Notes in the Margins: Angel donors, interest rates and skipping texts

'Angel donors" quietly buoying U.S. colleges As the economy has made fundraising more challenging in recent years, some universities are being buoyed by longtime angel donors whose quiet philanthropy is plugging budget holes. Their gifts occasionally come so anonymously that the schools do not even know their benefactors’ identities right away. (Associated Press via The Boston Globe)

Lenders’ fears could raise interest on student loans As if rising tuition costs weren’t enough, many college students could soon face higher interest rates on their student loans, another potential aftershock of last week’s U.S. credit downgrade by Standard & Poor’s. (The Washington Times)

A sober lesson that seems to stick A study of 30 campuses nationwide found that an online educational course that showed students in attention-grabbing detail the consequences of excessive drinking had significantly reduced common alcohol-related problems among freshmen, including binge drinking and sexual assault. (The Boston Globe via University Business)

SmartMoney college rankings gauge ‘value’ of public, private schools SmartMoney magazine has taken an interesting and refreshingly simple approach to measuring value in higher education. In a new analysis, the publication scores and ranks colleges by the average salaries of their graduates in proportion to the tuition they paid as students. (The Washington Post)

Rising Costs Force Students To Skimp On Textbooks Seven out of 10 undergraduates surveyed at 13 college campuses said they had not purchased one or more textbooks because the cost was too high, according to a new survey released Thursday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. (The Huffington Post)

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