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State grant and scholarship programs for college students increasingly favor students who aren’t needy, according to a new report.

Performer John Legend visits college hopefuls at Duke Ellington School for the Arts. A new report faults Washington for awarding college scholarships without regard to financial need. (Photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)The report, “Beyond Need and Merit,” comes from the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Ostensibly, it recommends that states eliminate the distinction between need-based aid and merit aid and instead award all grant aid by a simple formula that considers both.

But what the report really advocates is that all states base their grant programs primarily on need. Its top recommendation: “Focus resources on students whose chance of enrolling and succeeding in college will be most improved by the receipt of state support.”

A surprisingly large number of states don’t do that.

Three students from Boston University were killed Saturday and at least five others injured when their minivan flipped in a New Zealand vacation town, according to the Associated Press.

A backpack lies on a road after a minivan crashed, near Turangi, New Zealand, Saturday, killing three and injuring five Boston University students. (AP Photo/New Zealand Herald, John Cowpland)The students were traveling Saturday morning near the town of Taupo, part of a two-van convoy en route to hike the famed Tongariro Crossing. University authorities identified the dead as Daniela Lekhno, Roch Jauberty and Austin Brashears. A fourth student, Margaret Theriault, was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition, officials said.

Most of the students were enrolled in a study-abroad program based in Auckland.

Study abroad is an increasingly popular choice on the higher-education menu these days - - even among community college students. Goucher College, the University of Richmond and many other local institutions pride themselves on near-universal participation in study abroad. Eighteen large universities each have more than 5,000 students studying abroad, according to the Institute of International Education. Nearly 300,000 U.S. students study abroad annually.

Here is a guest post by Josh Wyner, executive director of the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit that seeks open-minded dialogue and enlightened leadership.

Graduation exercises at Anacostia High School, 2010. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) Beginning this month, high school students across the country will be making choices about the colleges they will attend for the next two or four years. Whether they are choosing from among elite private colleges and flagship public universities, or from a list of open-access state four-year and community colleges, how will they and their families make those decisions?

Until now, it has been almost impossible for students to include in their deliberations what graduating from specific colleges and their programs is likely to yield in terms of jobs and salaries after graduation. But that is starting to change.

Here is a guest post by Abir Qasem, director of academic computing at Bridgewater College, and Tanya Gupta, a senior resource management officer at World Bank.

Three University of Florida Gators. The university is under fire for making academic cuts while the athletics operation prospers. (REUTERS/Dave Kaup)The University of Florida recently decided to drastically shrink its computer science department, a move that will save the university around $1.4 million. At the same time, the university’s athletics budget went up by around $2 million. Although there has been a strong reaction against this move in the media, there have been those who supported the UF decision, saying that it was an expression of the free market. For instance, an article in The Atlantic noted that UF Athletics, as a nonprofit entity, returns part of its profit to the university and also receives generous contributions from alumni and others. This line of reasoning implies that athletics should not be cut, as they contribute directly to the college’s bottom line. However the argument being made is seriously flawed. Let’s explore why.

A team of University of Michigan professors have created a new model for funding academic research that potentially eliminates months of delay from when an idea is born till the money arrives to put it in play.

They hope the rapid-funding approach will help their peers at Michigan compete in an increasingly fast-paced research community. (U-Mich, with $1.24 billion in annual research funding, is the second-most-productive research university in the nation, behind Johns Hopkins.) Ideas that used to languish for months or years in poorly circulated academic journals now see instantaneous release online and can be shared by all. Michigan administrators believe the concept, an apparent first among the nation’s research universities, represents the future of scholarship on university campuses.