Education News

MPR News keeps track of the latest education news in Minnesota so you can understand the events shaping the future of learning and how it impacts students at any level.

Stay informed about local education events, policies and more happening in schools and colleges across Minnesota.

School district officials say a four-day schedule works well for students and their communities. But Minnesota Department of Education officials would like to see the shortened weeks go the way of the one-room schoolhouse.
Is Pine Tech’s bid for community-college status part of a trend?
Pine Technical College‘s attempt to become Pine Technical and Community College is part of a long-term change among Minnesota’s technical colleges. A handful of technical colleges have become comprehensive campuses in the last decade or so, leaving another handful with a purely technical orientation. Pine’s bid to become a comprehensive campus comes a workforce development Read more →
Utopian Pasts and Futures The belief that the liberal arts and sciences should be central to higher education rests on a distinctively American idea. The criticism of this kind of education, and the insistence in much of the national debate today about the priority of training in vocational skills, is also a distinctively American idea. (The Huffington Read more →
Chancellor: Campuses will control MnSCU’s transformation
Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system Chancellor Steven Rosenstone — who has faced faculty suspicion that he’s trying to centralize decision-making — says in the Pioneer Press that he won’t try to micromanage the committees carrying out his overhaul of the system: “The people doing the work have to be the ones at the Read more →
MnSCU names two interim campus presidents, academic chief
As I mentioned in my story on Metropolitan State University yesterday, St. Cloud State University Provost Devinder Malhotra has been named interim president of Metro State. He starts July 1, and his term is for two years. He’s the second interim president named yesterday. Lisa Larson will be taking charge at North Hennepin Community College Read more →
Federal task force to target campus sexual assaults The announcement is seen as a victory by many college activists, who have organized in recent years to file federal complaints against administrators. (Los Angeles Times) Textbook CFO: U.S. Higher-Education Recovery Unlikely This Year Pearson’s finance chief said Thursday that the publisher’s core U.S. higher-education business faces Read more →
State college and university leaders are trying to fill the growing hunger for bachelor’s degrees in the Twin Cities metro area – and say Metropolitan State University may not be large enough to handle demand. The 43-year-old university in St. Paul has long played a niche role within the public university system – as a Read more →