OBAMA vs ROMNEY: Here's Who's Right About The Economy
Dismantling The Middle Class: The Hidden Cost Of Higher Education | Speckled Axe
For decades, education was viewed as the most important step on the path out of poverty and the golden ticket to class mobility in American society. While this may still ring true for those managing on a hand-to-mouth existence, the role of education in securing the continued upward economic trajectory of the middle class is much less certain. Indeed, with rising costs of tuition and cuts in student aid, the debt burden of a college education may be enough to break the middle class. The American middle class, historically admired for its size and diversity, owes much of its existence to the public universities that made access to higher education available to everyone regardless of socio-economic background. According to Christopher Newfield in his book Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class: “There has never been a middle class in history that was not created by public infrastructure—by facilities offering rough equity regardless of personal means.
I Quit, I Think
Prologue - Page 2 Page - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 I Quit, I Think I was New York State Teacher of the Year when it happened. An accumulation of disgust and frustration which grew too heavy to be borne finally did me in. To test my resolve I sent a short essay to The Wall Street Journal titled "I Quit, I Think." Page - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Why Americans doubt man-made climate change - Inside Story: US 2012
It was 42 years ago that the first Earth Day was organised in the US, drawing millions of Americans to rallies across the country calling for a sustainable environment. Some consider that day to be the birth of the modern environmentalist movement in the US. Today the day is marked by millions around the world but its impact in the US seems to have fizzled, with only dozens turning out at the National Mall in Washington DC on Sunday. While the first Earth Day helped lead to the establishment of the US Environmental Protection agency, this year it was largely ignored by politicians and the public. And for the Republicans it is something they would rather distance themselves from. So why do most Americans still doubt that climate change is man-made?
Capitalist universities and fightback « Workers Party (NZ)
Joel Cosgrove Universities are an important part of modern society. The Education Act of 1989 defines them as being the “critic and conscience of society”. In the documentary 1951 author Kevin Ireland recalls calling a Student Representative Council meeting to make a stand against the draconian laws passed to smash the locked out watersiders in 1951 and finding his progressive motions drowned out 10-1 by conservative students, bent on supporting the authoritarian actions of the state. Forecast Tertiary Education Funding vs Forecast Inflation Per capita funding for universities rose in real terms through to the mid-70’s and since then has been declining. Initially the various institutions absorbed the increasing costs. Right now at Victoria University budgets have been slashed, pay rises are below inflation, resourcing cut, tutor numbers have fallen dramatically and more people are being crammed into each course. We need to take back the University. The pressure is mounting. Like this:
Destroy the University by André Gorz 1970
André Gorz 1970 Destroy the University Source: Les Temps Modernes #285, April 1970;Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor. The university cannot function, and we must thus prevent it from functioning so that this impossibility is made manifest. The occasions and the ways of making it come to a head are subject to discussion. The open crisis in the university in France goes back to the beginning of the 1960’s, to the Fouchet Plan. The ideology of the academy is that of the equality of chances for social promotion though studies. The contradictory character of this demand remained masked as long as the right was, in theory, recognized for all while, the practical possibility to use it was denied to the vast majority. These administrative limitations – numerous clausus, exams for university entry – are such delicate matters politically that the successive governments of the Fifth Republic have retreated before their application.
Faller musikkens verdi?
Faller musikkens verdi? Tom Skjeklesæther betrakter det som et endetidstegn at øl blir mer verdt enn musikk. Tom Skjeklesæther betrakter det som et endetidstegn at øl blir mer verdt enn musikk. (ABC Nyheter:) I sommer har debatten om musikkens fremtid, vilkår og verdi tatt fatt igjen. Den svenske streamingtjenesten Spotify tilbyr både gratis, reklameavbrudt lytting og abonnement. Det kan uansett være gode grunner til å reflektere over hva streamingtjenestene innebærer, også utover den umiddelbare situasjonen med minimale inntekter for opphavsmenn og selskaper. Det har vært påpekt at streaming kan ha et potensiale som kan sammenlignes med omsetningen av innspilt musikk da den var på toppen, for fem år siden. Men det fortsatt uklart hvilke andre konsekvenser det har for selve musikken at den finnes i et slikt omfang, bare tastetrykk unna. Ender vi som mer aktive eller mer passive musikklyttere i streamingæraen?
How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. If the national movement to “reform” public education through vouchers, charters and privatization has a laboratory, it is Florida. It was one of the first states to undertake a program of “virtual schools”—charters operated online, with teachers instructing students over the Internet—as well as one of the first to use vouchers to channel taxpayer money to charter schools run by for-profits. About the Author Lee Fang Lee Fang is a reporting fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Also by the Author They're using the Ukraine crisis to push for expedited approval of US natural gas exports. News reports and politicians lauding US gas exports as “best for Crimea” don’t disclose the US gas companies pushing the line, or their Russian connections. But as recently as last year, the radical change envisioned by school reformers still seemed far off, even there.
On the poverty of student life
On the poverty of student life considered in its economic, political, psychological, sexual, and particularly intellectual aspects, and a modest proposal for its remedy Published by UNEF, Strasbourg 1966 First published in 1966 at the University of Strasbourg by students of the university and members of the Internationale Situationniste. A few students elected to the student union printed 10,000 copies with university funds. We might very well say, and no one would disagree with us, that the student is the most universally despised creature in France, apart from the priest and the policeman. There are reasons for this sudden enthusiasm, but they are all provided by the present form of capitalism, in its overdeveloped state. Up to now, studies of student life have ignored the essential issue. Modern capitalism and its spectacle allot everyone a specific role in a general passivity. At least in consciousness, the student can exist apart from the official truths of "economic life."
