Each year for the last few years, the College Board has announced not only that the number of high-school students taking Advanced Placement tests has gone up, but also that the percentage who do well on at least one test has grown. But many students take more than one test. And, as the College Board prepares to release its latest AP report next week, a USA Today analysis found that, over all, the proportion of low scores has grown over the past decade, with students in the South faring particularly poorly. The College Board told the newspaper that the finding is misleading because it lumps all tests together and doesn't account for differences in the historical performance on, say, the physics and English-literature tests.

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.

Four foundations have given $13-million to the Gateway to College National Network to increase its work of helping high-school dropouts get ready for college and go on to enroll. The program, which operates at 27 community colleges in 16 states, will expand to 15 more colleges. Providing the new support are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Kresge Foundation.

In recent years, colleges have created a range of programs that help them retain and graduate more students. Few colleges, however, focus not only on how well such programs work, but on how cost-effective they are. Enter the Cost-Return Calculator -- released today, along with a report on the pilot project, and available for download from Jobs for the Future and the Delta Cost Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity, and Accountability.

For the second year in a row, the percentage of large, prestigious colleges with overly-restrictive speech codes has dropped, according to an annual report released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. But this year's report, "Spotlight on Speech Codes 2010: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses," says that 71 percent of the 375 colleges and universities the group examined still maintain codes that it views as unconstitutional.

A former dean of the State University of New York at Cobleskill has filed a lawsuit asserting that the college intentionally recruited and enrolled underqualified black students in order to increase its tuition revenue, according to the Times Union, in Albany. Thomas J. Hickey, the former dean of liberal arts and sciences, says in the lawsuit that the college knew the students had no chance of earning a degree and that the provost resisted efforts to use remedial programs to help them. Further, Mr. Hickey, who is a tenured professor at the college, says he was stripped of his dean position and prevented from getting a job at another college in the system because he spoke out.The SUNY system said in a written statement that "the assertions are baseless and we are confident the court will agree," according to the Times Union.

New U.S. Census data show that the number of young adults attending college hit an all-time high in October 2008, driven by growth in attendance at community colleges, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center released today. The findings bolster the notion that more Americans, including young adults, are turning to two-year colleges in the down economy. About 11.5 million 18- to 24-year-olds, or 39.6 percent of that population, were enrolled in a two-year or four-year institution last October, up from 38.8 percent that same month in 2007.

James Madison University's judicial-affairs office has charged two student journalists with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and noncompliance with an official request in connection with reporting they were doing for the campus newspaper, The Breeze. According to the student paper, one of the reporters went into a dormitory with a resident and tried to interview students, before being asked to leave by a resident assistant. She later returned with the editor in chief, accompanied by another resident of the dorm. Both journalists were then asked to leave by the hall director, who called the police. According to the newspaper, the university is not commenting on the charges because the case is pending.

A new "flash poll" from Student Lending Analytics says yes. The group, which advises colleges on student-loan options, found that 43 percent of the 260 colleges that responded had a financial-literacy program in place. And almost half of the colleges that did not have a program planned to start one within the next 12 to 18 months.

The U.S. Department of Education says in a new report that West Virginia University violated the Clery Act in 2001 and 2002 by mislabeling some campus crimes, underreporting others, and failing to include crimes reported to other agencies, according to the Associated Press. A university spokesman told the AP that the errors were clerical and that the university had corrected its procedures. The department will now decide whether penalties are warranted.