 and 2000, and some observers feel the affirmative vote demonstrates a growing uncertainty about the future of faculty job security.

A committee of the University of Massachusetts approved today a proposal for the system's Dartmouth campus to acquire the Southern New England School of Law, which would give the state its first public law school, The Boston Globe reported. That approval, however, is only the first step for the controversial proposal, which critics have questioned on academic and financial grounds. The private Southern New England school, which has been unable to meet the American Bar Association's accreditation standards, has offered to donate its campus and assets to the state. The university's trustees approved a similar plan in 2005, but the state higher-education board

In the face of dwindling state support for higher education, Oregon should convert its three largest public universities into public corporations to make it easier for them to raise money, David B. Frohnmayer, who recently retired as president of the University of Oregon, recommends in a report released today by the Oregon University System. The report calls for giving the University of Oregon and Oregon State and Portland State Universities the type of autonomy that the Oregon Health and Science University acquired in the 1990s, when it became a state-assisted public corporation. A legislative leader quoted in The Oregonian seemed receptive to the idea but said it was unlikely...

Community colleges in California will be encouraged to offer a common assessment in mathematics and English for incoming students starting in the fall of 2010, the system's chancellor, Jack Scott, said today at a news conference. The system's 110 campuses have long offered dozens of incompatible assessment tests, which Mr. Scott said had wasted money, muddied transfer pathways to universities, and made it more difficult for students to move from one community college to another.