By ELEANOR CHUTE, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PITTSBURGH - It is a line -- well, actually a command -- that the petite nun has used on many a student in nearly 50 years in Catholic schools:

"You need to give me what you have."

Usually, that yields some contraband gum or rubber bands for Sister Lynn Rettinger, the 5-foot-3 principal of Sacred Heart Elementary School here.

The year before a souring economy caused endowments to fall, jobs to be cut and pay to be frozen, presidents of major private research universities across the country had an extraordinary year for pay increases.

Bob Dandoy, who has taught high school and college composition in Western Pennsylvania for more than 30 years, still remembers the community college student who, upon being told she would have to write a 10-page research paper, got up, walked out and threw up.

As college enrollment grows across the country, more and more classes are being taught by instructors who aren't tenured or on the tenure track.

The College Board -- maker of the SAT college entrance exam -- has announced a new standardized test it said it developed because of popular demand.The two-hour test, called ReadiStep, is for eighth-graders, and is aimed at helping educators see which skills students need to develop to be prepared for high school and college.

What's your major?There are hundreds, if not thousands, of possible answers to that question.Students can choose from majors as common as business or as unusual as blacksmithing.

PITTSBURGH -- Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor whose final lecture inspired millions, died early Friday in Virginia of pancreatic cancer.