As bad as these numbers are, it appears they understate the level of dishonesty exhibited by America’s youth. More than one in four (26 percent) confessed they lied on at least one or two questions on the survey.
Will higher ed be the next bubble to burst, with student loans providing the easy credit that inflated it?
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The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough.
Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it...
The motion was forwarded by Donnie Northrup, who represents science students. Mr. Northrup did not respond to a request for an interview.
The rationale for dropping cystic fibrosis as the beneficiary is not correct, she said. CF is diagnosed just as often among girls as boys, although the health of girls deteriorates more rapidly, she said. It is commonly considered an illness that affects Caucasians, but that includes people from the Middle East, South America, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
Hypocrisy is an overblown sin. Better to be a hypocrite who occasionally violates his principles than a villain who never does...
The Obamas will send their two daughters to the expensive private school, Sidwell Friends. Yes, that makes him something of a hypocrite because he is a vocal opponent of giving poor kids anything like the same option.
But you know what? Who cares? Personally, I would think less of the Obamas if they sent their kids to bad schools out of some ideological principle. Parents' first obligation is to do right by their own kids.
Michelle Rhee, D.C.'s heroic school chancellor, in her 17 months on the job has already made meaningful improvements. But that's grading on an enormous curve. The Post recently reported that on observing a bad teacher in a classroom, Rhee complained to the principal. "Would you put your grandchild in that class?" she asked.
"If that's the standard," replied the defensive principal, "we don't have any effective teachers in my school."
The main reason politicians adopt a policy of malign neglect: teachers unions, arguably the single worst mainstream institution in our country today. No group has a stronger or better organized stranglehold on a political party than they do. No group is more committed to putting ideological blather and self-interest before the public good...
The Democratic Party continues to tolerate this sort of thing because public school teachers continue to be reliably liberal voters. And their unions cut big checks.
There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries, including Canada.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- At the University of Illinois, being an athlete gets you access to a $6 million facility with oversized leather chairs and Oriental rugs.
But it's not a fancy country club - it's a tutoring center.
The Irwin Academic Services Center helps only about 550 of the school's 37,000 students. And places like this in schools across the country leave critics fuming...
"A student who is not an athlete will say, 'I'm working nights to get through school - why don't I get free tutoring?'" Sack said.
In addition to the University of Illinois, at least four other schools have multimillion-dollar tutoring centers just for their athletes. Most are funded by athletic departments.
Proponents say the centers prepare athletes for life after sports, but other students want the same help available for everyone. The University of Michigan student newspaper is pushing to have their school's $12 million athletic tutoring facility open to all students.
The presidential transfer of power may be going swimmingly, but things are not so smooth in Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District. That's where Rep. Phil English, a Republican who has represented the Erie area since 1994, lost his reelection bid to Democratic challenger Kathy Dahlkemper. And he seems to be taking it hard.
This week, English shuttered his offices and has been turning away constituent work, even though he and his staff remain on the federal payroll until January. English closed up shop before he could finish one of his most important December constituent duties: interviewing and recommending candidates for the military service academies.
Anxious and angry parents of high school seniors have been calling Dahlkemper's campaign office asking for help getting their children's applications processed. The families "were in a bit of a panic because evidently Congressman English's office sent back their applications," said Tina Mengine, Dahlkemper's campaign manager. "For these kids, this is their future."
English spokeswoman Julia Wanzco said her boss has "ceased all casework because we're going to have limited access to federal resources." Beginning Dec. 1, English will work out of a "cubbyhole" with access to just one computer, phone line and printer, Wanzco said, adding that other departing lawmakers will have similar accommodations during the transition.
Little kids dressed up as Indians and Pilgrims drew protesters and police in Claremont, California, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Massassoit and the Pilgrims kept the peace until the first generation of leaders died. Then things went bad. Can’t we celebrate the good parts of American history any more?I'm sure that to many of our history teachers, there are no good parts of American history.
A 17-year-old Chippewa Falls High School student has been arrested for showing friends nude photographs of his ex-girlfriend stored on his cell phone.
General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses.
“We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed” from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.
BAGHDAD – Iraq's parliament approved Thursday a security pact with the United States that lets American troops stay in the country for three more years — setting a clear timetable for a U.S. exit for the first time since the 2003 invasion.
The Shiite bloc agreed to a Sunni demand that the pact be put to a referendum by July 30, meaning the deal must undergo an additional hurdle next year.Our troops will be there until 2012 under this agreement. 2012. All you Americans who wanted them to come home under fire without having completed their mission, look at that date. 2012. Nine years. I've read that it usually takes about 10 years to quell an insurgency, so this sounds good.
The difference is that Wal-Mart expanded without ever losing its focus on operating efficiently, nor ever eschewed its custom of passing savings along to consumers. That's because Wal-Mart, which produced huge savings when it revolutionized the distribution and delivery of goods to stores on a massive scale starting in the 1970s, has never forgotten the lessons that it learned during its early years...
Still, the Wal-Mart Effect circa 2008 is different in several crucial ways. Two years ago, for instance, Wal-Mart saw an opportunity because of rising prescription drug prices, and it kicked off a campaign to sell generic drugs for $4 for a 30-day prescription.
The move, which the company eventually expanded to all of its pharmacies, sparked a pricing war around the country as big pharmacy chains slashed their own prices on generics. Wal-Mart estimates that Rx customers at its stores alone have saved more than $1 billion.
That might be chump change, however, compared with what's happening in the grocery business. Once primarily a general merchandise discounter, Wal-Mart embarked on rapid expansion of stores selling groceries when it noticed that local supermarket chains were taking a bigger and bigger bite out of consumers' pocketbooks — in some markets doubling their profit margins during the 1990s.
Today, Wal-Mart operates some 2,500 stores selling food items, and food prices at Wal-Mart's stores are typically from 10% to 25% lower than at competitor stores, depending on the food category.
Even if you don't shop at Wal-Mart you're likely to save 5% on your food costs when the retailer enters your market...
(Few of Wal-Mart's general merchandise competitors, like Target or Kohl's or Kmart, are unionized)...
That battle, with Wal-Mart as the subtext during a presidential campaign, helped to galvanize every anti-Wal-Mart constituency.
This disparate group united in their single-minded loathing of the chain includes: (long list follows)
Members of Wal-Mart's founding family, the descendants of Sam Walton, have also angered activists and made the business a target because they have used their fortune to support conservative and free-market causes, especially the choice movement in public education.
Apparently, it's one thing to use the family fortune to back anti-smoking initiatives in the developing world, like New York Mayor Bloomberg's foundation has done, or to advocate for the rights of prostitutes in Africa, as George Soros' Open Society has done, but quite another to promote free-market principles here in the U.S.
Still, despite the unique ability of Wal-Mart to drive a certain type of activist into a frenzy, consumers have mostly just yawned at the anti-Wal-Mart hysteria.
He notes, for instance, that calls by activists that Wal-Mart pay its entry-level workers more fail to acknowledge that Wal-Mart's overall margin of profits-to-revenues is small, as are its profits-per-worker, and that other retailers with higher salary scales serve a different, more upscale customer.
Furman also disputes the notion that Wal-Mart benefits from "corporate welfare" because some of its workers (4.5% to be precise) are on Medicaid, noting that for entry-level workers, the choice of Medicaid over a company-sponsored plan that requires co-pays simply makes economic sense, and that the benefits of the program accrue to the worker, not Wal-Mart.
Columbia University students will vote this week on whether to bring the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps back to Columbia's New York City campus after a 40-year ban...
Columbia's ban includes ROTC for all military branches, but this week's vote determines the future of NROTC programs because Columbia students who are Air Force and Army cadets have access to programs at nearby universities...
This week's vote is not entirely up to the students. If they vote yes, the issue will go once again before the school Senate, but ultimately it is Columbia's board of trustees that will have the final say.
"Shouldn't the students here be exposed to the attractiveness of serving in the military, particularly as an officer?" said McCain.
"I recognize that there are students here who have differences in terms of military policy, but the notion that young people here at Columbia or anywhere, in any university, aren't offered the choice, the option of participating in military service, I think is a mistake," said Obama.
Colleges are perfectly capable of becoming more efficient and productive, in the same way that countless other industries have: through technology. And increasingly, they are. One of the untold stories in higher education is that the cost of teaching is starting to decline, but virtually none of those savings are being passed along to students and parents in the form of lower prices. Instead, colleges are pocketing the difference, even as they continue to jack up tuition bills.
It’s tempting to see the automation of college teaching as educational malpractice, a ploy to water down instruction and put professors out of work just to save a few bucks. But there’s persuasive evidence that the opposite is true—properly used, technology can make higher education better, not worse. NCAT has been spreading the gospel of course transformation since the late 1990s, when it secured an $8.8 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to pilot the process with thirty colleges. The results were unequivocal: twenty-five colleges saw learning results improve while the other five saw no change. All thirty reduced costs, some by over 70 percent. As the number of NCAT institutions has expanded, they’ve found similar—or even greater—success. (boldface mine--Darren)
The key is letting computers do what they do best—grading multiple-choice tests, providing 24/7 access to text, audio, and video, connecting people to one another at a distance—while retaining the human element when only real people will suffice. The Virginia Tech Math Emporium is staffed twelve hours a day with a combination of upper-division math majors, graduate students, and faculty, each of whom is prepared to help students with any of the Emporium-based courses.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A 23-year-old teacher burned in an acid attack on 15 schoolgirls and instructors wants the Afghan government to throw acid on her attackers and then hang them. Kandahar's governor said Tuesday that authorities had arrested 10 alleged Taliban militants for the Nov. 12 attack in this southern city and that several confessed to taking part.
