The coming week will be filled with White House-sponsored events to raise awareness of and support the efforts of the nation's 105 historically black colleges, so it only makes sense that President Obama has declared the week as National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week. The week's events are part of a conference organized by the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and will feature, for example, discussions of ways institutions can strengthen their fund raising and corporate partnerships. The president's domestic-policy adviser is scheduled to speak on Monday morning, and a press announcement says President Obama is invited but not confirmed. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other key officials are also scheduled to speak at the conference, as are the presidents of several black colleges and other experts on minority-serving...

The Anderson School of Management, of the University of California at Los Angeles, is seeking to opt out of public financial support and replace the money with private donations and increased tuition revenue, the Financial Times reported. If the proposal is approved by the university system's leaders, tuition—now $41,000 a year for California residents and $49,000 for nonresidents—is likely to rise to a rate comparable with top-tier private business schools, like Stanford University's, Judy Olian, dean of the Anderson school, told the newspaper. She described the proposal as a "creative solution" that would allow the cash-strapped university system to reallocate the money to undergraduate programs. "The UC system is arguably the greatest public university system in the world," she said. "But we’re not going to keep it that way with the old model."

Four academics have been named as winners of the international Balzan Prizes for 2010. Each prize carries an award of 750,000 Swiss francs, or about $737,000, half of which must be used for research. The prizes are given in different fields of the humanities and sciences each year. This year's categories and the winner in each are as follows: European history from 1400 to 1700, Carlo Ginzburg of Italy's Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; the history of theater, Manfred Brauneck of the University of Hamburg; mathematics, Jacob Palis of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, in Brazil; and stem cells, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and the University of California at San Francisco.

A Binghamton University center's director is accused of falsifying a travel-expense report and faces a felony criminal charge, a local newspaper, the Press & Sun-Bulletin, reported. The official, Seshu B. Desu, is a former dean of the university's Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science and is now executive director of its Center for Autonomous Solar Power. He was not available for comment in the newspaper's account. Binghamton officials would not say whether he remained on the job, but did say that an investigation was continuing.

In the wake of a congresswoman's admission that she violated rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's scholarship program in awarding scholarships to her relatives and those of an aide, the foundation has begun an audit of the program, its chairman announced on Monday. The foundation has also delayed its next round of scholarships until new integrity measures are in place. "There will be no self-dealing or nepotism in the awarding of college scholarships," said the chairman, Rep. Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey. The Dallas Morning News first reported the problems with 23 scholarships handed out by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrat of Texas, since 2005. Ms. Johnson has said that her actions were unintentional, but the foundation's lawyer, Amy Goldson, pointed out that the students, the lawmaker awarding the scholarships, or the lawmaker's designee must certify that ...

President Obama plans Tuesday to announce a series of initiatives to streamline the system by which the federal government restricts the export of products and technologies that can have both military and commercial uses. The announcement is being eagerly awaited by groups such as the Association of American Universities, which said it expects the changes will reduce costs and bureaucratic hassles for universities that conduct research involving sensitive technology. Among other things, the changes are expected to make it easier for foreign graduate students to work on such projects, and for universities to form partnerships with institutions overseas.

An associate professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been relieved of teaching duties this fall after a series of incidents that include making a sexual reference in an e-mail to students, and allowing a student to videotape a class discussion without getting other students' consent, according to The News-Gazette, a local newspaper. The professor, Louis Wozniak, has apologized for the e-mail but says students knew he was joking when he wrote that he only remembered the ones he had had sex with. The professor, who has taught at Illinois since 1966, sued the university in 1998 after he was suspended from teaching in another dispute. A faculty committee on academic freedom says the university has abridged his rights in its handling of the latest dispute.

Lambuth University, a financially struggling Tennessee institution that was in talks last May with unidentified private investors about a possible sale, announced on Monday that it had received commitments that would allow it to deal with payroll problems and assure its viability for the academic year, as well as a "major commitment" that would "lead to long-term stability and growth," a local newspaper, The Jackson Sun, reported. In a written statement cited by the newspaper, the university said the latter committment "relates in large measure to the creation of a joint venture that will develop and grow online-education opportunities." A college spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the details of any of the arrangements, but said the partners in the joint venture had changed since the pending deal that was announced earlier this year.

Complying with a court order, California State University-Stanislaus on Thursday released Sarah Palin's contract for a fund-raising speech on the campus in June, The Modesto Bee and the Associated Press reported. Earlier in the day, the university had insisted that it could not comply because the contract was held by its nonprofit foundation, which is exempt from the state's open-record laws. The document was in the possession of Susana Gajic-Bruyea, who is both the university's vice president for advancement and the executive officer of the foundation's Board of Directors, the Bee reported. She had signed it in both capacities. The contract contained no surprises, as the university had already disclosed Ms. Palin's $75,000 fee, and other details had leaked out.

The North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to delay enforcement of a lower court's ruling that said the campus police at Davidson College could not enforce state laws because the college is a religious institution, the news site DavidsonNews.net reported. The state attorney general’s office filed an appeal on Thursday of the August 17 ruling by the state Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court granted a stay of the ruling while it decides whether to accept the appeal.