Archive for May, 2011

Pay Attention When Scott Adams Gives Education Advice to College Students

Since he’s already got my respect, I had no trouble giving full focus to his article in the Wall Street Journal about why the average college student would benefit more from learning how to run a business than from all that chemistry, calculus, and art history mumbo-jumbo. I loathe business and can’t get enough of the mumbo-jumbo arts, hard sciences, and math, but his article made so much sense I was forced (against my will!) to agree[ READ MORE ]

Job Market Less Than Kind To Recent College Grads

The NY Times has the newest studies and infographics on how new college graduates are faring in this wicked-fun economy. Basically, the higher-educated are working for pennies in jobs totally unrelated to their fields of study. Debt resulting from all that higher-ed tuition and all those textbooks is insane ($20,000 is standard), and must sting [ READ MORE ]

Wikipedia Wants Your Learned Grey Matter

Whether it’s a site-able source (it’s absolutely not, according to many professorial types) or not, everyone uses Wikipedia as a quick way to satisfy some burning question or as a starting point on some quest for reams of information on almost any subject one can think of. It’s like a Twinkie or Oscar Meyer baloney: I don’t trust it, I would never serve it at a dinner party, but I’m still gonna eat it. [ READ MORE ]

Broadband Availability for U.S. Schools

School kids need broadband, too! There’s a nearly infinite universe of information available on the Internet, a bazillion football stadiums’ worth of hard copy knowledge that would never fit into a school library or classroom[ READ MORE ]

Bots High

If you’re feeling like you can’t come up with a single non-cool entity, it’s because none exist[ READ MORE ]

Civics 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress

Here’s the latest press release from the National Assessment Governing Board. I’m not a fan of standardized testing, but I’m sure there are others who feel differently and would like to know how well American school kids did on their civics exams. The full press release is below[ READ MORE ]

“Unbundling College: How to Avoid Spending $100,000 (or more) on a Credential You Don’t Really Need”

I’ve been a fan of Ramit Sethi for a long time. He’s smart and I like the way he thinks---simple and logical and rarely what I’m expecting. He comes from a money/business/finance direction, so reading what Ramit has to say about higher education, graduate degrees, necessity and money had to be done[ READ MORE ]

Grad School Heaven

Two major points in their favor: They understand the college rankings machine and its methods are questionable and should be taken with a grain of salt, and they are of the strong opinion that any prospective grad student who pays someone else to write admissions essays/statements/letters of intent is a jackass who is decreasing his/her chances of being accepted[ READ MORE ]

OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Meeting 2011

May marks the 10th anniversary of the OpenCourseWare movement, with the goal being the offering of courseware from legit sources (colleges, universities, etc.) online and free of charge. The OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Meeting 2011 begins May 4th (today) and goes through Friday the 6th in Cambridge Mass[ READ MORE ]

Positive Outlook for Future Careers in Alzheimer’s Research

When the sh*t is actively hitting the fan in large amounts, everyone who was supposed to be dealing with the crap in the first place suddenly starts running around like their hair is on fire, desperately scrounging for a solution. [ READ MORE ]