Record flooding struck Ames, Iowa, on Wednesday, closing several buildings on the campus of Iowa State University and surrounding athletics facilities with water, The Tribune, a local newspaper, reported. But the university expects no delays for the fall semester. “The main part of campus is in good shape,” John McCarroll, executive director of university relations, told The Des Moines Register. Move-in day for residence halls is next Tuesday, and classes start August 23. Floodwaters swamped the basketball court in Hilton Coliseum, but did not reach the football field at Jack Trice Stadium, so the Cyclones' home opener on September 2 can go ahead as scheduled.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by descendants of the Apache leader Geronimo against the federal government, Yale University, and the Order of Skull and Bones, the Yale Daily News reported. The descendants believe members of Skull and Bones, a secret society that is a separate entity from Yale, may have looted a skull and other remains from the legendary chieftain's grave at Fort Sill, Okla., more than 90 years ago. The university has said it does not possess the remains, and representatives of Skull and Bones have declined to comment.

Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing figures from the Federal Reserve and Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org. The total owed in revolving credit, most of which is credit-card debt, is now $826.5-billion, according to June 2010 figures from the Fed, while Mr. Kantrowitz calculates the total owed in federal and private student loans as $3.2-billion higher—some $829.785 billion. The Journal notes, however, that the figures reflect a sharp drop over the past two years in revolving-credit debt, which reached a high of $975.7-billion in September 2008.

"Lost" images from a trove of glass negatives said by their finder, Richard Norsigian, to be early works of Ansel Adams may actually have been taken by a photographer from the Fresno area named Earl Brooks, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Culture Monster blog. Marian Walton, an 87-year-old niece of the late Mr. Brooks, told the newspaper that when she saw an image from one of Mr. Norsigian's plates on television, she thought, "Oh my gosh, that's Uncle Earl's picture!" Several photos in her possession were later found to be exact or close matches to images from Mr. Norsigian's trove. A lawyer for Mr. Norsigian said that if prints attributed to Ms. Walton's uncle did turn out to have been created from Mr. Norsigian's negatives, it proved only that Ansel Adams had made prints from the negatives and that Earl Brooks had later acquired them.

California State University at Fresno is...

The $41.7-million cost of the University of Oregon's new academic center for athletes prices out to more than $1,000 per square foot, about twice as much per square foot as Portland's priciest condo buildings, according to The Oregonian. The John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes, named for a founding board member of Nike and paid for by Philip H. Knight, the company's chairman, has spurred controversy because of its opulence and exclusivity—most of it is off-limits to nonathletes. "Forty million dollars buys a lot of new faculty, reduced class sizes, better facilities for the rest of campus," said Nathan Tublitz, a professor of biology and president of the University Senate who has previously criticized the role of athletics at the university. Phil Weiler, a university spokesman, countered that "the building was a gift," and that donors decide where to direct their funds.

The University of Virginia will require students this fall to voluntarily report if they have been arrested or convicted of a crime, according to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The change, which toughens an existing policy, comes in response to the death last spring of Yeardley Love, a student, and the arrest on murder charges of George Huguely V, a fellow student whose previous arrest on charges of assaulting a police officer was not reported to university officials. John T. Casteen III, who recently retired as the university's president, had suggested changing state law to require law-enforcement agencies to notify universities when a student is arrested. UVa's new president, Teresa A. Sullivan, told reporters on Friday that she believed the self-reporting requirement would be more effective. Still, the policy presents "thorny" legal issues regarding safety and privacy,...

Tony Judt, the longtime professor of European history at New York University and controversial political essayist, has died of complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, according to an obituary in The New York Times. He was 62. Mr. Judt was the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the highly acclaimed Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin Press, 2005), but he was perhaps best known for his political commentary, especially his harsh criticism of Israeli policy. Increasingly paralyzed by ALS during the last two years of his life, he remained outspoken, delivering a public lecture last fall at NYU's Remarque Institute on the topic, "What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy."

A state investigation of fund-raising practices of the California State University-Stanislaus Foundation, begun amid the controversy over what the nonprofit organization was paying to bring Sarah Palin to a campus event, found some accounting problems but no criminal wrongdoing, The Modesto Bee reported. "We examined whether money given to a charitable foundation was handled appropriately, but found no violation of law," Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. said in a written statement on Friday, adding: "However, the foundation board has agreed to make changes to improve oversight of its funds." The financial investigation did not explore whether the university broke the state's public-records law. A separate investigation of that question has been suspended pending the outcome of a lawsuit, Mr. Brown said.

William Ayers, the University of Illinois at Chicago education professor whose former association with a radical group has roiled campuses and national politics in recent years, is retiring after 20 years with the university, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Mr. Ayers has gained support from academics, but his planned speaking engagements on campuses have drawn community protests, most recently in Boston, Georgia, and Wyoming. Mr. Ayers did not comment to the news media on Thursday. Vicki Chou, dean of the Chicago campus's College of Education, told the Tribune that his retirement would be effective soon and had nothing to do with negative publicity. "He's made a significant mark here," she said.

New York's Legislature approved a state budget on Tuesday night, after changing the status of a controversial proposal to give the state's public universities more power, the Associated Press reported. Negotiations will continue on the university proposal, which is now a nonbinding "framework" rather than a law. The measure, which had snagged budget discussions four months past the deadline for the bill, was intended to give the State University of New York and the City University of New York greater autonomy from Albany.