More cheerful news from the student loan front: the New York Times reports on the continuing crunch felt by higher ed borrowers as the market slowly collapses like a flan in a cupboard (with apologies to Eddie Izzard).

Meanwhile, the Economist has a great article on how connectivity is changing the way people live and work. The first paragraph is about a young woman busting out her MacBook at an Internet cafe to study for a law class.

Down in Atlanta, Get Schooled asks users to envision their ideal college town. In pondering this, my eye strayed to my postcards of Fira, Santorini, but those 900-foot cliffs probably don’t go too well with hordes of carousing coeds and frat boys. It would be like having a Deke party on the Cliffs of Moher.

And, from the ever-reliable Higher Ed Watch, an update on the government’s effort to keep college vaguely affordable. The House just introduced student loan legislation similar to Kennedy’s Senate bill. This one increases Stafford loan levels, expands eligibility for PLUS loans and deferments, and introduces the Dept. of Education as a “secondary lender of last resort” for struggling primary lenders. If my understanding of the legislative process is correct, now representatives from the House and Senate get to sit down and build one bill out of these two, and then everyone gets to vote again.