Just because students are gone and my family sprung a trip to relatives in Indiana doesn’t mean the news has stopped coming. Two particularly interesting stories emerged from the Philly/NJ area right around Christmastime.

First, the state of New Jersey sued the Stevens Institute and its president, Harold Reveche, for their alleged mismangement of the endowment and for receiving illegal, low-interest loans to fund vacation homes. Reveche had a salary of over $1.1 million and, according to the lawsuit, the school was using multiple sets of books to hide the financial gymnastics.

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The president of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is resigning after a far-reaching admissions scandal, the Chicago Tribune is reporting.

The Trib first broke the story in May. It’s a doozy: The school set up a “shadow admissions system” where politically connected students with fewer qualifications won spots over well-qualified-but-unconnected applicants. The well-connected students were friends or family of university trustees, state lawmakers, Governor Blagojevich and others. A state commission investigated and issued a scathing report calling on all the University Trustees to resign; all but two did. The board has since been refilled. The faculty of the school on Sept. 14 called for the president and chancellor of the school to resign.

Sometimes I’m still astounded that Barack Obama spent any time, at all, in Chicago/Illinois politics. Talk about a mess.