George R. Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, will step down from his post, effective December 31, 2010, the association announced today. Mr. Boggs has been the association's leader for a decade and an ardent advocate for community colleges for more than 40 years.

Metropolitan Community College will sue Nebraska's five other community colleges in an attempt to claim about $9-million in state aid that its leaders say should have gone to the Omaha institution, the Omaha World-Herald reports. The lawsuit will argue that the other community colleges intentionally misreported their tuition numbers, lowering them to get a bigger share of state aid.

The U.S. Department of Education today awarded $11.3-million in grants to 29 projects in 20 states that will benefit working adults and displaced workers pursuing degrees or credentials at community colleges. The projects encompass a wide range of activities, including remediation, tutoring, counseling, and support services. Some projects will use distance learning to reach out to adult learners. The grants, which range from $200,000 to $500,000, are administered by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education.

Nearly one in 10 community-college students in the United States cannot get a federal student loan, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt that echoes previous reports on the difficulty such students face in financing their higher education. Black and American Indian students were twice as likely as other students to lack access to the loans, the new report says. The report, "Getting With the Program: Community-College Students Need Access to Federal Loans," warns that students who need to borrow may turn to risky and expensive private loans or credit cards when federal loans are not available at community colleges.

The Pew Hispanic Center released a pair of reports on Wednesday about Hispanic youth and education. One examines the gap between the educational aspirations of Hispanic youth and their college-enrollment rates (only half plan to attend), and the second looks at the changing pathways of Hispanic youth into adulthood, pointing out differences between young men and women.

Immigrant black students are more likely to attend selective American colleges and universities than are native black and white students, according to a new study published in the journal Sociology of Education. The study, by sociologists at the John Hopkins University and Syracuse University, expands on previous research that showed that black high-school graduates are more likely to attend college than are white high-school graduates with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and that many of the black students who attend selective colleges are immigrants or the children of immigrants.