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The lawsuit, filed late last month in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, asks a judge to prohibit college trustees from changing bylaws without the consent of the monks, whose order founded the university.
 

 

 

Harvard graduate students are on strike. On December 3, more than 4,000 members of Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW hit the picket line after negotiations with the university hit an impasse. The union, which the university formally recognized in May 2018, has been negotiating with Harvard officials for over a year. HGSU-UAW is demanding better pay and more benefits to address what graduate workers have reported as unmanageable costs of living — covering basic necessities like housing, child care, and mental-health care — in one of the most expensive areas of the country.

On Wednesday, Columbia announced a global effort to help people like Sahtout — refugees and students displaced by wars and natural disasters. The Columbia University Scholarship for Displaced Students, underwritten with a commitment of up to $6 million a year, is the first of its kind in the world, university officials said. As many as 30 students a year who are admitted to any of the university’s undergraduate or graduate programs will have all of their education and living expenses covered.

The collapse of the coal industry and the opioid epidemic continue to decimate Kentucky’s Appalachian region, disrupting families and sapping crucial tax dollars from rural schools. At the same time, these cash-strapped district administrators are having to provide more basic services to students, who may show up for class hungry, homeless or in need of health care. In response, Berea College, a 1,600-student liberal arts institution that doesn’t charge tuition, has vastly expanded its K-12 assistance program, Partners for Education, to provide “cradle-to-career” services to Appalachian families in some of the country’s poorest communities.

On most college campuses, December marks the end of the semester, but for the first time in 185 years there was no fall semester at Green Mountain College in southwestern Vermont. The closing of the liberal arts college last spring has hurt the local economy in the tiny town of Poultney — population 3,339.