The recession has caused a spike in enrollment at two-year schools like Austin Community College, which now educates more than 40,000 students — within striking distance of the great behemoth, the University of Texas at Austin.

Thevenot on the abysmally low community college graduation rate and higher ed's coming budgetary winter. Ramshaw on Terri Hodge's guilty plea and hasty exit. Grissom on the Department of Public Safety's use of dreaded federal stimulus funds to plug a hole in the state's border security budget. Hu on the first of the intraparty face-offs in our Primary Color series. Ramsey and Stiles on the congressional candidates with the most money on hand. Ramsey on whether Farouk Shami's accent and name are an obstacle to his election. Aguilar on the fever-tick epidemic overwhelming South Texas. Rapoport on TxDOT's hard road and the State Board of Education's lack of finance expertise. Philpott on how Barack Obama's budget will impact Texas. M. Smith on whether lawyers giving to judges is a good thing. Hamilton on the latest transportation innovations on the drawing board. The best of our best from February 1 to 5, 2010.

Community colleges pitch themselves as the gateway to prosperity for lower-income students who've been historically shut out of higher education. Trouble is, despite increasing enrollment numbers, few of them graduate.

Hu explores on the schism between Bushworld and Perrywold and the increasingly curious question of what Debra Medina wants; Stiles goes all Shark Week on gubernatorial campaign finance, with searchable databases, bubble maps and word clouds; M. Smith on what happens if there's a GOP runoff; Rapoport on the sniping between Perry and KBH on transparency; Hamilton on KBH's abortion issue odyssey; Ramshaw exposes the disgracefully low percentage of state school employees who abuse or kill profoundly disabled Texans and are then prosecuted for their acts; Thevenot on higher ed's tuition time bomb; Aguilar on the Latino pay gap; Ramsey on Farouk Shami's "gift" to Hank Gilbert; Ramsey and Philpott on the the Supreme's Court's corporate campaign cash fallout; and E. Smith's interviews with House Speaker Joe Straus with retiring Republican state representative — and future Texas State chancellor? — Brian McCall. The best of our best from January 18 to 22, 2010.

A new study gives a window into the wide variety of ways college presidents get paid. Think houses, cars, deferred comp — and private monies supplementing public funds.

Low-income and minority students have every right to expect the same level of educational excellence experienced by their peers in more affluent settings. We literally cannot succeed without setting high expectations for them and fully developing their talents.

In Texas, they earn 35 percent less than their Anglo counterparts — a disparity that's bigger here than elsewhere. Is it because of education, age, discrimination, or some combination of the above?

As El Paso begins to wear the new off its hard-fought medical school, another Texas border community is starting on the long road to establishing its own. University of Texas System officials are evaluating how long it will take and how much it could cost to train the next generation of doctors in the Rio Grande Valley.

Border communities struggle to keep younger, educated residents when larger cities dangle economic and quality-of-life opportunities. They're afflicted with the reputation of being black holes of talent — where escape is necessary in order to prosper.

The number of Mexican-born professionals living in the United States has more than doubled since 1995. They're not the undocumented workers you see in evening-news mug shots or aerial photographs of a littered and barren desert. They're college graduates — some with multiple degrees — who join their blue-collar counterparts in their journeys north.

Under new legislation, school districts for the first time can spend a portion of state “book” money on computer hardware and digital content. Some fear the explosion of choice will produce an erosion of quality content.

“It’s both an ideological concern and a safety concern,” one of the student plaintiffs said. “Obviously college campuses aren’t some magical zone where no violence occurs, and so I feel particularly strongly that every student that feels the need to carry handgun anywhere in their lives should also be able to do so on a college campus.”