About 60 percent of parents of college-bound children under age 18 are saving for their oldest child's college education, and the share of families who are saving rises sharply with income level, according to a report released Tuesday by the lending company Sallie Mae. The report, "How America Saves for College," is based on a Gallup survey of parents. A related report, "How America Pays for College," based on a survey of current traditional undergraduates and parents of undergraduates, was released earlier this year.

The University of Wyoming's financial-aid director and associate director retired Friday, after an internal audit, the Laramie Boomerang, a local paper, reported Saturday. According to a university spokeswoman, the audit found that some scholarship decisions should have been better documented, though guidelines for allocating the money were followed.

An adjunct professor who taught courses on Roman Catholicism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that the loss of his job, after a student complained about how he addressed the morality of homosexuality in a class, violated his academic freedom, the News-Gazette, a local paper, reported today. The instructor, Kenneth Howell, sent students an e-mail describing how homosexual acts would be viewed under utilitarianism and natural-law theory. A student then e-mailed the head of the religion department to complain on behalf of a friend who had taken the course, calling the contents of Mr. Howell's message "hate speech." Mr. Howell was told after the spring semester that he would no longer be teaching in the religion department, where he had worked for nine years.

The United Methodist Church took back a public warning and restored its financial support of the Claremont School of Theology on Friday, the Los Angeles Times reports. The seminary had risked its relationship with the church when it decided to train students who wish to become Muslim and Jewish clerics.

The Claremont School of Theology, a California institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church, will offer clerical training to Muslim and Jewish students this fall, the Los Angeles Times reports. The seminary is believed to be the first accredited institution to train clergy members of multiple faiths, according to the Times. But the expanded mission could cost the seminary. Earlier this year, the church suspended its financial support of the seminary, an amount that accounts for about 8 percent of its budget, pending an investigation.

The state authority that distributes student aid in New Jersey failed to comply with executive orders, had insufficient oversight, and may have violated state ethics laws, according to a report released by the state's inspector general, The Star-Ledger reported today. The authority's executive director, Michael Angulo, was a finalist in the recently completed search for a president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

The New Jersey inspector general recommended that the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority hire an internal auditor and give more power to its board. Agency officials declined to comment to The Star-Ledger, but a spokeswoman told the newspaper that the group was working to "ensure that the proper controls are in place." The authority had previously come under scrutiny as part of a larger investigation into ties between colleges and ...

Liberty University, the Baptist institution founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, is investigating whether Ergun Caner, head of its seminary, fabricated parts of his testimony about growing up a devout Muslim before converting to Christianity as a teenager, reports The News & Advance, a newspaper in Lynchburg, Va. Several blogs accuse Mr. Caner, president of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary & Graduate School, of making false statements about his background at speaking engagements, some of them right after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The university decided to investigate after receiving calls from the news media.

Getting high-school seniors to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid is one of the great challenges of college access. Many high schools offer help with the form but lack a way to know who still needs to complete it. Last week the U.S. Department of Education announced it would allow a small number of high schools and districts to track whether their seniors had completed the application in a pilot program this spring based on a similar project that has shown success in the Chicago Public Schools. Twenty schools or districts can participate in the pilot program, and nearly 100 have already expressed interest, said Greg M. Darnieder, special assistant and adviser to the education secretary on the secretary's initiative on college access.

Despite speculation that other colleges would follow Dartmouth College and Williams College in cutting back or dropping their no-loans student-aid policies, a new survey by the Project on Student Debt has found that none of the 50 other colleges the group identified with pledges to limit or eliminate loans plan to make major changes in those policies in the next two academic years. Some of the colleges, whose policies range from not including loans in any student's financial-aid package to capping loans for students with family incomes below a certain level, have made smaller changes in their aid policies, such as increasing the expected contribution from students' summer-work earnings or increasing work-study.

Alabama's prepaid-tuition plan, which has been squeezed by stock-market losses and growing participation, might not be able to cover students' tuition past the fall of 2011, the Associated Press reports. The state's House and Senate have each passed a bill to put $236-million into the plan, but the House version would cap tuition increases at participating colleges, a move that the colleges oppose. The two legislative chambers have not yet found a compromise, the AP said.