Deirdre Fernandes

Maria Mossaides, the state’s child advocate, said her office is considering possible changes.

It is a new and stunning kind of public power-push by uber-rich donors, whose ranks are growing, and who suddenly appear hungry to use their money to shape higher education in America today, experts said.

For many Black academics, the resignation by Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University was a reminder that there is little room for error for Black leaders in an arena that is still dominated by white men.

Government officials can be quick to punish parents whose babies die while sleeping with them, but slow to craft a safety message that resonates with today’s parents.

Can parents can be penalized for “child neglect” when sleeping near a baby who dies? Yes, and the decision can rest largely on who is assigned the investigation.

Government officials are blaming some parents who endure the tragedy of an infant death while co-sleeping. Instead of compassion, they got mostly criticism and penalties — and this falls largely on low-income families.

Many selective colleges have admitted a more racially and economically diverse first-year class. But they have also rejected more students than ever before.

Across Massachusetts, community colleges are hoping the latest and largest infusion of aid — the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan recently signed by President Biden — will serve as incentive to keep students in school and bring back many of those who have walked away from their degree programs.

UMass President Martin Meehan will recommend a freeze on in-state tuition rates for a second year in a row, a nod to the continuing financial strains that many of the system’s students face in the pandemic.

The group, which has sued Harvard over its use of race in college admissions, lost in lower courts.

The university fared worse in achieving gender equity among its top earners than many of the country’s 130 public and private research institutions surveyed in a report released Wednesday.

The vandalism last month of the first-year women’s multicultural floor has elevated long-simmering frustrations over an entrenched culture that critics say has not reckoned sufficiently with concerns over the climate on campus.

College students have been among the most frequently tested in Massachusetts for COVID-19, but they may be among the last to get vaccinated against the virus.

The longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the current philosophy of “delegating a lot peripherally to the states and the cities to be on their own” has resulted in a conflicted, uneven response to the crisis.

At more than two dozen colleges and universities across the region, the number of full-time graduate and undergraduate students plummeted by more than 20 percent this September compared with the previous year, according to the New England Commission of Higher Education, the regional accrediting agen…

Its the university’s first layoffs due to the pandemic.

The swift turnaround by the Department of Homeland Security came during a federal district court hearing about a lawsuit filed by Harvard University and MIT seeking a temporary injunction of the new guidelines.

More than half a dozen Massachusetts community colleges and state universities could rapidly burn through their cash in the worst-case financial scenario for the next academic year, leaving them on shaky footing, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Many are concerned about their health, and plans for hybrid teaching methods.

Scholar and best-selling author Ibram X. Kendi will launch a Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University next month, the school announced on Thursday.