The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has approved a plan not only to improve public higher education in the commonwealth, but also to measure how well, or poorly, it is educating students. While many details have yet to be worked out, the measure broadly promises to increase the percentage of students attending and graduating from public colleges. In addition, the colleges will issue an annual report on their performance in those areas compared with their counterparts in the other 49 states.

In the face of major cuts to public colleges, Louisiana's commissioner of higher education, Sally Clausen, has reduced her own compensation by nearly 53 percent, according to The Advocate, a newspaper in Baton Rouge. Ms. Clausen will forgo $178,000 in salary and $48,000 in car and housing allowances. State money for higher education has been cut by $280-million, or more than 20 percent, over the past 17 months.

Federal requirements for states to maintain a benchmark level of spending on higher education seem to be working, for now, according to an analysis by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The $40-billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, contained in the 2008 federal stimulus package, requires states to spend no less than they spent in 2006 on education, unless they receive a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education. And the study concludes that the mandate, "not state formulaic priorities or educational principles, was the overriding factor in many state decisions in determining funding levels for higher education." As evidence for that argument, the study lists nine states that cut higher-education appropriations to within 1 percent of the 2006 threshold.

The long, painful slide in state tax collections is coming to an end, according to a report by the Bloomberg news service. The 15 most populous states are projecting a 3.9-percent increase in tax collections during the 2011 fiscal year, which will begin for most states on July 1. And for the first time in two years, overall state tax collections are also expected to increase, the article says. That could portend better news for public colleges in the budget cycles ahead.

Some Wisconsin parents are complaining that state grants for college tuition are falling far short of what they thought Gov. Jim Doyle had promised, the Associated Press reported. The Wisconsin Covenant program has enrolled 50,000 eighth graders over the past three years, but Governor Doyle, a Democrat, only recently announced details of the grants it would pay. Those range from $250 to $2,500, based on family income. At a legislative hearing on Monday, some parents complained that they had thought the grants would cover the entire cost of college.

Seven former students of Southeastern University, in Washington, have filed a $10-million class-action lawsuit against the institution, which lost its accreditation in August 2009. The plaintiffs claim that the university defrauded each of them of up to $41,500 by failing to warn them that it was in trouble with its accrediting agency and could not provide the promised level of training and internships, the Courthouse News Service reports.

Connecticut's highest court ruled on Monday that the State Constitution guarantees public-school students a "suitable" education that prepares them for the work force or postsecondary education, the Connecticut Law Tribune reported. The 4-3 decision allows a lawsuit to go forward to determine if the state's current system of support for public schools does in fact provide students with "a constitutionally adequate education." The ruling is consistent with the outcome of similar cases in several other states, including Kansas, Massachusetts, and Montana, where judges ruled that lawmakers were providing too little money for public schools.

A Florida legislator, State Rep. Marti Coley, is under scrutiny for her role at Chipola College, a public institution in the Panhandle town of Marianna, and for the $11-million in state money she helped secure for an arts center on the Chipola campus, reports The News Herald of Panama City, Fla. Ms. Coley, a Republican, was given a position at the college in 2006, shortly after she won a special election for her seat in the state Legislature and after nearly two decades as an adjunct faculty member, according to the newspaper. In 2007, after she had helped steer the construction money to the college, Ms. Coley was promoted to a new position that raised her $45,000 annual salary by 30 percent. A similar controversy last year resulted in the resignation of the speaker of Florida's House of Representatives and the ouster of a college president.

Compromise legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly will allow the public greater access to information compiled on people being watched by campus threat-assessment teams, according to The Roanoake Times. The bill, a response to the 2007 shootings at Virgina Tech, would require colleges to release notes and reports by their threat-assessment teams if the person being monitored commits a violent crime. But the teams would still not be required to release criminal histories, health records, or academic-performance measures, the newspaper reported. Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, is expected to act on the bill -- amend, sign, or veto it -- before April 21.

Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada, a Republican, has unveiled a set of measures meant to give public higher education more control over its finances and to operate more efficiently, reports the Las Vegas Sun. The public colleges would get more flexibility to set and spend fees and nonresident tuition, and the measures would exempt campus capital projects from some state oversight and allow institutions to keep up to a quarter of their unspent general funds each year, the newspaper reports. Ultimately, the plans are meant to make the institutions less reliant on state appropriations — the state's Legislature recently cut higher-education money by 6.9 percent.