Everyone knows teachers aren’t paid enough, but apparently they make more than architects, accountants, medical scientists and engineers. Who knew? From All Education Schools, Teacher Salary Secrets Revealed:

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), average teacher salaries for K-12 positions range from a median of $47,040 a year for kindergarten teachers to over $52,500 a year for some secondary school positions. And, those numbers just reflect the US median.

Take a closer look at teacher salaries and you’ll find states like New York where the median kindergarten teacher salary is over $71,000 a year, and states like New Jersey where middle school vocational teachers make over $60,000 a year. You’ll also find states, such as Montanta and Arkansas, where teacher salaries rarely exceed $40,000 a year, even after teaching for many years.
Teachers Are Paid More Than the Average Professional Worker

According to a recent Manhattan Institute study of teacher salaries, public school teachers are paid 11 percent more than the average professional worker. The statistics also show that most public school teachers are paid better than their private school counterparts.

At over $34 an hour, according to 2005 BLS statistics, average teacher wages exceed that of many professionals:

* The average accountant salary includes a median hourly wage of $27.89.
* Architects earn a median hourly wage of $32.96.
* Civil engineers earn a median hourly wage of $33.41.
* Medical scientists earn a median hourly wage of $33.24.
* Fashion designers earn a median hourly wage of $32.39.

Even computer programmers, the architects of the Internet age, earn a median hourly wage of $32.40. This is evidence that teachers can make a good living depending on their subject specialty and their state’s school district.

college | teaching

Undergrad Origins Of PhDs

Despite Reed College’s possible letter-writing inadequacy, they kick ass at molding their undergrads for PhD-hood. Their website has a very shiny table that shows the top 10 schools in the nation where PhD recipients earned their baccalaureate degree.

The table tracks a decent interval, from 1975 to 2004. It’s interesting to note the fairly solid state of the list: only 11 schools make it to the Top 10 in the 29-year span. It’s not the list I thought it would be—there are schools I hadn’t expected as well as several schools I assumed would have been on the list and aren’t.

Here’s the list, including number 11, in alphabetical order so I don’t piss anyone off:

Bryn Mawr
California Institute of Technology
Carleton
Grinnell
Harvey Mudd
MIT
Oberlin
Pomona
Reed
Swarthmore
University of Chicago

Grinnell College has part of the list as well, broken down by discipline. It’s interesting, but kind of a tease as they only show a tiny section of the list for each discipline where Grinnell appears. They only show the other schools at all for “context.” It is on their website, they can choose which parts to show us.

Earlham College has a good chunk of the data on their site that you can check out.

I don’t know whom you have to pay to be allowed to see the entire list. I looked, and the closest I came to finding the list in its entirety was someone else wondering how in the hell to get a copy of it. Feel free to let me know if anyone can shed some light.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

No one can back up “Coolest” with facts, but I stand by my statement nonetheless. The non-sheep in me wanted so much for it to have been an actual college admissions essay. Alas, I can find nothing to back that up. The Urban Myth maintains that Hugh Gallagher wrote the infamous essay in 1990 when he applied to NYU and it was then printed up in several major newspapers as well as becoming infamous via the Internet. The Internet part is true, which means most people have already read it. If you haven’t, you really should.

Here’s the real story, according to Harper’s Magazine:

“This essay, by Hugh Gallagher, won first prize in the humor category of the 1990 Scholastic Writing Awards. It appeared in the May issue of Literary Calvalcade, a magazine of contemporary fiction and student writing published by Scholastic in NYC. Gallagher, who is 18, grew up in Newtown Square, PA, and will attend NYU this fall.”

He did attend NYU and graduated in 1994. I have no connections in the admissions office, so I have no idea whether he used his essay to get in. The Internet circulation in combination with his essay being published in Harper’s did open some doors for Gallagher’s writing career. He’s written for Rolling Stone, Wired, and his first novel, Teeth, was published in 1998.

Optimism usually pisses me off. And yet it’s my dream (which has every chance of not coming true) that someday colleges will choose students because of who they actually are and for their unique potential, not for padded high school transcripts or highly-coached college admissions processes and SAT scores. Whether Gallagher actually sent this in with his application to NYU or not, it still makes me happy and gives me at least a spider web of hope. Sometimes we all need to be reminded that not being a sheep can work in your favor.

ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Sometimes crappy life moments can be funny. Especially if they have to be or you’ll risk becoming catatonic. High school seniors in their San Francisco prep school psychology courses figured out a way to deal therapeutically with their collection of college rejection letters. They turned it into a competition.

I would imagine that the most ass-kicking therapy occurred when the students scored the colleges in the following categories:

-Most obsequious while maintaining utter insincerity
-Least number of words you need to read before you know you are being rejected
-Most emphatic rejection
-Shortest rejection
-Least original rejection
-Total insensitivity

Apparently Reed College won for “Total Insensitivity”:

The grand prize for “total insensitivity” is presented to Reed College. One student applied to Reed and when the college failed to notify him that they had received his materials, the student sent a polite follow-up letter inquiring about his status. Reed sent him back what was apparently intended to be an interoffice memo which read “he’s a deny.” Reed’s selection as biggest overall loser precludes them from “shortest rejection” contention.

Posted by Alexa Harrington
college

Good News for College Interns

Summer is upon us: the season of the intern. Thousands of eager college students and some overly aggressive high schoolers will flock to New York, DC, and maybe some other cities to surf the web for eight hours a day, attend some meetings, and hopefully learn a trade.

Though there can be a lot of pressure on people to secure the best internships (people even pay for them now) and get noticed by their superiors, being an intern is one of the great joys of growing up. Whether 15 or 23-years old, I encourage everyone to make the most of “working” in a professional environment without any real consequences. Of course, you should soak up information like a Downy kitchen towel, “challenge” yourself, and maybe attempt to secure a couple “connections.” But do me one favor and remember the Golden Rule of Internships: No one will ever entrust you with anything that actually matters.

Take it from me, I’ve done my fair share of internships. Hell, who am I kidding—I’m still an intern!!!!

Anyways, for anyone planning to intern in New York City this summer, good news doth abound. First, there seem to be some really nice summer music festivals taking place, so that should be a breath of fresh air for everyone. And second, there is a new service hitting the ‘net (and also regular-sized paper) that caters directly to you.

Educatednation.com is no Gawker, but we’re hot off the presses with news of the Intern Memo, a free newsletter that promises to be hilarious and also pretty informative. Here is the press release:

Coming on May 28th, 2007, The Intern Memo is a free email newsletter sent out three times a week with a mix of event listings, comedic vignettes and career advice for interns working in New York City — basically all you need to get you through your summer internship.

To sign up just give your email address at www.internmemo.com. Enjoy the summer!

Posted by Chris Schonberger

Last week, TV’s favorite college girl, Lorelai “Rory” Gilmore (did you know that was her full name?) graduated from Yale University (the show couldn’t help but mention “Yale” every other line). This week, the show ends it’s seven year run. The show’s snappy dialogue, loaded with pop culture references and allusions to indie music, politics, class, gender, and academia, garnered the Gilmore Girls status as a critical darling as well as a deeply devoted fan base.

Gilmore Girls has had many rough patches, but it survived the “college years,” a death knell for most shows (The O.C., Veronica Mars, 90210). According to the show, Rory had her mind set on attending Harvard since kindergarten, so she transfered from a public school to an elite prep school in order to achieve her goals. Throughout the show, main plot points revolved around Rory’s academic career, such as Rory’s dilemma over choosing between Yale and Harvard. Poor thing. Still, the show’s kooky heart was the center of Gilmore Girls; its warmth, wit, good humor and amused take on the world radiated out of it.

“I live in two worlds,” Rory said during her valedictorian address when she graduated from high school. “One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina and strolled down Swann’s Way.”

“It’s a rewarding world, but my second one is by far superior. My second one is populated with characters slightly less eccentric but supremely real, made of flesh and bone, full of love, who are my ultimate inspiration for everything.”

It’s only fitting that the series conclude with Rory’s graduation from college, still we’ll miss the Gilmore Girls.

gilmore girls | college

I wrote a while back about Arizona State University’s new degree programs in Sustainability. When I first read about it, I was just happy that there was a glimmer of hope shining through the fog of global warming and pollution. My logic was that if higher education was seeing this as a viable degree, then societal thinking about how to save the planet was changing. And, obviously, if we teach people how to implement ‘green’ technologies and practices, then someday we might be smart enough to save ourselves. This article from FastCompany makes my happiness even more complete. Business executives are all over this sustainability degree action:

The idea: If companies hope to operate in a world that increasingly demands sustainable strategies and practices, they’ll need employees who actually have the technical expertise. “Significant and high-profile corporations are saying we need to do this,” says director Charles L. Redman. Indeed, executives from Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), as well as Arizona utility companies APS (NYSE:PNW) and Salt River Project, have already joined the school’s board.

Students will learn to identify and provide solutions to both local and global challenges, taking on such issues as rapid urban growth, sustainable energy and materials use, and water management. At least a dozen research projects are under way, including one on strategies to combat the rising heat index around Phoenix, and another on a special strain of bacteria that could be used to create fuel.

If the white-collared people of the world are seeing this as a solid career choice, then doesn’t it follow that society overall has changed the way it thinks about natural resources and the environment and all the generally bad stuff mankind does to the planet? Was I just too pessimistic before? Because I totally thought it was going to take complete polar ice cap-meltage to convince the money-makers that the sky is falling.

Watch this if you prefer to stay pessimistic and laugh about the fate of the planet and how dumb humans are.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Commencement Day Tossing Traditions

The scene of hundreds of jubilant graduates tossing their black mortarboards into the air upon commencement is a quintessential graduation symbol. Many colleges and universities including the U.S. Naval Academy, sanction the practice, however there is a trend toward banning the tossing of anything into the air. Injuries from flying tortillas and caps have promoted UC Davis and the University of Arizona to ban tossing from the ceremonies. At Harvard’s 2006 graduation, among the most unusual totems thrown were inflatable plastic Aladdin’s lamps accompanied by ears of wheat.

Here are some creative tossing traditions:

• Surgical gloves
• Globes
• Gavels
• Condoms
• Faux CliffsNotes
• False Teeth
• Rulers
• Inflatable Sharks
• Construction Tape
• Rubber chickens
• Toothpaste Tubes