A new report from the left-leaning think tank Demos argues that looking at borrowers' income alone providers limited insight into student loan burdens.

The report examines the racial equity implications of various proposals to cancel student debt, a policy solution that's become increasingly popular with some progressives. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat seeking the party's presidential nomination, has also offered a debt cancellation proposal as part of her higher ed agenda.

The Demos report underlines how student debt is experienced differently by different borrower groups. The typical white male borrower, for instance, has paid off 44 percent of his student loan debt within 12 years of graduating, while the typical black female borrower has actually seen her balance grow by 13 percent, the report says.

An essay in PLOS Biology argues that funding agencies should require grantees to post their papers on preprint servers such as arXiv and bioRxiv before submitting them to academic journals. Richard Sever and John Inglis of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, founders of bioRxiv, and co-author Mike Eisen, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of genetics, genomics and development at the University of California, Berkeley, describe their “Plan U” proposal as a low-cost, faster alternative to the traditional academic publishing system.

In addition to increasing access to research, the authors argue that Plan U (for "universal") would allow the pace of research to accelerate, as peers would see and build on their colleagues' work sooner, instead of waiting months for it to be published. Moreover, the paper says, “the existence of all articles as preprints would create a fertile environment for experimentation with new peer review and research evaluation initiatives, which would benefit from a reduced barrier to entry because hosting and archiving costs were already covered.”

The University of Utah police department honored a dispatcher and two administrators for their handling of the aftermath of a student murder on campus, despite a review of the case that found it was largely botched.

The police department apologized on Thursday for including the name of the late student, Lauren McCluskey, in the program for the awards ceremony it held, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

“I have nothing against the individuals,” Matt McCluskey, Lauren’s father, wrote in an email to the publication, “but the idea of the police department giving awards for the handling of Lauren’s case borders on obscene.”

Lauren McCluskey was shot to death by Melvin S. Rowland, whom she briefly dated. McCluskey told police on multiple occasions she was concerned about Rowland contacting her. Rowland later ended his own life.

The campus police spokesman hung up on the Salt Lake Tribune reporter who asked for further comment.

Today on the Academic Minute, part of University at Albany Week, Shobba Chengular-Smith, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, explores how relationships can help during tough times. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.