China students on intravenous drips for exams
The school maintains that the amino acid drips help students relax while studying for university entrance exams, and will continue the practice.
This is a mule disguised as a library. He brings books and literacy to children in remote Venezuelan villages. Mules like him are called Bibiliomulas and they are perfect.
53% of Recent College Grads Are Jobless or Underemployed—How?
More than half of America’s recent college graduates are either unemployed or working in a job that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree, the Associated Press reported this weekend. The story would seem to be more evidence that, regardless of your education, the wake of the Great Recession has been a terrible time to be young and hunting for work.
But are we really becoming another Greece or Spain, a wasteland of opportunity for anybody under the age of 25? Not quite. What the new statistics really tell us about is the changing nature, and value, of higher education. […]
As the AP notes, recent graduates are now more likely to work as “waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined.” This is a problem for any number of reasons, but here are two big ones: First, a degree is more expensive than ever, and students are piling on debt to finance their educations. It’s much harder to pay back loans while working for tips at Buffalo Wild Wings than when you have a decent office job. Second, when college graduates take a low-paid, low-skill job, they’re probably displacing a less educated worker, For every underemployed college degree holder, there’s a decent chance someone with just a high school diploma is out of work entirely.
So is a college education simply less valuable than in the past? In some respects, yes. According to the Census, the number of Americans under the age of 25 with at least a bachelor’s degree has grown 38 percent since 2000. Not nearly enough jobs have been created to accommodate them, which has resulted in falling wages for young college graduates in the past decade, as well as the employment problems we’re now seeing.
That said, not all degrees are created equal. The AP reports that students who graduated out of the sciences or other technical fields, such as accounting, were much less likely to be jobless or underemployed than humanities and arts graduates. You know that old saw about how college is just about getting a fancy piece of paper? Not true. For an education to be worth anything these days, it needs to impart skills.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
“I like to know I’m writing for a real flesh-and-blood reader who is excited by the words on the page. I’m sure children feel the same way.”
– Harvard College Writing Program director Thomas Jehn • Fathoming the idea of automated essay grading — essentially, essays graded by robots. The idea is getting pitched in a contest by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which plans to offer $100,000 in prize money to any group of programmers that can figure out a way to automate the process of grading essays. We’re with Jehn: If students are spending all this time writing essays, it’s only right that the person on the other side of the coin is also a human being. (via shortformblog)
“I like to know I’m writing for a real flesh-and-blood reader who is excited by the words on the page. I’m sure children feel the same way.”
– Harvard College Writing Program director Thomas Jehn • Fathoming the idea of automated essay grading — essentially, essays graded by robots. The idea is getting pitched in a contest by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which plans to offer $100,000 in prize money to any group of programmers that can figure out a way to automate the process of grading essays. We’re with Jehn: If students are spending all this time writing essays, it’s only right that the person on the other side of the coin is also a human being. (via shortformblog)
good:
For Many California Students, Harvard Is Now Cheaper Than State Schools
A 300 percent increase in tuition and lackluster financial aid from state schools is making elite private universities look more appealing. As the state has cut billions of dollars from education budgets over the past few years, California’s universities have begun admitting more out-of-state students, who pay triple the tuition. This makes private schools resting on billion-dollar endowments appear way more attractive to their accepted students.
This Is Insightful, You Should Watch It of the Day: The Bechdel Test is a straightforward evaluation of the gender bias present in a given movie.
To pass, a film must meet three requirements: 1) Have at least two female characters 2) who talk to each other 3) about something other than a man. (A variant of the rule called the “Mo Movie Measure” adds the requirement that the female characters must have names.)
Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian applies the test to the 2012 Best Picture nominees to see if the pass.
Spoiler Alert: Most don’t.
[ontd.]
The Seedy, Scandalous History of Valentine’s Day
Imagine half naked men running through the streets, whipping young women with bloodied thongs made from freshly cut goat skins. Although it might sound like some sort of perverted sado-masochist practice, this is what the Romans did until 496 A.D.
Indeed, mid-February was Lupercalia (Wolf Festival) time. Celebrated on February 15 at the foot of the Palatine Hill beside the cave where according to tradition the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus, the festival was essentially a purification and fertility rite.
Directed by the Luperci, or “brothers of the wolf,” the festival began with the sacrifice of two male goats and a dog, their blood smeared on the faces of Luperci initiates and then wiped off with wool dipped in milk.
As thongs were cut from the sacrificed goats, the initiates would run around in the streets flagellating women to promote fertility.
Painkillers now cause more deaths in America than cocaine and heroin combined.
