CCSU researchers based their findings on six criteria: booksellers per capita (we tied Charlotte, N.C. for 45th) , education level (we’re 25th), Internet resources (we’re fourth), libraries (we tied Plano, Texas for 25th, newspaper circulation (we’re fourth), and the number of other periodical publishers (we tied NYC for second). Somehow that adds up to fifth place overall. READ MORE
Community Colleges: The Great Massachusetts Equalizer. All in all, it’s been a pretty great week for community colleges in Massachusetts. Ever since Deval Patrick announced his plan to improve them with a unified system during his State of the Commonwealth address on Monday night, the ripple effect has been that community colleges can save everything from the economy, jobs, people, and downtrodden downtowns. [Herald News]
Those who watched President Obama’s State of the Union address online on Tuesday night may have noticed that the speech was “enhanced” this year with a series of PowerPoint slides that added an Al Gore-like emphasis to Obama’s major policy points. But Danny Yagan didn’t notice, in part because the 27-year-old Harvard Ph.D. candidate in economics was buried in his work and didn’t remember that the address had started. Then, about 19 minutes into the speech, his phone began buzzing with texts. And his mom called to congratulate him.
Yagan is a member of the Harvard economics team that’s been researching the value of well-trained teachers in early education. The group’s recent findings have determined that an effective teacher can have a lasting impact in the lives of children — their students are more likely to go to college, earn higher incomes, and less likely to be teenage mothers. The research was the basis for one of the major policy points Obama hammered home during his speech:
“We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance. Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies — just to make a difference.
Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones.” READ MORE
Here’s the problem. You have dozens of small to medium-sized cities sprinkled throughout New England, and nearly all of them have seen better days when it comes to urban vitality. Boston is the big exception. But most of our other cities are not aging too well. What can we do about it?
This is a complex problem, and there are many factors in the long decline of many of these former powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution. But when Deval Patrick suggested in his State of the Commonwealth address that we need to re-focus our Community Colleges on improving the fit between the skills of the unemployed and the needs of Massachusetts employers, he was onto another big opportunity as well.
We should locate all of our community colleges in the under-populated cores of older cities. READ MORE
Tufts University has gone Gaga. That is, the school’s Experimental College is following in the footsteps of the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Arizona State, and Wake Forest by offering a course on the gender-bending poptart this semester:
EXP-0005-S: Gaga’s Holy Monsters
Through in-depth analysis of her musical, textual and visual aesthetics, this course will explore Lady Gaga’s work as represented mainly by her music videos in relation to the implications for gender and sexuality. This course will investigate how her work draws on Christian ideas and practices to frame her commentary on issues of gender and sexuality, and how such appropriations may yield positive and/or negative effects.
Tufts senior Emmanuel Hernandez — a double-major in music and religion — is leading the class, which kicked off yesterday. The Fame Monster’s impact on fashion and design is indelible. And her Born this Way Foundation (just down the street at Harvard) and campaign against the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy clearly demonstrate her stance on LGBT politics and sexual equality. I’m most interested in how her work draws on Christian ideas.
The BostonInno blog suggests that if Gaga is indeed taking over higher ed, Emerson should be next in line, if only because of this epic, 9-minute long lip dub:
(And, yes, the Emerson Quidditch team makes an appearance during “Poker Face.”)
“Mainstream is, like, so lame.” Photo via ThinkStock.
If you find yourself getting enraged whenever your amazingly idiosyncratic indie bands keep getting airtime on mainstream radio, then you just might be a hipster. If you were the first of your friends to wear skinny jeans, but now it seems that everyone’s walking around wearing sausage casings, then it’s looking like you might be a hipster. And if you feel frustration at the fact that your distinctive tastes are constantly being commodified by popular culture, then, yup, you’re probably a hipster. READ MORE
Earlier this month, economists at Columbia and Harvard released the findings from a study that followed 2.5 million students from third through eighth grade well into adulthood. Their key finding? Time spent with a good teacher has wide-ranging positive effects for the rest of a kid’s life.
Because the researchers followed the same students for 20 years, they could link performance in elementary school to later life outcomes. Instead of looking at how a teacher did in her classroom from one year to the next, they used their vast data sets to track each kid’s performance. In this way, they could more accurately judge whether a particular teacher consistently helped kids learn. READ MORE
Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, nearly 150 years ago. Image via ThinkStock.
As the good people of South Carolina consider whether or not to essentially coronate Mitt Romney as the GOP candidate for President, one of the biggest things on some minds will be the war. I don’t mean the one that’s ending in Iraq or the one that’s still going on in Afghanistan. I mean the one that started there, at Fort Sumter: The Civil War. They’re still mad about it.
Recently, I was down in the lovely city of Charleston, and I took a guided tour. One of the most interesting moments occurred when my guide, a thin and genial man with short, graying hair and a soft drawl, first mentioned “the war.” By way of compromise I suppose, he used the term “the War for Southern Independence” rather than the term many Carolinians prefer, “the War of Northern Aggression,” or the term most of us Yankees were taught in school, “The Civil War.” READ MORE
Elizabeth Warren’s Salary at Harvard: $429,981. Warren earned the sum from 2010 to 2011, excluding her earnings as an expert witness in an antitrust case ($90,000), as a consultant on a case involving asbestos victims ($43,938), from royalty fees ($136,946), or from the stuff that gets complicated: investments, real estate, renting out her multi-million-dollar home, and, you know, earnings from government appointments. [AP]
Primaries, presidential candidates, really icy roads, oh my! There’s just so freakin’ much to keep track of this week that you may have missed the fact that the scientific community is absolutely up in arms this week. Outraged, I think, is the best word for it.
The issue at hand: the freedom of scientific research to be freely accessed and read by the general public — or, if you’re looking it at it from the stance of the Association of American Publishers, the right to protect their intellectual property.
The source of everybody’s ire stems from the Research Works Act, a bill currently making the legislative rounds around the House, and the crucial piece of text that has everybody’s attention is as follows:
No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that —
(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or
(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work. READ MORE
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Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, nearly 150 years ago. Image via ThinkStock.
