College tuition. Two words that frighten any parent or student during the process of applying to schools or even continuing education at any given college for the next year. It all comes down to finding the right fit for any individual student, regardless of the tuition cost.

A few steamy showers run, toilets flush, and half-awake college girls prep themselves for morning classes. Crisp morning air fills the Miley Hall second floor bathroom and blends in with the smell of sanitizer and soap.

Maria Lourdes Goncalves is busy at work sudsing the bathroom with a green and yellow sponge, and grunts as she scrapes down the walls of the vacant showers.

Dr. Khalil Habib stands before his class in a suit coat, blue Oxford, red tie and pressed khaki slacks. The sun generously beams through the windows lining a classroom on the second floor of O’Hare Academic Center. The building overlooks a vast, green lawn extending to the historic Newport Cliff Walk and drops down to the clear blue of the Narragansett Bay.

Leila de Bruyne sits at her glass desk at her Thames Street office, surrounded by photos of African children, multiple Mac computers, and two clocks on the wall, one showing the time in Newport and the other showing the time in Nairobi, Kenya. On the right side of the desk rests a half-finished cup of tea and an enormous Poland Spring water bottle.

WASHINGTON- Two of President Obama’s top remaining domestic policy initiatives-energy and immigration-appeared on the brink of collapse on Saturday, after a Republican senator at the center of both efforts threatened to jump ship in a dispute with Democrats over timing.