As administrators say the university is growing toward a better learning community, retention rates are increasing.

Mike Scott, director of scholarships and financial aid, said TCU has risen three percentage points, from 83 percent retention to 86 percent, in the past three years.

According to a report from the 2007 Student Success Initiative, the university hopes to reach 88 percent retention by 2010.

Scott said the initiative began in 2005 as a way to help the university from a "physically sound aspect."

To help create a living community at TCU, freshmen and sophomores are required to live on campus, and more dorms have been built to accommodate them.

With more students living on campus and more students trying to get a good night's sleep, one would expect noise levels to not be a problem.

This is not so.

Students are consistently disturbed by yard work first thing in the morning on weekends and irritating sounds of drills and construction machines disrupt the usually silent nights.

How is a student supposed to get any sleep on campus?

Being an American consumer gets harder every day.

You have to consider the value, the nutrition (if it's food) and whether the product was ethically produced.

On top of these already difficult choices, more and more products hit the shelves every day making these decisions more complicated.

But don't get too stressed out just yet. Help is on the way.

Several companies are developing systems designed to help shoppers make the right decisions. At your local grocery store you may soon find a rating next to every product.

Campus construction is booming and tuition increases steadily each year, which often leaves students wishing they weren't born in the late 1980s to avoid dealing with the university's burst in development.

Students may not know exactly how the university spends its money or why it asks for more each year. But by thinking positively, some may find satisfaction by knowing that in years to come TCU will be better than it is today.

When Jill C. Havens became the British and Colonial/Post-colonial Studies minor program director in 2005, three students were enrolled in the program. Because of recent changes, the award-winning minor now boasts 11 students as declared minors.

Havens said some key changes were made to the minor - one course was eliminated in favor of other areas of study, transfer credit limitations were eased and course requirements changed to incorporate other departments around the university.

A new energy technology and management minor open to all majors will be brought before the Undergraduate Council for consideration Friday.Already approved by the College Committee, the minor is an incorporation...

Sure. They have special edition Monopoly games for pretty much whatever you are into. There is the SpongeBob SquarePants edition, the Transformers Collector's edition, the Disney edition, even the Boston...

The TCU track and field team looks to follow its strong performance at the Arkansas Invitational with an even stronger season, the team's head coach said.

The men's and women's teams finished with 21 top-five finishes at the season-opening indoor meet Jan. 11 in Fayetteville, Ark., five of which were first place marks.

Despite the team's early success, head coach Darryl Anderson doesn't want to get carried away with the strong opening.

On Jan. 20 at 12:30 a.m. the spelling of Edward Simmen's name was corrected.A joint program with Mexican school Universidad de Las Americas-Puebla, remains in limbo following the departure of UDLA's rector,...

Although the interior design program is growing in size, it recently started limiting the number of students allowed to graduate within the major in order to better use its resources, officials in the program said.

After three years of declining enrollment, down from 111 students in 2004-2005 to 100 in 2006-2007, the program has grown to 113 students this academic year, according to the TCU Fact Book.

Three hundred dollars, $700, $1,200.

Nope, not buying a laptop.

Just the cost of textbooks for a semester.

Each semester the prices for textbooks seem to increase, with students having to shell out extra hundreds of dollars on top of increasing tuition rates.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, textbook prices increased by 186 percent between December 1985 and December 2004, nearly tripling in price.