Free Republic

The National Labor College, an education venture for working adults supported by the AFL-CIO, will close next year because of financial difficulties school officials attribute in part to the construction of a conference center several years ago on the Silver Spring campus. The college, with 599 online students this fall, announced Wednesday that its board of trustees voted this week to accept a closure plan. Word of the impending shutdown had been circulating since at least mid-November. “We’re all very, very sad,” said Paula E. Peinovich, the college’s president. The college will offer courses through the spring semester and have...

UCLA has killed a proposed online program focused on teaching undocumented students about immigrants’ rights and labor activism. Republican lawmakers had criticized the proposal, which involved a partnership between a UCLA labor studies center and a national college founded by unions. UCLA on Friday said the so-called National Dream University, which was to open in early 2013, had not received the needed approvals from UCLA’s faculty and administrators. As a result, the agreement between UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education and the AFL-CIO-affiliated National Labor College to develop the online classes “has been declared void” and no more work...