the college concern.

So How Did It Go? Can That Be A Hashtag Yet? #sohowdiditgo

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:45:52 -0700

By now, you may have seen requests for college students who have just finished their #firstyear of study to comment on how it went, and what advice they might have for incoming first-year students.

I appreciate your responses, and some of them may be used for upcoming blog content! Please send to thecollegeconcern@gmail.com, or @ reply on Twitter @college_concern!

professingfaith: My motto.

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:57:31 -0700

professingfaith:

My motto.

"While I ended up with a rewarding and varied professional life, your letter shows just how much..."

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:53:53 -0700

“While I ended up with a rewarding and varied professional life, your letter shows just how much Harvard — not to mention my husband, our families and even myself — didn’t give my career the respect it deserved when I was just starting out.”

- In 1961, Phyllis Richman applied to graduate school at Harvard. She received a letter asking how she would balance a career in city planning with her “responsibilities” to her husband and possible future family. Fifty-two years later, she responds.

The Washington Post
(via coolchicksfromhistory)

populationpensive: world-shaker: Chart of the Day: Student...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:41:09 -0700

populationpensive:

world-shaker:

Chart of the Day: Student Loan Debt is Skyrocketing

It’s also yet another fault line between young and old that’s not likely to turn out well. My generation got a cheap college education when we were young, and we’re getting good retirement benefits now that we’re old. Pretty nice. But now we’re turning around and telling today’s 20-somethings that they should pay through the nose for college, keep paying taxes for our retirements, and oh by the way, when it comes time for you to retire your benefits are going to have to be cut. So sorry. And all this despite the fact that the country is richer than it was 50 years ago, and will be richer still 50 years from now.

But at least today’s kids don’t have to worry about being drafted. That’s something, I suppose.

Whenever a baby boomer talks about their retirement and how bad they feel about taking away mine, I say the following:

A.) Enjoy my money and spend it wisely.

B.) If you feel so bad, why don’t you write me a check for the money you’re taking.

Hmm.

newyorker: George Packer on Oprah, Harvard, and inequality:...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 12:12:01 -0700

newyorker:

George Packer on Oprah, Harvard, and inequality: http://nyr.kr/1aZXyw2

"There were 74 schools that showed a return of $1 million or more on the investment in an education,..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:45:50 -0700

“There were 74 schools that showed a return of $1 million or more on the investment in an education, while 30 schools had a negative return on investment—meaning the cost of attending was more than what the students would make up with increased wages, even over a 30-year period.”

- Is college worth it? It depends on where you go. (via pacificstand)

explore-blog: Message to a graduate – the inimitable Grant...

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:13:15 -0700

explore-blog:

Message to a graduate – the inimitable Grant Snyder brings his brand of comic irreverence to the seasonal standby of commencement addresses and their cliches.

But not all graduation speeches are created equal: Here are some of history’s most timelessly uplifting and thought-provoking speakers: Greil Marcus, Ann Patchett, Jacqueline Novogratz, Neil Gaiman, David Foster Wallace, Ellen DeGeneres, Aaron Sorkin, Barack Obama, Ray Bradbury, J. K. Rowling, Steve Jobs, Robert Krulwich, Meryl Streep, and Jeff Bezos.

ilovecharts: -apollo-bars

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:44:34 -0700

ilovecharts:

-apollo-bars

theatlantic: The Touch-Screen Generation Norman Rockwell never...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:45:13 -0700

theatlantic:

The Touch-Screen Generation

Norman Rockwell never painted Boy Swiping Finger on Screen, and our own vision of a perfect childhood has never adjusted to accommodate that now-common tableau. Add to that our modern fear that every parenting decision may have lasting consequences—that every minute of enrichment lost or mindless entertainment indulged will add up to some permanent handicap in the future—and you have deep guilt and confusion. To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry—the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects. So what’s a parent to do?

Read more. [Images: Erin Patrice O’Brien]

Photo

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:17:35 -0800

Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:06:00 -0800

Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later:

We’re a little late to this discussion but this is a good place to start.

New companies are partnering with universities to offer online courses, in an effort that could define the future of higher education — if anyone can figure out how to make money.

thegetty: Is art history dead? Is the digital revolution...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:51:21 -0800

thegetty:

Is art history dead? Is the digital revolution passing art historians by? What is the future of publishing in art history?

We’ll be exploring these topics next week on The Getty Iris, and we’re kicking off with a short Google+ Hangout, “Resuscitating Art History,” on Monday, March 4, at 4:00 p.m. PST.

We’d like to hear from artists, students, art historians, authors, and, especially, art history grad students: Is there a question the field needs to address? A challenge you face? A radical idea art historians need to be for (or against)? Please let us know here, on Facebook, or via tweet to @thegetty (hashtag: #digitalhumanities).

Books in the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. 010101 is a real book.

theatlantic: The 10 Colleges Most Likely to Make You a...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:47:49 -0800

theatlantic:

The 10 Colleges Most Likely to Make You a Billionaire (Harvard Is #1)

[Image: Reuters]

"Why are most school buses yellow? Why not some other color? Why not burnt sienna, like a crayon?..."

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 11:10:09 -0800

“

Why are most school buses yellow?

Why not some other color? Why not burnt sienna, like a crayon? Why not light-medium robin’s egg blue, like a jewelry box? Why not magma orange, like a Lamborghini?

The answer is Frank W. Cyr, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, who became known as the “father of the yellow school bus” for research he led in the 1930s.

Dr. Cyr, who died at 95 in 1995, had traveled the country, surveying pupil transportation in an era when school buses cost $2,000 apiece but differed widely from manufacturer to manufacturer and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Some states had safety standards; some left the task to local school districts. “In many cases, standards have been set up by more or less hit-and-miss methods,” according to an account that Dr. Cyr oversaw.

Then, in the spring of 1939, he called together educators, school bus manufacturers and paint experts for a conference that approved the nation’s first school bus safety standards — 42 pages covering everything from axles, batteries and emergency brakes to the inside height of the passenger compartment to, yes, the color that the world saw outside. The standards were published in a booklet with a yellow cover: the yellow was the color the group had chosen.

”

- A brief and fascinating history of why the school bus is yellow (via explore-blog)

latimes: Ninety-four and still writing: Think you’ll still be...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 11:05:04 -0800

latimes:

Ninety-four and still writing: Think you’ll still be working at your job by the time you’re approaching retirement age? How about by the time you’re 94? For one journalist, age is just a number - nothing gets between him and his beat.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s David Perlman churned out 111 stories last year and is still going strong. Not bad for someone born before the discovery of penicillin and Pluto.

Read more about Perlman’s inspiring story here, from Times writer Maria L. La Ganga.

explore-blog: Mapping the distribution of higher education in...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 11:04:24 -0800

explore-blog:

Mapping the distribution of higher education in America. Compare and contrast with the distribution of poverty:

iampatrickw: This poem got me through elementary school. And I...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:03:51 -0800

iampatrickw:

This poem got me through elementary school. And I never knew the name of the poet.

Anyone else’s schools have this all over the walls? Great stuff!

DEAR PUSHY DAD

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:13:52 -0800

admissionsproblems:

Dear Pushy Dad,

I’m not impressed when you open up our phone dialogue with what you do, rather than who you are. I don’t care if you’re the Assistant Attorney General or the Chief Executive of Fantasyland…your kid has to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Sincerely,
Me
Vice President of Not Impressed

PS—One or two phone calls per day is enough. By phone call #4, all I hear is “blah, blah”

"1. Linguistic Intelligence: the capacity to use language to express what’s on your mind and to..."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:07:42 -0800

“

1. Linguistic Intelligence: the capacity to use language to express what’s on your mind and to understand other people. Any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or other person for whom language is an important stock in trade has great linguistic intelligence.

2. Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: the capacity to understand the underlying principles of some kind of causal system, the way a scientist or a logician does; or to manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, the way a mathematician does.

3. Musical Rhythmic Intelligence: the capacity to think in music; to be able to hear patterns, recognize them, and perhaps manipulate them. People who have strong musical intelligence don’t just remember music easily, they can’t get it out of their minds, it’s so omnipresent.

4. Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence: the capacity to use your whole body or parts of your body (your hands, your fingers, your arms) to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of production. The most evident examples are people in athletics or the performing arts, particularly dancing or acting.

5. Spatial Intelligence: the ability to represent the spatial world internally in your mind — the way a sailor or airplane pilot navigates the large spatial world, or the way a chess player or sculptor represents a more circumscribed spatial world. Spatial intelligence can be used in the arts or in the sciences.

6. Naturalist Intelligence: the ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) and sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations). This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or chef.

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence: having an understanding of yourself; knowing who you are, what you can do, what you want to do, how you react to things, which things to avoid, and which things to gravitate toward. We are drawn to people who have a good understanding of themselves. They tend to know what they can and can’t do, and to know where to go if they need help.

8. Interpersonal Intelligence: the ability to understand other people. It’s an ability we all need, but is especially important for teachers, clinicians, salespersons, or politicians — anybody who deals with other people.

9. Existential Intelligence: the ability and proclivity to pose (and ponder) questions about life, death, and ultimate realities.

”

- Howard Gardner’s seminal Theory of Multiple Intelligences, originally published in 1983, which revolutionized psychology and education by offering a more dimensional conception of intelligence than the narrow measures traditional standardized tests had long applied. (via explore-blog)

You know… since it did start out for college...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:41:12 -0800

You know… since it *did* start out for college students.

pewresearch:

Facebook is 9 years old today. See demographics of social network users from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.