Free Application Week Backfires in Indiana

Here's the biggest news in collegeland on Tuesday:

- Indiana University waived application fees for one week last summer to get more kids to apply to college, and officials had hoped that they could have the event once a year. But details released this week say it devolved into a cash drain quicker than you can say Hoosier, costing the school some $300,000, the Huffington Post reports. The Associated Press adds that many applications were never completed, costing admissions officers both time and money, and the free application week won't be happening again this summer.

- The president of University of California—San Francisco has dropped her stock in Altria, the company that owns Phillip Morris USA, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, the New York Times reports. The University of California system divested from tobacco stocks in 2001, and UCSF is the second-largest recipient of National Institutes of Health funding, according to the Times. Reactions to Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann's stock ownership seem mixed, but one thing is certain: People are happy she cast her Altria stock aside.

- A hedge fund manager who has criticized for-profit colleges in the past will pay off the debt of a single mother who owes more than $17,000 to a vocational college, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Yasmine Issa testified in front of the Senate that, despite her education, she could not find a job or pay off her debts. The testimony moved Steven Eisman to challenge the Career College Association, an organization that represents colleges like the one Issa attended, to pay half of her debts if Eisman paid the other half. On Monday, however, Eisman said he'd pay it all if the CCA didn't respond directly to his challenge, which it didn't—yet, anyway.

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