Gov. David A. Paterson of New York, a Democrat, has proposed several reforms in his annual budget that would give New York's public universities more operating flexibility, including the authority to set tuition, receive revenues from other programs without a state appropriation, lease property, and purchase goods without going through the state's procurement process. Officials at the State University of New York and City University of New York systems have been seeking similar changes for many years, but have been rebuffed by the state Legislature.

The Internal Revenue Service will audit 40 higher-education institutions, including Harvard University, according to a report from Bloomberg News. The examination is a follow-up to a questionnaire sent to 400 public and private universities, including Harvard, in October 2008 by the federal tax agency. The IRS is investigating how much institutions pay their executives and how they manage their business relationships and endowments, among other things.

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, announced plans on Friday for a new partnership between Oak Ridge National Laboratories and the University of Tennessee that he says could attract as many as 400 new graduate students and double the university's research budget. Using $6-million in state money, the program would bring in 200 researchers at Oak Ridge as faculty members, the governor said. The plan is meant to attract more money from businesses and to be an incubator for startup companies.

State tax revenues declined by nearly 11 percent over all in the third quarter of 2009, the third consecutive quarter of double-digit declines, according to a report released today by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York at Albany. But states in the Western half of the United States fell further into the red than the rest of the country, with likely implications for higher education and other recipients of state funds. Total tax revenues fell more than 19 percent in the Southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas in the quarter that ended in September. The 11 states in the Southeast had the smallest total decline in tax revenues, 7.5 percent, over that period.

Gov. Haley Barbour's proposal to merge the administrations of several universities in Mississippi to save money has little chance of passing in the state's House of Representatives, said the chairman of that chamber's Universities and Colleges Committee, according to The Commercial Appeal, a Memphis newspaper. The state's Senate, however, may still be open to considering the proposed merger, the paper reported. The plan, which among other things would merge three historically black universities, has drawn sharp criticism.

A federal judge in Michigan has ruled that a disabled student does not need to be enrolled in a degree-granting program in order to live in the dormitories at Oakland University, according to The Detroit News. The 25-year-old student has a cognitive disorder and was completing a program to improve his social and independent-living skills.

As the California Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in a case over whether students who are illegal immigrants may pay the cheaper in-state tuition rates at public colleges, a Texas group has filed a similar lawsuit in the Lone Star State. The Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas, which describes itself as a nonprofit group of taxpayers in Harris County, Tex., says that roughly 8,000 illegal immigrants are violating federal law by paying resident tuition rates and receiving state student aid. The defendants in the case include the state comptroller, Susan Combs, as well as the University of Houston system, the Houston Community College system, and the Lone Star College system.

The U.S. Education Department today released a report critical of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, saying the regional accrediting organization did not set minimum standards for its member institutions on program length or credit hours. "The lack of requirements could result in inflated credit hours, the improper designation of full-time student status, and the over-awarding of Title IV funds," states the report, which was issued by the Education Department's Office of Inspector General. The accreditor responded that "the fundamental concern of higher education's constituencies is whether students graduate with appropriate knowledge, skills, and competencies, not how many hours they spend in a classroom."

Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat, has vetoed a bill that would have required him to appoint seven of the University of Wisconsin system's 18 regents from separate geographic districts, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Supporters of the measure, which the Legislature passed in November, say too many regents have come from Milwaukee and Madison. But the governor said the bill would have encouraged appointing regents who would be likely to "advocate narrowly for the needs of campuses located in their home districts" rather than to serve the broader interests of the state's taxpayers, businesses, and students.

Colleges in the city of Pittsburgh have rejected an offer from Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to pay $5-million annually for the next five years, according to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Now the mayor says he will push the city council to vote Wednesday on his proposal to levy a 1-percent tax on college tuition. A majority of the council favors the tax, the paper reports. A bill introduced recently in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives would prevent localities from taxing colleges.