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To Gordon Jones, president of the College of Western Idaho, the case for allowing community colleges like his to offer baccalaureates is clear: Employers are in desperate need of skilled labor, and workers need faster, cheaper ways to advance in their careers. But when the College of Western Idaho sought state permission to award a bachelor of applied science in business administration late last year, Idaho’s public four-year colleges protested — loudly. Boise State University, 18 miles to the east, called the degree duplicative and warned that it would cannibalize limited state resources.

After a fraught and drawn-out appropriations cycle, Congress released its final $1.2 trillion package of spending bills early Thursday morning. The measures would provide little in the way of new funds for programs important to colleges, largely aligning with the Senate’s proposed budget and avoiding billions of dollars in cuts suggested by House Republicans. If the legislation passes, the Education Department would receive $79.1 billion, a relatively small $500 million decrease from last year’s budget.

When Oakland University’s 14th-seeded men’s basketball team defeated No. 3 Kentucky on Thursday night, delivering the first shocking upset of this year’s N.C.A.A. tournament, it cast a spotlight on the relatively anonymous university based in Rochester, Mich. And if history is any indication, the next few days and weeks — and perhaps longer — promise to be a lucrative time for the school. Upset victories by double-digit seeds are not just a big deal for busted tournament brackets. They also raise the profile of the schools who pull off the shockers. 

A technical problem with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has resulted in inaccurate estimates of some applicants’ aid eligibility, the U.S. Department of Education announced on Friday. The latest snag in a series of complications with the new form will require the department to reprocess and resend a few hundred thousand aid applications to colleges this spring, probably delaying when those students will receive financial-aid offers. The problem, which the department said had been fixed, affected applications from dependent students who reported assets on their FAFSA, according to the announcement. 

Justin Chase Brown took last week off. It was spring break at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where he serves as director of scholarships and financial aid. The storm is the disruption resulting from the problematic rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which went live in late December, about three months later than usual. After a rocky first month defined by glitches and unexplained errors that have hindered many applicants, the U.S. Department of Education announced in late January that it wouldn’t start sending processed federal-aid forms to colleges until the first half of March, pushing back the financial-aid timeline even further.