At this time of year, all the local colleges are settling in to contemplate who is in and who is out. Kids with stars in their eyes are hoping to go to the school of their choice so they can go on to lucrative careers as doctors, lawyers, and Internet entrepreneurs. An entrance to Harvard might lead to Facebook-esque fame. So no wonder the kids are going all out. Really all out. Recently, Linda Wertheimer......

Boston University is willing to spend big bucks--$1.8 billion, to be exact--to be an academic powerhouse. Linda Wertheimer at the Globe reported Thursday that BU wants to "add 150 professors, dramatically lower the school's student-faculty ratio, and pour money into salaries to allow BU to vie for the nation's top professors." Not bad. You go, BU. President Robert Brown has visions of US News & World Report college rankings dancing in his head. However, if......

The local college news has been depressing. One Globe editorial in particular sent Bostonist into a funk. While brainiacs with ordinary parents get denied at Harvard, the dumb but well-connected just waltz their way in, proving that the college admissions process is a skunky business. But Tufts offered a ray of light this week with the announcement that it will help students pay off their college loans if they take a job in public service.......

The tables are turning on Tim Russert tonight at the JFK Library. He'll be chatting with NPR's Linda Wertheimer about his twenty years of broadcast journalism. Since taking over Meet the Press at the end of 1991, Russert has interviewed anyone that's anyone in today's political world, and we're hoping he'll share some dirty little secrets tonight. The Sunday morning interview show has been around 57 years, longer than any program in the history......