Nevada's public colleges and universities face a 6.9-percent cut in state funds in their current budgets, and things are likely to get worse next year, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Sunday as state lawmakers wrapped up a special session of the Legislature. The special session was dealing with a current deficit of $887-million, but unless the economy turns around, legislators could face a revenue shortfall of more than $3-billion when they meet at next year's regular session, the newspaper said. "The real cliff comes next February," said Daniel Klaich, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education. "That is when the tough decisions start."

Brown University's trustees on Saturday approved a budget for the 2011 fiscal year that raises tuition, increases enrollment, and eliminates additional jobs—but also gives raises to faculty and staff members. The budget also makes some increases available for research and for construction projects supported by donors, The Providence Journal reported. The university, which saw 139 employees accept early-retirement offers last fall, doesn't know yet how many more jobs will have to be trimmed this year, officials said. Brown's president, Ruth J. Simmons, said that because the institution's endowment has decreased by $740-million, the gap between income and revenue is "substantial."

One Temple University student was killed and seven others were injured early Saturday, when the van in which they were traveling to a dance competition in North Carolina left the highway and hit a guardrail, the Associated Press reported. The van was carrying eight members of Temple's Bhangra dance team, which performs dances traditional to India. The team was to perform at a Punjabi-heritage competition sponsored by North Carolina State University's Sikh Student Association. The police identified the student who was killed as Kammini Ragoopath, 21, of Lansdale, Pa.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck near Concepción, Chile, early Saturday, initial reports said that a fire had broken out in a science building at the University of Concepción. But with communications badly interrupted and the university's Web site down, additional details were difficult to obtain.

Meanwhile, 27 University of Notre Dame students and staff members who were in Chile's capital, Santiago, were reported safe. And a group of business-school students and faculty members from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who were on their way to the same city were also reported safe. Three faculty members had already arrived in the city, but the  students and four other professors were on planes that were diverted to other cities after the quake struck.

The University of South Carolina at Columbia said it had been able to reach its seven students who were...

Students angered by the discovery of a noose in the University of California at San Diego's library on Friday morning took over the office of the university's chancellor, Marye Anne Fox, for six hours late Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported. The demonstration ended peacefully, and no one was arrested. The protest came just a few hours after the noose was discovered hanging from a lamp on a bookshelf in the Geisel Library at the university, where an off-campus party on February 15 that mocked Black History Month had prompted a series of other protests. University officials said that a student had contacted the campus police and taken responsibility for the noose, and that Chancellor Fox had suspended her. The chancellor also spoke at a campus rally and issued a video statement in which she condemned "the offensive acts of hate and bias that have occurred over the past days."

The discovery of a noose hanging in a library at the University of California at San Diego has students planning a protest over the third racially offensive incident at the university in the last two weeks, according to The San Diego Union Tribune. More details about the incident can be found at UC Regent Live, a blog. The noose was discovered a day after a student walkout interrupted a teach-in on race at the university, an event held in response to a party that mocked Black History Month and a racial slur uttered by a student satirical group on the campus's television channel.

Update (4:29 p.m., U.S. Eastern time): The university system's president, Marc G. Yudof, issued a statement today expressing outrage at the noose, calling it "a despicable expression of racial hatred," and vowing that "appalling acts of this sort cannot go unpunished." The statement said a student had come...

In addition to presenting the 2009 National Medals of Arts on Thursday at the White House, President Obama honored the recipients of the 2009 National Humanities Medals. They included three academic scholars: Annette Gordon-Reed, a law professor at New York Law School and history professor at Rutgers University who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family; David Levering Lewis, a history professor at New York University who won Pulitzer Prizes for both volumes of his biography of W.E.B. Du Bois; and William H. McNeill, a retired historian at the University of Chicago known for a series of seminal thematic works in worldwide history, notably The Rise of the West, Plagues and Peoples, and The Pursuit of Power. Also honored were Robert A. Caro, the acclaimed biographer of Lyndon B. Johnson; Philippe de Montebello, the former director of the Metropolitan...

President Obama will sign an executive order today on the White House Initiative for Historically Black Colleges, The initiative, intended to strengthen historically black institutions, grew from a federal program begun by Jimmy Carter in 1980. Mr. Obama's proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year includes a 5-percent increase for a program to support historically black colleges, as well as more money for graduate programs and facilities at the colleges.

Some students and faculty members at Northwest College, a public residential two-year institution in Wyoming, have raised concerns about a letter the Northwest president, Paul B. Prestwich, sent to about 1,000 high-school students who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, describing opportunities for Mormon students near the campus and mentioning his own membership in the church, the Billings Gazette reports. The letter was part of the college's enrollment-management plan to forge ties with local churches and community groups to increase diversity and recruit students, Mr. Prestwich told The Chronicle.

The University of Alabama at Huntsville has suspended Amy Bishop, the biologist accused of killing three colleagues and wounding three other people, and is taking steps to fire her, The Huntsville Times reported. It quoted a brief statement by Ray Garner, a university spokesman, as saying: "Dr. Amy Bishop was suspended without pay effective February 12, 2010. The university is moving forward with the process of terminating her employment."