US: Top official calls for urgency on college costs

As Occupy movement protests helped push spiralling college costs into the national spotlight, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged higher education officials last week to "think more creatively - and with much greater urgency" about ways to contain costs and reduce student debt, writes Tamar Lewin for The New York Times.

The education department characterised Duncan's remarks, at a Las Vegas conference of college financial aid workers, as the start of a "national conversation" about high costs, which have prompted raucous protests across the country and ignited an angry push among some borrowers demanding debt forgiveness, federal grants and interest-free loans. It was clear that the administration was taking heed of the rising furore over tuition increases, and a growing online debate about how much a college degree is worth at a time when few jobs are available for graduates.
Full report on The New York Times site