"Defiance," a statue of a female African-American slave, is back at Chicago State University, according to the Chicago Tribune. The missing sculpture had turned up in the office of a state lawmaker, Rep. Monique Davis, who initially refused to return it. Late last week, however, she agreed to do so, and on Friday it found a new home in the university's library.

A federal judge has ordered the National Conference of Bar Examiners to allow a blind law student to use computer-assisted reading devices when taking the bar examination next month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The national examiners group routinely makes other accommodations available to blind applicants, but had resisted putting test questions on a computer disk, citing test-security concerns. Federal disability law "does not require testing organizations to provide disabled examinees with their preferred accommodations," the group's lawyer, Gregory Tenhoff, had argued in court papers.

The U.S. Department of Justice is considering whether to investigate college football's Bowl Championship Series for possible antitrust violations, Bloomberg News reported. The assistant attorney general, Ronald Weich, announced the department's interest in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, who has long pushed for such an investigation. Other members of Congress have also questioned how college football determines its national champion -- and divides up the $140-million the BCS brings in. A bill pending in the House of Representatives would require that the national championship game come as "the culmination of a fair and equitable playoff system."

The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities has selected Michael Galligan-Stierle as its next president, the group announced at its annual meeting on Sunday. Mr. Galligan-Stierle, currently the group's vice president, will replace Richard A. Yanikoski, who is retiring as president in August.

A California state senator has introduced a bill that would put a 10-percent cap on tuition and fee increases at the state's public universities, as well as requiring a 180-day waiting period before any increases could take effect. The senator—Jeff Denham, a Republican—held a news conference Friday at the University of California at Merced to announce the bill, which he named the Student Protection Act. He said he had prepared the legislation because students "need to be protected from sudden, unexpected, and excessive fees and tuition increases."

The tax credit for small businesses and nonprofit organizations that hire new employees, proposed this week by President Obama, would also apply to private colleges and the affiliated foundations of public universities. For such groups, which are exempt from federal income tax, the credit would apply to payroll taxes on wages that they do pay, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

A blog at the Web site of Foreign Policy magazine relays a statement from the rector of the University of Quisqueya, a private institution in Port-au-Prince, about how it fared in the earthquake two weeks ago. According to the rector, Jacky Lumarque, all buildings at Quisqueya were destroyed, like other Haitian universities, and the dead include five students, a lecturer, an engineer, and two gardeners. About 20 survivors were pulled from the rubble. Mr. Lumarque reports that university efforts are now devoted to providing food, water, and basic health care to people who have set up camps, known as colonias, in surrounding neighborhoods. Foreign aid, he writes, is "abundant but poorly coordinated."

The U.S. Senate has announced its six nominees to serve on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, an 18-member board that advises the education secretary on accrediting agencies. Senate Republicans chose Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, who served on the committee from 2007 to 2008, before Congress overhauled it in the reauthorized Higher Education Act. The other two Republican appointees are Bruce Cole, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Michael Poliakoff, former vice president for academic affairs and research at the University of Colorado system. The Democratic nominees are Daniel Klaich, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education; State Rep. Cameron Staples of Connecticut; and Larry N. Vanderhoef, former chancellor of the University of California at Davis. The ...

The Education Trust, a Washington-based research-and-advocacy group, has published two reports highlighting public four-year colleges that have significantly raised their minority graduation rates, in some cases closing the achievement gap between underrepresented minority students and their white counterparts. Among the colleges it cites are Georgia State University, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Western Oregon University.

California's public colleges and universities are struggling to meet statewide challenges of access and affordability because they lack an effective coordinating body, according to a report from the state Legislative Analyst's Office released today. The report says the lack of central coordination in California has contributed to restricted enrollment, duplicative programs, and problems for students transferring from two-year to four-year colleges. The report also says the distinct roles for California's three public-college systems, as envisioned in the 1960 Master Plan, have become muddied.