Quick Takes

The mayor of Providence, David N. Cicilline, has been floating ideas for weeks on how to get tax revenue out of private colleges -- alarming many of them in the process. On Wednesday, he formally unveiled his proposals, which will be considered by Rhode Island lawmakers, The Providence Journal reported. One bill would allow local governments to tax private colleges $150 for every full-time student enrolled from out of the state. The other bill would subject private colleges to local property taxes of up to 25 percent of what entities that are not tax-exempt would pay.

The standard ways of comparing the higher education success of different countries have come under attack on a range of fronts, mostly focusing on how entities like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development focus on student participation rates that vary enormously across borders. A new analysis takes a different approach, which paints a different, but not necessarily prettier, picture of how the United States performs. The report, released by Jobs for the Future's Making Opportunity Affordable project, generally supports the idea -- up to a point -- that the U.S. is losing its edge in the international competition to produce educated citizens and workers. But that decline occurs mostly because the country is falling behind others in the production of sub-baccalaureate degree holders (it continues to fare pretty well on bachelor's degree recipients), pointing to the need for the U.S. (and states and other funders) "to shift public resources toward less costly sub-Bachelor’s programs in community colleges, while ensuring that these programs lead more students to successful outcomes, including credentials and degrees of value in the labor market."

For years, various groups have urged that academic medical centers should reduce the total hours and consecutive hours that medical residents work, and focus more on educational programming for them. A study released Wednesday by the RAND Corporation and the University of California at Los Angeles examines the cost of enacting such reforms, and says that they would cost teaching hospitals $1.6 billion annually. The report acknowledges that society might benefit from such changes, but raises questions about whether academic medicine can afford them.

Brandeis University has told all employees that it will suspend for one year any institutional contributions to retirement funds. The university has been facing a serious budget shortfall, leading to a controversial plan -- currently under review -- to sell a highly regarded art collection. Many institutions have been trying of late to add retirement incentives to encourage more senior employees to consider retiring. Brandeis employees can continue to make their own contributions to their retirement accounts. The university will save $7.4 million by suspending its contributions.

College officials who complain about the ever-growing volumes of federal regulations that apply to their institutions have a new way to vent. The federal Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance has created a Web site where college administrators or others can identify federal student aid rules that are "duplicative, no longer necessary, inconsistent with other federal regulations, and/or overly burdensome"; a committee of officials will then review and make recommendations to Congress on how lawmakers might streamline or reduce the regulatory burden on colleges. Review will begin on July 15, so start your bitchin'.

A federal judge is urging the dismissal of a lawsuit by Andrew Giuliani, son of the former mayor and presidential candidate, against Duke University. The young Giuliani charges that Duke unfairly kicked him off its golf team, while the university has responded by detailing incidents of rudeness and inappropriate behavior by Giuliani against coaches and team members. The New York Daily News reported that the judge not only found little justification for the suit, but used golf metaphors to explain his view that the claim against Duke "slices far from the fairways."