Two senators have asked the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, to hold off deporting illegal immigrants who would be eligible to stay under the proposed Dream Act. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, and Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican of Indiana, wrote a letter requesting the policy change. The legislation, which if enacted would apply to only a small number of students, would provide a path to permanent residency for those who came to the United States illegally with their parents before the age of 15, who have lived in the country for at least five years, who have a high-school diploma or GED, and who attend college.

Personal information on 3.3 million student-loan borrowers, stolen last month from ECMC Group Inc., a student-loan-guarantee agency in Minneapolis, has turned up in a police evidence room, the Associated Press reported today. The information, which was held in two safes, was recovered shortly after the theft, on the weekend of March 20-21, and has been in the Minneapolis police's evidence room since then. The data do not appear to be compromised, ECMC said in a written statement.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced $99.8-million in Teacher Quality Partnership grants today, money that will go to universities and school districts working together to improve teacher training. The 12 grant recipients include seven teacher residency programs, which pair aspiring teachers with high-need schools; three universities changing their licensing programs; and two that are working on both residencies and licensing. The administration is seeking to change teacher-training programs as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now known as No Child Left Behind, comes up for renewal.

President Obama will donate his $1.4-million award from winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to a range of nonprofit organizations, including several that offer college scholarships, the White House announced today. The president is dividing the prize money among 10 charities, six of which are college-oriented. College Summit, which aims to prepare elementary- and middle-school students to attend college, will receive $125,000. Five foundations offering college scholarships -- the Posse Foundation, which gives four-year full-tuition scholarships to public high-school students; the United Negro College Fund; the Hispanic Scholarship Fund; the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation; and the American Indian College Fund -- will receive $125,000 apiece.

President Obama today announced a $100-million investment in a program designed to prepare more students to attend and complete college, including money for early-college high schools that grant high-school and associate degrees simultaneously, and for dual-enrollment programs that allow students to earn college credit while still in high school. The money was proposed for the College Pathways Program in Mr. Obama's budget for the 2011 fiscal year. At an event hosted by the America's Promise Alliance, Mr. Obama said his administration would also soon announce programs to help students and families complete and submit Fafsa forms.

President Obama will sign an executive order today on the White House Initiative for Historically Black Colleges, The initiative, intended to strengthen historically black institutions, grew from a federal program begun by Jimmy Carter in 1980. Mr. Obama's proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year includes a 5-percent increase for a program to support historically black colleges, as well as more money for graduate programs and facilities at the colleges.

At a meeting of the nation's governors today, President Obama praised an initiative to develop "college- and career-ready standards," which he plans to make a centerpiece of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it comes before Congress for renewal. His plan would require states to adopt such standards in order to be eligible for federal Title I funds and would encourage all players -- including teachers colleges -- to help align schools toward the standards. Mr. Obama's speech marked the beginning of his more-public efforts to promote proposed changes in the act, first outlined this month in his suggested budget for the 2011 fiscal year and described in more detail by the Education Department.

A federal Office of Indian Education program that awards money to colleges and universities to train American Indians to become teachers and school administrators has failed to maintain accurate records, creating "an environment susceptible to fraud, waste, and abuse," according to an audit by the U.S. Education Department's inspector general. In a report issued on Tuesday, the inspector general said that the inadequate record-keeping meant the department could not adequately track students who received the grants to make sure they were paying back the funds or serving Indian communities. The office is also storing students' data without their knowledge, the report says, and some of the grant money was awarded to institutions that planned to spend less than half of it on training students.

The Veterans Affairs Department announced today that it was committed to processing benefit payments for veterans attending college by February 1 and that it hoped to avoid the long delays that plagued students who were waiting for benefits from the Post-9/11 GI Bill last fall. The department, which almost doubled its staff to process the higher-than-anticipated number of claims in the fall, said it had already processed 72,000 of some 103,000 applications it received for spring enrollments.

Many major public universities have increased subsidies to their athletic programs, even as state fiscal shortfalls have tightened the institutions' overall budgets, according to a USA Today analysis of athletics spending at 99 public universities in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top competitive level. At more than 30 public universities, the percentage of athletics-department revenue from university subsidies grew from 2005 to 2008, and many of the increases were at member institutions of the six richest conferences.