The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved a new $300-million plan to reverse Israel's brain drain and attract top-class researchers back to their homeland, Ynetnews reported. A recent survey found that the ratio of Israeli academics working in the United States to those in Israel was nearly 25 percent. The new fund, one-third of which will come from the government, will establish 30 centers of academic excellence at existing universities with attractive salary, budget, and working conditions to woo academics.

Gretchen M. Bataille lost her job as president of the University of North Texas because of repeated disagreements with the university system's chancellor, reports The Dallas Morning News. Its review of thousands of newly released public documents shows that Ms. Bataille and Lee F. Jackson, the chancellor, clashed over budgets, tuition increases, campus technology, and facilities. In an e-mail message she sent to a colleague just after her resignation. Ms. Bataille wrote: "The irony is that there really isn’t much else! No smoking guns, no actions that warrant termination, and mostly no good sense exhibited in any of this."

The Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the state's three public universities, approved sizable increases in tuition and fees for next year, but warned the institutions that the new revenue would not solve their money problems, The Arizona Republic reported. The increases vary by institution, coming to just over 20 percent for undergraduates at the University of Arizona, nearly 19 percent for new students at Arizona State University, and about 16 percent for new students at Northern Arizona University. The university system had to absorb a 17-percent midyear

A proposal in the Michigan State Senate would require universities that conduct embryonic-stem-cell research to report to the state each year how many such cells they have received, created, stored, and used for research, the Detroit Free Press reported. The provision was inserted into a budget bill for higher education that the full Senate has not yet considered. The Republican lawmaker who sponsored the provision, State Sen. Tom George, said it was not an attempt to thwart the intent of a 2008 ballot initiative that eased restrictions on stem-cell research. "There is an interest in knowing, Are we creating thousands of new stem cell lines, or just two?" Senator George said.

President Obama will donate his $1.4-million award from winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to a range of nonprofit organizations, including several that offer college scholarships, the White House announced today. The president is dividing the prize money among 10 charities, six of which are college-oriented. College Summit, which aims to prepare elementary- and middle-school students to attend college, will receive $125,000. Five foundations offering college scholarships -- the Posse Foundation, which gives four-year full-tuition scholarships to public high-school students; the United...

Britain's higher-education minister has urged the country's universities to make up for cuts in government support in part by applying for federal dollars from the United States, the Financial Times reported. David Lammy, the minister of state for higher education and intellectual property, told university leaders on Thursday that the American federal government's "huge financial stimulus for U.S. research" presented "an opportunity" for British institutions, which have been reeling from sweeping budget cuts. "British universities can lament the fact that we can't afford a cash injection on that scale. Or they can, as I've repeatedly urged, try to get a piece...

C.L. Max Nikias, provost of the University of Southern California, will become the Los Angeles college's next president, officials announced today. Mr. Nikias, who will take office in August, had been seen as a favorite to replace the exceedingly popular Steven B. Sample, who has transformed the university in his nearly two decades as president. Mr. Nikias will face the challenges of replacing a living icon and sustaining the university's rapid ascent into the top academic ranks.

Nearly a dozen former college football and basketball players who competed as far back as the 1960s have joined a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA, arguing that the association should pay them for the use of their images. The suit, brought last year against the governing body of college sports by Ed O'Bannon, a former basketball standout at UCLA, is pending in federal district court in California. The NCAA's amateurism rules prevent college athletes from accepting payment in exchange for the use of their images or likenesses in videos and other commercial ventures. But Mr. O'Bannon has asserted that the rule should not apply to former...

A newly renovated Muslim-student center at Brandeis University was vandalized last week, The Boston Globe reported. The president of the Muslim Student Association entered the Usdan Student Center to find lamps overturned, appliances unplugged, and a copy of the Koran missing. Dennis Nealon, Brandeis's spokesman, told the Globe, "We do not believe it is a hate crime, but that assessment will be made during the investigation."

The University of Alabama at Huntsville confirmed on Wednesday that it had fired Amy Bishop, the biology professor who is accused of killing three co-workers and injuring three others in a departmental meeting last month, The Decatur Daily reported. Previously, the university had said Ms. Bishop was suspended without pay. Ms. Bishop, who is in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing on charges of capital murder...