Infoneer Pulse

Drawing almost no attention, the nation crossed an ominous milestone last year that threatens more economic polarization and social division: For the first time, public colleges and universities in most states received most of their revenue from tuition rather than government appropriations.

“What you see is a generation that’s struggling with really deep questions about how to be a pluralistic society and a pluralistic campus and how to be an open society and an open campus,” said Sam Gill, vice president of communities and learning at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which led the effort with Gallup, the polling company.

Enrollment in language courses other than English fell 9.2 percent in colleges and universities in the United States between the fall of 2013 and the fall of 2016, according to a new study by the Modern Language Association.  The study includes research based on the enrollments of undergraduate introductory courses as well as advanced-degree programs.  Of the 15 most commonly taught languages, the only two that showed gains in enrollment during the 2013-16 time frame were Japanese and Korean. Enrollment in Japanese language programs grew 3.1 percent, and enrollment in Korean language programs grew 13.7 percent.

Surprisingly, news categorized as false or fake was 70 percent more likely than true news to receive a retweet. “Political” fake news spread three times faster than other kinds, and the top 1 percent of retweeted fake news regularly diffused to at least 1,000 people and sometimes as many as 100,000. True news, on the other hand, hardly ever reached more than 1,000 people.

Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins. Now I am not just less anxious and less addicted to the news, I am more widely informed (though there are some blind spots). And I’m embarrassed about how much free time I have — in two months, I managed to read half a dozen books, took up pottery and (I think) became a more attentive husband and father. Most of all, I realized my personal role as a consumer of news in our broken digital news environment.

"It’s possible to teach art history, English, or French literature in a really didactic, transmissionist, passive manner," he says. "And it’s equally possible to teach anatomy, physiology, or mechanical engineering in a really engaged, inquiry-driven manner. One of those leads to students who develop these habits of mind for problem solving, teamwork, and communication. The argument that certain disciplines, by default, lead to certain competencies or skills — and others don’t — is not a very good argument."

Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior paediatric doctors have warned. An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, they say. “Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago,” said Sally Payne, the head paediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust. “Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not be able to hold it because they don’t have the fundamental movement skills.

The more you live through screens, the more you’re living in a narrow bandwidth, an abstract world that’s increasingly artificial. And that virtual world is safe and controllable, but it’s not rich and unpredictable in the way the real world is. I’m worried what will happen if we lose our connection to reality altogether.

Close to 75% of young Americans, ages 17 to 24, are not eligible for the military due to health issues or criminal backgrounds, Politico's Bryan Bender reports, citing government data. That's 24 million out of 34 million individuals.

Yale University Library announced a $2 million project Feb. 13 to resurrect over 3,000 obsolete software applications used in the sciences, design, engineering, and music composition, among other fields. Funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon and the Alfred P. Sloan foundations, Yale seeks to make opening an old word-processing file as easy as opening a book. “Software powers business, it powers government, it powers culture. It powers pretty much anything that you can think of, and it’s been doing that for a long time,” Seth Anderson, the project manager, told Quartz. Prior to this project, “we haven’t had effective strategies for making [obsolete] software accessible.”

The biggest divide was around students’ professionalism and work ethic. Almost 90 percent of seniors thought they were competent in that area, but only about 43 percent of the employers agreed. Nearly 80 percent of students also believed they were competent in oral and written communication and critical thinking, while only roughly 42 percent and 56 percent of employers, respectively, indicated that students were successful in those areas. Per the survey, only in digital technology skills were employers more likely to feel that students were prepared versus the seniors themselves.

The result has been financial calamity for millennials: overall, only 57 percent of borrowers are current on their loan payments; one-third of borrowers who graduated between 2006 and 2011 have already defaulted. Home ownership and new business creation by young adults has plummeted. As Gen Zers reach college age, they’re looking at the example of millennials and contemplating whether a traditional four-year accredited college or university is the optimal path for achieving their primary goal: a good first (and probably digital) job in a growing sector of the economy.

Onboard the FalconHeavy were two Arch discs, Arch 1.1 and Arch 1.2, from a set of five existing discs made with cutting-edge storage technology. They have an absolutely massive capacity and an amazing life expectancy. Arch 1.1 and 1.2 can each hold up to 360 terabytes of data, and remain readable for up to 13.8 billion years, even in the harsh environment in space — the discs can withstand temperatures up to 1,000°C.

"When they're ready to be done with high school, they think, 'That's all the school I need, and I'm just going to go and find a job.' " That job, Gordon explains, might be on the family farm or at the egg-packaging plant or the factory that makes pulleys and conveyor belts, or driving trucks that haul grain. Variations of this mindset, among many other reasons, have given rise to a reality that has gotten lost in the impassioned debate over who gets to go to college, which often focuses on racial and ethnic minorities and students from low-income families: The high school graduates who head off to campus in the lowest proportions in America are the ones from rural places. Overall, 59 percent of rural high school grads — white and nonwhite, at every income level — go to college the subsequent fall. That's a lower proportion than the 62 percent of urban and 67 percent of suburban graduates, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this.