Margaret Spellings talks about customer satisfaction not only as one who holds some large purse strings in Washington, but as the parent of a daughter at Davidson College. Speaking with U.S. News ahead of her much-anticipated speech on the future of higher education, Spellings outlined her plans for shaking up the government's relationship with the country's colleges and universities. "I think it's right that the federal government–who's a big investor in all of this–[should] know as much about our customers who are freshmen as we do about our customers who are third-grade readers," Spellings says.
Starting today, anyone can get an account. Even your mom. "Welcome to Facebook, everyone," the company wrote on its blog at the bright hour of 4:47 this morning. (So much for that "Mark Zuckerberg doesn't wake up before 10 a.m." whining, Yahoo!.) The Daily Stanford seemed to know the move was coming first. Guess the folks there wake up early, too.
University of Virginia dropped early decision--and added some new evidence to the case that this will help level the admissions playing ground. Only one of the 172 freshmen who are low-income was admitted early decision last year, the school's admissions dean told the Cavalier Daily, and fewer than 20 of the 948 students admitted early last year applied for financial aid.
AP - The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush's portrayal of a world growing safer.
AP - New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hit back at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday as the political fighting escalated over which president Bill Clinton or George W. Bush missed more opportunities to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
AP - The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.
The war in Iraq has not made the world safer from terror, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told CNN on Tuesday. Musharraf -- often portrayed as being in complete agreement with President Bush -- said he agreed to cooperate in the war on terror in the interests of Pakistan. "We... are victims of terrorism and... are against al Qaeda or any form of terrorism related to [the] Taliban," he said.
The key conclusions of a document assessing the state of global terrorism were declassified Tuesday. One assessment is the war in Iraq is shaping a new generation of terror leaders. Bush suggested parts of the report were originally leaked for political purposes, and that media accounts of the leak were meant to confuse Americans.
Two men who worked at West Virginia's Sago Mine during the January disaster that killed 12 miners have committed suicide in the past month, state police said Tuesday.