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[Fiction] From Simon Rich’s serialized novella for The New Yorker: A pickler strikes out on his own: “Simon refills his coffee vat and smirks. “‘Who’s going to hire you? You’ve got no education, no experience, no skills.’ “‘Simon,’ Claire says. ‘That’s rude.’ “‘It’s not rude,’ he says. ‘It’s realistic. I mean, for God’s sake, Hersch, […]

Why do we treat student differently than other debt? An argument that it is “a form of social control”: “As states disinvest from public higher education and compel students to take on ever-increasing debt loads to fund their studies, the experience and purpose of higher education is transformed. The pursuit of a college diploma becomes […]

Educators at Stanford University are paving the way for the future of online learning by providing free lectures on the Internet, but the idea of a prestigious college providing mass online education for free remains the subject of intense debate: “Within days of going online with little fanfare, the three free courses attracted 350,000 registrants […]

A unique community experiment: What happens when a group of anonymous donors offers to pay for the college education for every child in Kalamazoo, Michigan? “From the very beginning, Brown, the only person in town who communicates directly with the Promise donors, has suggested that the program is supposed to do more than just pay […]

How Udacity, Coursera and other online universities are changing the way we learn—and changing who has access to higher education: “‘It turns out that two-thirds of our students are from outside the United States,’ Stavens, now the CEO of Udacity, said. ‘It’s about a third US, a third from ten other countries you might expect—western […]

How a semiliterate University of Memphis football player educated himself while facing countless obstacles: You can’t hide for long in college when you’re semiliterate. But somehow Mr. Cathey slipped through his freshman year with just under a C average, taking classes like elementary algebra and music appreciation. Then he saw the syllabus for HIST 2010: […]

Stanford University, and its president John L. Hennessy, have a tight relationship with Silicon Valley, which has helped the university’s endowment grow to nearly $17 billion. A look at how those relationships are shaping what’s next: “John Hennessy’s experience in Silicon Valley proves that digital disruption is normal, and even desirable. It is commonly believed […]

Examining the unmet medical needs for transgender people in the United States: “The problem is that in the United States, most physicians don’t exactly know what treatment for the transgender patient entails. For an untrained professional, it’s a challenge to provide care to a patient with a penis who wants a vagina, or to a […]

The killing of three sisters shocks a country where the past decade has seen a rise in violence toward women: “Since the turn of the millennium, over 5,000 women have been murdered in Guatemala. To give a better idea of what this figure means, consider that if Guatemala, with its population of 14 million, were […]

A Minnesota school district enacts a policy designed to stop teachers from discussing or acknowledging homosexuality. Gay students report bullying, but administrators do nothing. The result is a string of suicides that has shaken the community: “Sam’s death lit the fuse of a suicide epidemic that would take the lives of nine local students in […]