WASHINGTON – Calling for a “new college compact,” Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday unveiled a $350 billion plan aimed at making college more affordable and reducing the crushing burden of student debt. At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, the state with the highest average student debt in the country, Clinton proposed steps to reduce the cost of four-year public schools, make two-year community colleges tuition-free and cut student loan interest rates.

The days of skyrocketing tuition at Washington’s public universities appear to be over. Unprecedented tuition cuts contained in the new state budget will lower the cost of attending the state’s colleges and universities by up to 20 percent over the next two years, and any future increases will be capped at the average annual rate of statewide wage growth.

Here’s a news item from the Associated Press: BOISE, Idaho (AP) — All four of Idaho's four-year public universities and colleges have eliminated degree programs, dissolved academic departments or reduced staff over the past year as part of a statewide effort to cut costs and...

Idaho education officials want to flip the traditional college admission process around in order to boost the state's dismal college attendance rates, the AP reports. The State Board of Education listened to a new proposal Thursday that recommended alerting qualified high school seniors that they...

BOSTON (AP) — A Harvard University survey released Wednesday found that nearly one in two millennials believe America's criminal justice system is unfair and few believe protests triggered by the killings of black men at the hands of police will make a significant difference. The findings, from a survey of 18-to-29-year-olds conducted from March 18 to April 1, come as anger over the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore man who suffered a spinal cord injury in police custody, turned violent this week.

OLYMPIA – Amid fears that cutting tuition would harm the quality of Washington’s higher-education programs, the state Senate passed a bill Wednesday that could slash rates by as much as 30 percent over the next two years. “Student debt is out of control on a federal level and on the state level,” said Sen. Barbara Bailey, R-Oak Harbor. “This bill will take us back to where we really need to be.”

Eastern Washington University is no longer providing gun storage for students and others, mostly because it lacks enough space and personnel to accommodate the growing requests, but also due to liability concerns. “We made that decision based on the resources that I have available,” said EWU police Chief Tim Walters, explaining that it required extensive check-in and checkout procedures each time a firearm was either dropped off or picked up.

Millennials! You’ve heard of them, right? Judging by the relentless media inquiry, you might suspect they are an alien race, landed from the future or outer space or Brooklyn, whom we must now dissect sociologically. As with every successive generation, at least since the Baby Boom, there is a widespread and thumb-fingered effort to get a grip on just who these young people are. National news magazines do cover stories. Pollsters track their attitudes. The Pew Research Center offers a quiz: “How Millennial Are You?” And everyone tries to fold 73 million young people, ages 18 to 34 or thereabouts, into a single box. They’re self-absorbed. They’re pampered. They’re socially conscious. They wear pajamas in public. They’re creative and entrepreneurial. They’re this or that, or that or this.

Two private meetings this summer brought top officials from the University of Washington and Washington State University close to a deal on "co-branding" a medical school in Spokane. Yet the efforts for a third and possibly final meeting to seal an agreement were stymied when WSU officials hesitated. And now the two schools are veering away from collaboration that would have shared local faculty, and brought medical school admissions, administration and research dollars to Spokane.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — College students from West Africa may be subject to extra health checks when they arrive to study in the United States as administrators try to insulate campuses from the worst Ebola outbreak in history. With the virus continuing to kill in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the expected arrival of thousands of students from those countries has U.S. authorities on alert but cautioning against alarm.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department said Tuesday that it was awarding $28.4 million in grants to 40 states, Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands to reduce the cost of advanced placement exams for low-income students. The department said the reduced cost will encourage low-income and first-generation students to take the exams. Students who pass the test could earn college credit, reducing the time and cost for a post-secondary degree.

KENNEWICK – Community college and university officials have been told to plan for more budget cuts to balance the state’s 2015-17 budget. The Office of Financial Management is expecting the state to need at least another $1 billion in revenue to meet its needs for the next biennium. Before Gov. Jay Inslee develops his budget proposal, colleges as well as other state agencies have been told to make requests that include up to 15 percent reductions, the Tri-City Herald reported.