Most people would be willing to pay higher taxes for public schools and health and human services, according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States. But more taxation for colleges? Not so much. The center has just released an analysis of public attitudes about the fiscal problems in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, and New York, which make up nearly a third of the country's population and economic output. Collectively, the states also account for 45 percent of the total budget gaps that states will face in the current fiscal year. Nearly 70 percent of respondents to Pew's survey said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to protect public schools. Higher education, however, was a distant third on that particular question, behind health and human services, with fewer than half of those polled saying they would pay more taxes to maintain money for colleges.

The University of South Carolina's football team is 3-1 so far this season and did not play on Saturday. But the university's latest defeat came today, at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices denied the university's request to review a decision by the federal Trademark Trial and Appeals Board that the initials "SC" could not be registered as a logo because the University of Southern California has already registered a mark using those letters. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had also agreed with the board's decision. The Trojans of USC may have won in court, but their 18th-ranked football team lost to the unranked  Washington Huskies, 32-31.

Some rare good news for state spending on higher education: A new survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures concludes that  tax revenues are projected to rise in 40 states in the 2011 fiscal year, with Colorado, Oregon, and Washington predicting increases of more than 10 percent. Fourteen other states now expect revenues to climb from 5 percent to 10 percent, and 23 states project growth of 1 percent to 5 percent. Of the 47 states that responded to the survey, only Alaska expected tax revenues to fall this fiscal year, by 6 percent, because of a decline in oil prices.

While the U.S. Department of Education has delayed releasing a proposed rule on measuring whether graduates earn enough to cover their college debts, the Government Accountability Office released a report today finding that 26 states are already collecting such information by linking labor data with lists of degree holders. Some states use the information to determine the education level of the work force, for example. But the GAO noted that there were concerns among state officials it contacted about how the information might be used: Some of them "cautioned against potentially inappropriate uses of the data, such as holding institutions accountable for the employment outcomes of graduates, noting that such outcomes are often beyond schools' control," the report says.

The push for more accountability in higher education has been accompanied by calls for more information on the academic performance of individual students. But figuring out what information to collect and how to use it has been complicated because of the variety of data systems in use by states. But today the State Higher Education Executive Officers group has released a survey of student data systems in 44 states and the District of Columbia.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office recognizes that it's really hard for states to report all of the information on how educational institutions are spending their money from the stimulus package -- more than $70-billion for schools and colleges. But they should be giving more detail than they are, the GAO recommended in a report released today. "While most states cannot provide information on how each subrecipient is using its funds, providing more information ... could help the public gain a better understanding of how the funds are being used," the watchdog agency concluded.

The National Governors Association has released a set of recommendations for states to help improve college and workplace readiness, including best practices for state leaders in working with government agencies, schools and colleges, and businesses to define what students should know to be ready to enter the work force or higher education after earning their diplomas.

The latest budget survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures concludes that states' fiscal conditions are likely to be better in the current fiscal year, which began for most states on July 1, than in the previous year. But that doesn't mean the situation will be good, says a report on the survey. While tax revenues are expected to pick up in most states, they may not increase enough to cover the loss of federal stimulus money that lawmakers used in the previous two years to cover shortfalls in education spending. In addition, states could lose billions of dollars if the federal government does not extend more-generous Medicaid-reimbursement formulas that were enacted as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the report says.

A new report by the National Conference of State Legislatures is another reminder of how the recession has taken "a brutal toll" on state revenues and of how states have relied on federal stimulus money to prevent major cuts in higher education in the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. In addition to an overview of state appropriations, the report provides short state-by-state descriptions of legislation and policies that will have an effect on higher-education finance.

News reports in April said Louisiana's commissioner of higher education, Sally Clausen, would be cutting her pay by more than half for the fiscal year that begins on July 1. What Ms. Clausen didn't tell reporters, or even the university system's Board of Regents, was that she had quietly retired one day in the previous August and had been rehired a day later, a step that allowed her to receive a lump-sum payout of more than $90,000 for unused vacation and sick leave, according to The Times-Picayune.