Colleges

California's highest court is poised to be the next battleground in the debate over benefits for illegal immigrants as the justices have agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of a state law allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

On the day Renardo Sidney announced his college choice, the gymnasium floor at Los Angeles Fairfax High was filled with 13 tables decorated in white linen with rose centerpieces, where more than 100 family members and friends dined on a catered meal of chicken and ribs. "Back in the South, this is what we do," Sidney's mother, Patricia, said proudly. "We celebrate big." The Sidney family had left Mississippi for the Los Angeles area to further his basketball career, and the move had paid off.

"All children, except one, grow up," Linda Brest announces. An oboe student with a streak of pink in her blond hair, she might be verbalizing the innermost thoughts of the peers who sit before her -- some of the nation's finest young musicians on the cusp of their adult careers. Brest is narrating a rehearsal of "Peter Pan," a piece arranged by James Newton Howard. The next day, the Colburn Outreach Orchestra will perform it at Belvedere Elementary School in East L.A.

Shakespeare, Edith Wharton and Internet poetry were supposed to be among the main topics of discussion at the largest gathering of humanities professors in the nation. But the sour economy and shrunken job market for academics proved to be more dramatic than any novel or play. An estimated 8,500 professors and wannabe professors of English literature, composition and foreign languages gathered for the annual meeting this week of the Modern Language Assn.

California's two enormous public university systems could face student fee increases, enrollment caps, reduced class offerings and possible layoffs of part-time instructors if the governor's deficit-cutting budget is adopted. The plan calls for most student fees to rise by 10% at the 23-campus Cal State system and by 7.4% at the 10-campus UC system.

It's a big deal when the pope agrees to speak at an event that isn't church-related. It's an even bigger deal when public protest forces him to cancel. Veteran Vatican-watchers said they'd never seen anything quite like it. Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday abruptly called off plans to speak at Rome's prestigious La Sapienza university, after students and professors rallied to proclaim him pontiff non grata.

Sun Yuanping skipped her college graduation ceremony for a job interview. It was an all-day affair and the bookish 22-year-old felt good about it. After all, she has degrees in marketing and botany from a well-regarded school in this central Chinese city, and she ranked in the top fifth of her class. Sun never heard back from that prospective employer nor from dozens of other companies and government agencies where she has applied since she graduated in June.

Joining a trend that reinforces the gap between the nation's wealthiest schools and those far short of multibillion-dollar endowments, Stanford University on Wednesday became the latest elite institution to announce a big boost in financial aid for undergraduates from the middle class.

Mervyl Melendez, the baseball coach at Bethune-Cookman University, respects his school's distinguished tradition within the ranks of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He tries every year to recruit African American players to the private liberal arts school, which has about 3,000 students at its Daytona Beach, Fla., campus. "We offered, in November, seven African American kids scholarships. All but one rejected that offer and signed with different universities," he said.

Laura Simurda faced a tough decision recently in choosing which of three simultaneous graduation ceremonies to attend at USC. After all, she was a triple major, earning degrees in astronomy, history and print journalism. Simurda finally chose to be among her astronomy classmates but doesn't want to be pigeonholed, because she found both science and the humanities stimulating. "It always seemed to keep my brain running in both fields," she said.