After a one-year reprieve from double-digit increases, the cost of attending one of the state\'s 15 public universities is up nearly 11 percent. The average annual price tag is nearly 67-hundred dollars. This year\'s increases range from seven-and-a-half percent at Saginaw Valley State to 18-and-a-half percent at Wayne State .

Peter Yougners, an alum of Wayne State University and one of the founders of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), died in Seattle at the age of 69. Nearly 40 years ago, while on vacation in Michigan , Youngers witnessed a horrific traffic accident that ended the lives of three young children and transformed his own. \"It happened because of a drunk driver,\" he recalled in 2003. \"A few weeks later, I went to court. The man left the courtroom with his license in hand and six months probation. I vowed that day to spend the rest of my life avenging the deaths of those children.\" Youngers earned a master\'s degree in early childhood education from Wayne State .

Oakland University\'s board of trustees on Thursday approved a 9.53 percent tuition increase, bringing the tuition and fees for an incoming freshman to $6,122.75 annually, up from $5,590 the previous year. The board had considered a 15.2 percent increase that would have rolled fees into tuition, bringing the annual bill to $6,439, but trustees rejected it because they felt it was too high. \"I wasn\'t going to go 15 percent. These kids can\'t afford it,\" said Trustee Henry Baskins. \"The trustees were unanimous in wanting to hold the line as low as possible.\" Students said they were happy the board chose to go with the lower increase, but said it still puts a burden on them.

An article about new appointees to the St. Joseph 's Healthcare Foundation Board mentions that Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel is among them. He has a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Wayne State .

After a one-year reprieve from double-digit increases, universities are boosting tradition more steeply. The average annual cost of attending a state university is nearly $6,700, 11 percent higher than last year. The increases range from 7.5 percent at Saginaw Valley State to 18.5 percent at Wayne State . Spending plans approved by the House and Senate would give big increases to a handful of mid-size universities and significantly cut funding for Wayne State and Northern Michigan . The story ran on the AP wire.

Young adult Detroiters can hone their skills on IBM or Apple computers, learn to surf the Internet and receive job placement assistance -- all while getting paid to do so, thanks to a free training program sponsored by the Wayne State University Word Processing Training Center through the department of computer science. The next computer training session begins Aug. 22. Classes are held Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Training Center , 2727 Second Ave. , near Wayne State \'s main campus in Detroit .

Jeff Gerritt should be commended for correctly characterizing in his July 29 column the plight of the homeless in our city and region (\"More Shut Doors: Less funding, fewer services, more homeless on streets\"). As the spotlight turns our way for high-profile events, the Free Press highlighted a problem about which many are inaccurately informed. Wayne State University \'s College of Nursing and the School of Social Work are working to alleviate homelessness in our city by collaborating on one of the only studies in the country documenting the effects of homelessness on older African-American women. This population has marginalized social-cultural status, and is at serious risk for health problems such as hypertension, arthritis and emotional distress.

Joint Sunday editions of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press will come to an end with the sale of the two newspapers to new owners. The Free Press, formerly owned by Knight Ridder, was sold to Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper chain. The News, formerly published by Gannett, was sold to MediaNews Group, a Denver-based publisher. "What it will mean eventually for this market is hard to conclude," said Ben Burns, director of the Wayne State journalism program.

A story about the new owners of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press includes a comment by Ben Burns, director of the WSU journalism program. He said he believes the new owners of The News, MediaNews Group, will put more resources into the paper than did the former owners, Gannett Co. He described William Dean Singleton, CEO of Media News, as "a very tough, smart newspaper publisher."

Commenting on William Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews, the new owner of The Detroit News, WSU journalism professor Ben Burns said "Singleton will be hailed in five or six years as the savior of The Detroit News or else he will be the one who helped shut it down." Burns is a former executive editor of The News. MediaNews Group and its affiliates publish 50 daily newspapers and 121 non-daily publications in 12 states.

Steven M. Firestine has joined the faculty of Wayne State University as an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

A story about motivational speaker Randy Graise notes in the second paragraph that he attended Wayne State University . Although Graise has a physical disability, he formed his own company, Randal Enterprises, and is in constant demand as a speaker, lecturer and workshop facilitator.

This editorial points out that Michigan 's state tax revenues in the past two months came in $140 million above projections, and "naturally, state lawmakers and the administration are hustling to find ways to spend it." The News suggests that it would be wise to save the money for now while waiting to see if the trend toward increased revenue from taxes continues. "If revenues continue to rise, lawmakers should consider building an additional business tax cut into their plans to revise the state's tax structure," the newspaper opines.

"Senior Scene" columnist Ruth Cain writes about WSU's performing arts program, noting that widely known actors and actresses such as Ernie Hudson and S. Epatha Merkerson are graduates of the program. "Did you know that the Hilberry Theatre is the only graduate school repertory theatre in the country?" she asks readers. She mentions the WSU backgrounds of several other performers and concludes her column with " Wayne State University 's Fine Arts school can truly be called a Detroit cultural treasure." Cain mentioned that she learned much about the programs from a recent issue of WSU Alumni Magazine.

Tuition at Eastern Michigan University this fall will be up 13.5 percent from last year's rate under a new budget that also allows the university to issue bonds to cover improvements of campus buildings. The increase to students would have been only 9.5 percent, but the university needed additional money to repay debt created by the bond issue, the article says. Other increases at state public universities have ranged from 7.5 percent at Saginaw Valley State to 19 percent at Central Michigan . Wayne State is mentioned as raising tuition by 18.5 percent.

Michigan State University will lead a public policy consortium of state universities to provide cities with information on urban sprawl, growth and development. The Michigan Higher Education Land policy consortium, funded by a $200,000 grant, also includes faculty from Wayne State University and Grand Valley State University .

With each passing day, we\'re learning a little more about the man President George W. Bush has nominated to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. We now know, for instance, that as a young lawyer in former President Ronald Reagan\'s Justice Department, John G. Roberts betrayed an abiding skepticism about affirmative action -- a posture that strikes one constitutional scholar, Cornell\'s Gary Simson, as strikingly similar to Robert Bork\'s. Bork\'s Supreme Court dreams ran aground on his own candor. But so far nothing has emerged to upset the conventional wisdom that Roberts will win confirmation by a comfortable majority in the U.S. Senate. Which begs a question: If Roberts is confirmed, will all the skirmishing over efforts to put an anti-affirmative action initiative before Michigan voters next year prove to have been beside the point? The whole idea behind the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, after all, is to nullify the 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding race-conscious admissions at the University of Michigan and its law school. If O\'Connor is replaced by someone more hostile to affirmative action, why shouldn\'t opponents of that policy sit tight and wait for the reconstituted court to reverse course?

Sen. Mike Goschka, chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee, told Northern Michigan University officials that he is considering whether proposed funding cuts to the university might be adjusted to be less severe. "I don't want to say I've changed my mind. I'm assessing (the situation)," he said. Under a proposed Senate budget plan, Northern Michigan and Wayne State are the only universities slated for budget cuts. Goschka, who toured the NMU campus Tuesday, said he has advised the Senate majority leader that "I think it would be appropriate to reassess this thing."

WSU's Ben Burns commented on the sale of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press to new owners. "Rumor has it there might be a format change at The News," he said, referring to reports that the newspaper might change to a tabloid format and that both papers might shift to publishing six days a week instead of seven.

D.W. James, manager of recruitment for Wayne State 's Word Processing Training Center , was an in-studio guest on the show "Upfront." The host, Karen Dumas, interviewed James about the next session of the center's computer training program, which starts Aug. 22. The free program is for low-income Detroiters, 19-21, who have a high school diploma or GED.