education

Robots Have Taken All the Good Jobs, Report Economists

Hamilton Nolan · 03/26/13 08:46AM

If you've been reading our unemployment stories—or if you've been out looking for a job lately—you know that many college graduates (and even advanced degree holders) are forced to accept low-skill jobs that don't put their degrees to use. One economist is now arguing that this state of affairs is the new normal.

Student Debt Is Perfectly Following the Financial Meltdown Script

Hamilton Nolan · 03/04/13 09:56AM

Just when the stock market recovers and public optimism returns and you start to lose faith in the power of American capitalism to constantly repeat its past mistakes in the form of foreseeable boom-and-bust cycles that always end in massive losses, the system steps up to reinforce your belief in humanity's fundamental unwillingness to learn from past mistakes, ever. Hello, looming student loan meltdown!

Hamilton Nolan · 02/26/13 01:36PM

Current trends predict only one in 20 black kindergartners in L.A. will graduate from a four-year state university.

We Need Fewer College Graduates

Hamilton Nolan · 01/28/13 03:45PM

Raising the percentage of Americans who have college degrees is a major component of the Obama administration's education goals. It's a policy that can swing many billions of dollars towards the higher education industry—an industry that is growing every more conscious of the fact that its financial foundation is not solid. "Promoting higher education" sounds like a good cause, in the abstract. But it may be a huge waste of money.

Mississippi Just Arrests School Kids for Anything, Including Farting

Hamilton Nolan · 01/17/13 01:01PM

The state of Mississippi ranks 50th in the average salary it pays its public school teachers. There's also, you know, the deep history of poverty and racism and deprivation. So perhaps it is no surprise that Mississippi's public schools are exceedingly quick to arrest students for the most trifling violations.

Spoiled Kids Get Worse Grades in College

Hamilton Nolan · 01/14/13 05:15PM

In what will surely go down as one of the most profoundly satisfying academic studies of the year, sociology professor Laura Hamilton has found that the more money parents pay for their kids' college educations, the worse their kids' grades are. Naturally.

Colleges Are Becoming Slightly Less Omnipotent

Hamilton Nolan · 01/10/13 02:18PM

A new Pew report out today confirms that, yes, having a college degree does have some benefit: young people with college degrees did much better during the recent recession than their peers without college degrees. (One would hope!) Expect your local college to immediately begin leafletting the town with this report, as a marketing effort.

The College Tuition Skyrocket Is Slowing Down, a Little

Hamilton Nolan · 12/31/12 11:40AM

Will 2013 be the year when the student debt bubble pops, raining havoc down upon us all in the form of economic destruction? Eh, who knows. What we do know is that college prices, which have been shooting skyward for many years as institutions reaped every last dollar they could from the public's hope and ignorance, are now slowly—ever so slowly—calming down.

Big Tough Politician Has Great Plan to Put More Guns in Our Schools

Hamilton Nolan · 12/18/12 09:16AM

Oregon state Rep. Dennis Richardson (R-Fantasyland) won himself a measure of infamy when he proclaimed after the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings that "If I had been a teacher or the principal at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and if the school district did not preclude me from having access to a firearm, either by concealed carry or locked in my desk, most of the murdered children would still be alive, and the gunman would still be dead, and not by suicide." What a dick. But Dennis Richardson is not just any dick: he is a dick with a plan.

Hamilton Nolan · 12/04/12 02:24PM

The bad news is student debt is soaring. The good news is, more crappy jobs than ever now require a college degree. So.

More on the Encouraging Decline of Fake Colleges

Hamilton Nolan · 10/25/12 10:20AM

It's been evident for more than a year now that "for profit colleges"—which is to say, "shitty colleges which exist only to make money and which run a lot of advertisements and which you would never ever recommend to a true friend"—are on the decline, after years of virtually minting money. Enrollment is down across the board. Last week, the University of Phoenix announced it's shutting down half of its physical locations. Could this be... real progress?

Even the Good News on College Debt Is Bad

Hamilton Nolan · 10/18/12 10:42AM

The University of Phoenix is shutting down 115 of its bloodsucking fake college locations in the U.S., about half of the total number of centers of flimflammery. This may be seen as part of the larger trend of the decline of so-called "for profit colleges," which is a good thing, in the sense that these schools are best not at education, but at sucking money out of desperate people who can scarcely afford it.

France Wants To Ban All Homework, French Kids Will Still Smoke Cigarettes and Be Sad Forever

MTanzer · 10/16/12 10:48PM

Every child has wished at one point or another that he or she would walk into school and there would be banners announcing that all homework had been cancelled forever. Of course, God would never answer the prayers of little American boys and girls — but he has heard the cries of French schoolchildren, and their wish is now, almost, a reality.