Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Education channel

 

How to Receive a World-Class College Education on the Cheap

May 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Looking for a low-cost college option? Consider learning German. Patrick Finger, a high school senior from Southern California, did just that. He applied to a dozen or so colleges this year, including several state schools. In the end, he chose a less conventional path, opting to perfect his German language skills over the next year and then enroll at the University of Cologne. Tuition at German universities proved irresistible—it's free. "State campuses here can cost as much as $35,000 per year and private colleges more," Finger says. Even with the extra year of study plus living and ... Read More

The 5 Top Host Countries for American Students Studying Abroad

May 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The number of U.S. students enrolled in full-degree programs at universities outside the United States grew four percent to about 46,000 last year, according to a report by the Institute of International Education's Project Atlas. Shaving thousands of dollars off their tuition bills is a prime motivation for many Americans studying abroad. Below is a more in-depth look at each of the five top host countries for American undergraduates enrolled in degree programs outside the United States, according to the report. UNITED KINGDOM Annual tuition: From $6,000 to $40,000. What to know before ... Read More

Why Are You So Smart, Aaron Shapiro?

May 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Welcome to "Why Are You So Smart?,” Pacific Standard's newest monthly column in which Noah Davis interviews a smart person and then interviews the smartest person that smart person knows and so on. For the debut Q&A, he asked the smartest person he knew for the smartest person he knew, which led to Huge CEO Aaron Shapiro. The Harvard University and Columbia Business School graduate was employee number 10 at the digital agency, transforming it from a small start-up to a 600-employee and growing behemoth. Shapiro talked about always working for himself, growing up without screens, and what ... Read More

You Only Hate Grad School Because You Think You’re Supposed To

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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It’s almost impossible to miss. So much gloom has been cast upon graduate school lately—and much of it is rooted in very real, very rational concerns about the bleak state of the academic job market. But I want to approach the topic of graduate school not from the cost-benefit standpoint of whether or not it will lead to academic employment. I don’t think it is possible to formulate any sort of useful blanket opinions on graduate school that do not take into account discipline-, institution-, and person-specific idiosyncrasies. However, I do feel capable of conducting a thought ... Read More

What Can’t It Do? European Austerity Policies Now Giving the World Anti-Matter, Clones

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Most people associate brain drain with developing nations. The idea being: a country that can't support its most talented minds will lose them to places that can. Most don't come back. That's now happening in southern Europe. Two cases just this week showed how the need to save five figures in salaries now could cost cash-strapped nations nine or 10 figures in valuable research down the line. Earlier this week we heard the ridiculous story of 30-year-old Diego Martinez Santos, a modest genius from Galicia, Spain, who has been doing research in Holland. Santos had just been voted "the most ... Read More

What’s That Thing Where You Feel That Thing and It Makes That Other Thing Happen?

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
dictionary

You know that sudden rush of existential dread that comes from your alarm seemingly going off just moments after you shut your eyes and you are no longer able to ignore the cosmically-pointless-but-personally-frightening impending machinations of the day ahead? Or that thing where you see a dog, blissfully unaware of the futility of its own existence, getting sprayed in the stomach by a water hose and you can't help but wonder why not me? There are no words for those feelings because there are no words for a lot of feelings. Other languages often do a better job—think "schadenfreude," or ... Read More

University Presidents Get Richer, Students Pay More

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The Chronicle of Higher Education just released a report outlining the salaries of the top-earning university executives across the country. And guys, we did it! There are now four presidents—well three, actually—making over a million dollars per year. I say "three" because the top-earning university president was Graham Spanier, who was fired as a result of a widespread, multi-year sexual abuse scandal at Penn State. His compensation, though, was pretty nice. The top 10: 01. Graham B. Spanier, Free Agent, $2,906,271 02. Jay Gogue, Auburn University, $2,542,865 03. E. Gordon ... Read More

Is College Worth It?

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The message that everyone should go to college does a disservice to the 60 percent of students who do not finish their degrees within six years, according to new research from Brookings Center on Children and Families, a non-partisan research center in Washington. These students end up with debt that is not recouped by higher salaries later in life. And for low-income families, the impact is even worse. "On average, getting a college degree is a good decision, but it isn't good for everyone. It's whether you finish, where you go, what you major in it, and what you do," said Isabel Sawhill, ... Read More

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg Pokes at the Foundations of the Ivory Tower

May 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus of Washington, D.C.’s The George Washington University, has spent most of his life thinking about higher education, either as a student—he has an undergraduate degree from Columbia, a law degree from Yale, and a master’s in public administration from Harvard—or as an administrator. He retired in 2007 as president of George Washington after 19 years on the job, and has written The Art of Hiring In America’s Colleges & Universities, Thinking Out Loud, and Reflections on Higher Education. Would you reprise what you said about ... Read More

Your Child’s Brain on Math

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
brain-on-math

Parents whose children are struggling with math often view intense tutoring as the best way to help them master crucial skills, but a new study released on Monday suggests that for some kids even that is a lost cause. According to the research, the size of one key brain structure and the connections between it and other regions can help identify the eight- and nine-year-olds who will hardly benefit from one-on-one math instruction. "We could predict how much a child learned from the tutoring based on measures of brain structure and connectivity," said Vinod Menon, a professor of ... Read More