Tag Archive: Education


Don’t Leave Underserved Populations Out of Higher Ed!

Filed Under: Economy, Education, New
Oct.21, 2010

In just a couple of months, the Department of Education (DOE) will release a decision about their “gainful employment” (GE) rule. In the 60-day comment period, they received 83,000 comments about the rule — the highest ever for a higher education rulemaking.

Here’s why: This rule is particularly devastating for African American populations and under-served communities. It would limit the amount of federal financial aid given to populations that had slower pay-back rates or were likely to have longer periods of debt – specifically the people that need financial aid.


Millions of people attend career colleges every year, and many need financial assistance to do so. Isn’t the purpose of financial aid to help those who cannot afford to pay for it themselves? Why would we take that opportunity away?


Add your voice to the 83,000 people who have already taken action. Tell the DOE that the GE rule is unfair and will have devastating results for our economy.
Don’t Leave Underserved Populations Out of Higher Ed!

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Protect Student Choice in Education

Filed Under: Economy, Education, New
Oct.11, 2010

Students need every opportunity to get ahead, particularly in this difficult economy.



At a time when Congress should be focused on job creation and strategies to prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s jobs, it is instead targeting private-sector higher-education providers that serve about 3 million students a year. The result could be more jobs lost and fewer Americans getting the education they need to secure good jobs.



Many for-profit schools are serving those least well-served by traditional higher education. Particularly in such tough economic times, it is with low-income and minority students that our nation is failing.



Let’s stop singling out sectors of higher education for unfair, unbalanced congressional hearings and discriminatory rules. Let’s start focusing on steps that will improve educational access, opportunity and quality for all Americans.

Tell Congress: It’s my education. My job. My choice.
Protect Student Choice in Education

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Kindergarten to College: S.F. Starts Savings Accounts for Kids

Filed Under: Education, New
Oct.06, 2010

Yesterday saw the launch of Kindergarten to College, America’s first publicly-funded college savings program. Over the next three years, about 1,200 San Francisco kindergartners will get new trust accounts from Citibank with an initial $50 deposit of city funds. Students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch will get $100.

Going forward, organizers hope that non-profits and corporations will provide matching donations for money the families manage to save. For the first year, the great local non-profit EARN will match the first $100 that all families save this year; it will match $100 savings from low-income families only in future years. The San Francisco Foundation will make additional matches if parents go to financial education classes and make routine deposits.

The idea is that students who already have a college fund will be more likely to matriculate — seven times more likely, according to one study. City officials urge families to commit to depositing even $5 a month.

Many of the children who receive the accounts will be the first in their family to have one, since half of San Francisco’s black and Hispanic population lack a savings account.

Mayor Gavin Newsom presented a similar idea, the Baby Savings Bond, in his inaugural address in 2008. He says he cribbed it from then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. “No one else in the country is doing this,” he says. “We are not just saying every child can go to college. We are now providing families with the financial tools necessary to make this a reality.”

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Katherine Heigl Pledges $1 Million to Stop Shelter Killing

Filed Under: Education, New
Sep.30, 2010

Pet overpopulation has resulted in an estimated 3 to 4 million cats and dogs euthanized each year. The population crisis is a community-wide issue that has solutions rooted in responsible pet ownership.

The newly founded Compassion Revolution has inspired actress Katherine Heigl to donate $1 million from her Heigl Foundation for spay/neuter programs in the Los Angeles area. The goal is for Los Angeles county to become a no-kill community. Heigl plans to lead by example, inspiring other communities to “reject killing as a method of achieving results.”

In many ways, Heigl is on the right track. A number of cities and counties across the U.S. are working toward the same no-kill goal, not just in having no-kill shelters but creating an entire no-kill community. It only takes one person to say enough is enough. Fortunately, celebrities have a built in audience to have their voices heard.

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Pledge to Consider Fair Trade and Socially Responsible Products

Filed Under: Education, New
Sep.27, 2010

Our impact on our finite planet is sometimes greater than we realize. Seemingly isolated choices we make every day — from what we eat for breakfast to how we do business — often support actions and practices we would never condone.

We would never knowingly support hazardous working conditions or environmentally destructive practices. But downtown or at the mall its hard to know which products will line up with our values. Fortunately, WorldofGood.com by eBay provides a Fair Trade marketplace that aligns with your personal values.

Workers are not just cogs in a machine, but individuals with personal stories, families and dreams. For the Aj Quen “the weaver” Association in Guatemala, Fair Trade means these women work for a fair wage that provides food, education and support for their families.

Help build a more just and sustainable world. Consider Fair Trade and sustainable products.
Pledge to Consider Fair Trade and Socially Responsible Products

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Indianapolis Bakery Won’t Serve Gay Students

Filed Under: Economy, Education, New
Sep.24, 2010

Looking for some cupcakes or cookies with rainbow frosting on them, to celebrate National Coming Out Day? Don’t head to Just Cookies in Indianapolis. The bakery, inside Indianapolis’ City Market, refused to accept an order from a gay student group at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Why?

According to the man who owns the bakery, rainbow cupcakes and cookies celebrating LGBT pride violate the values of the bakery.

“I explained we’re a family-run business, we have two young, impressionable daughters and we thought maybe it was best not to do that,” said co-owner David Stockton to a local Fox television station. He then added that it’s his bakery’s decision to decide what is obscene. Apparently rainbow colors fall under that label. “We have our values, and you know, some things … for instance, if someone wants a cookie with an obscenity, well, we’re not going to do that.”

All of a sudden making cookies and cupcakes for a gay student group is against family values? So much for customer service, and so much for making a good impression on those daughters, who were just shown by their parents that discrimination can come in the form of baked goods. Meanwhile, the Indianapolis City Market has a mission to enrich “the city’s economy, expands its educational options, enhances its culture.” Having vendors that refuse to serve LGBT customers doesn’t do any of that.

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Weekend Entrepreneur Links: Global Generosity, Education, IPOs

Filed Under: Education, New, Tech
Sep.13, 2010

September is the month that business, school, and real-life kicks into gear for many who had enjoyed the last gasp of August summer. Important articles this week range from the education access funding to the problem of regulatory frameworks for startup growth to the comparative generosity of global citizens.

The Most Generous Countries on Earth: The Gallup World Giving Index recently released data about the most giving countries. The USA comes in at number 5. The criteria used by Gallup includes charitable giving, time spent volunteering, and willingness to help strangers. It’s hard to draw too much from the limited amount of info here, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Making the Grade: This Matthew Bishop piece in The Economist discusses how loans for education may be the next version of microfinance to make it big. He discusses up-and-coming organizations like Enzi — who are experimenting with loans correlated to a percentage of future income — and Vitanna, as well as pondering the potential of Kiva’s entry into the student loan market. Watch this space in the coming months.

Startup Visa Interviews at O’Reilly Gov 2.0: This speech and interview combo posted by Brad Feld, a venture capitalist based in Boulder, CO and one of the leaders of the Startup Visa movement, provides great background on the push. In short, the goal is to create a class of visa specifically designed for immigrant entrepreneurs who wish to build their companies and create jobs in the USA.

Schools: The Disaster Movie: I expect that education reform will be one of the most talked about issues in our field over the next year. This is in part due to the fact that the field is so ripe for disruption, and that more and more startups are being created to tackle it. But it is also in part because the filmmaker behind “An Inconvenient Truth” is back with a much-anticipated film about the deplorable state of American schools. Early reports have suggested that Teacher’s Unions come out looking pretty bad, which will be sure to poor additional fuel on an already intense flame.

Instead of IPOs, Startups Look to Be Acquired: Tomorrow I will publish a piece about new evidence that suggests that startups are the most important economic engine of job creation in the United States. This piece reinforces the point I make then about how economic policy designed to promote small business and bank reform is not necessarily the same — in fact can be down right opposite — for policy needed to allow startups to flourish. This piece shows how both too much and too little regulation has ruined the market for technology IPOs, impacting job creation and the venture industry as a whole.

Photo credit: Schlüsselbein2007

Weekend Entrepreneur Links: Global Generosity, Education, IPOs

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Does Low-Carb Mean Good Health? Consumers Think So

Filed Under: Education, Health, New
Sep.08, 2010

Food marketers are are eager to latch onto the latest diet and nutrition trends to promote their questionable goods. Some of these descriptors might be useful — such as low-salt — but catchy labels don’t tell us much about the nutritional content of the product. However, many consumers think they do.

Low-fat might be the all-time most ubiquitious front-of-package catch phrase, but in the last decade, the low-carb descriptor took the (flourless) cake. The claims and products skyrocketed, stemming from a regrowth in the popularlity of Atkins-style, protein-heavy diets. Though low-carb products aren’t necessarily better or worse for you, a study published in the September/October issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that consumers misinterpret these claims to mean a product is better for their health and their waistlines.

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When Victims Become Traffickers

Filed Under: Education, New
Aug.28, 2010

Burmese police announced this week that out of the hundreds of human traffickers they have arrested over the past several years, at least 100 of them were once victims. Sadly, trafficking victims becoming traffickers is not unusual. But what makes a person go from victim to trafficker?

Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.

Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”

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When Victims Become Traffickers

Filed Under: Education, New
Aug.28, 2010

Burmese police announced this week that out of the hundreds of human traffickers they have arrested over the past several years, at least 100 of them were once victims. Sadly, trafficking victims becoming traffickers is not unusual. But what makes a person go from victim to trafficker?

Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.

Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”

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