Monthly Archives: January 2013

Here’s some progress. The U.S. high school graduation rate has climbed back to where it was back in 1976. That means that about four-fifths of all high school students are now finishing up and graduating. (Or if you are one of those people who prefer to look at life through the “my glass is half [...]

“College Crackup and the Online Future,” a post by Mark C. Taylor on Bloomberg.com, documents the rising number of college students who are opting to take courses online.
Taylor writes, “Some changes are well under way. In 2009, about 29 percent of college students took at least one course online; by 2014, that number is projected to [...]

Is your California community college in the throes of a budgetary crisis? Are classes being cancelled? Did you just get shut out of a course that you need to graduate?
If so, StraighterLine has a solution for you. Why not leave the troubles of the California community college system behind and enroll at Western Governors University [...]

Or, “How to get credit for what you learned in a non-credit-bearing course”
By Jeffrey Simons
Taking a MOOC sounded like a great idea. Who wouldn’t want to take a free online course from top professors at the best universities in the world, like Harvard and Stanford and MIT? That’s probably why hundreds of thousands of students [...]

Boy, did I love snow days when I was in public school. I’d wake up in the morning to the sound of the town’s firehouse siren, which signaled that schools were closed. I’d look out the window to confirm that there was white stuff on the ground. Then I’d grab my sled and meet my [...]

If you’re a college student, you know that the day you get to sign up for classes online is a lot like lining up to start a marathon. You and everybody else fire up your computers at the same moment. With luck, your college’s server is robust and you can get logged on. And with [...]

Above: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey Discusses the  National Couch Potato Crisis
Junior or Junette seems to be spending a ton of time on the couch these days. And there seems to be a good reason. He or she was planning to take courses this term in a community college near you. But now those [...]

We’ve been writing a series of posts on this blog about the community college crisis in California. Budgets and classes have been cut. Students are being shut out of classes, and many of them are making the decision to take courses online instead of waiting for classes to open up at their regular schools.
So, is [...]

If you’re looking for a university with a worldwide reputation for educational innovation and excellence, we would like to direct your attention to the University of Maryland University College. Because UMUC is one of StraighterLine’s partner colleges, you can begin your studies there after completing coursework at StraighterLine.
UMUC also accepts many of StraighterLine’s college-level courses [...]

The U.S. Census Bureau announced that 315.1 million people will be living in the United States as the years 2013 starts. “That is an increase of 2.3 million people or 0.73 percent from Jan. 1 2012,” according to a recent Reuters article. “It is also a gain of 6.3 million people or 2.05 percent since [...]

You’ve heard the old expression, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
There’s a lot of truth in that. When resourceful people face obstacles, they don’t stop or stall. They dig down, find new energy, and keep moving forward. That could explain why a growing number of students from California have chosen to take [...]

We recently found a fun post entitled “Nine Things that Aren’t True about Californians” on the Vampy Varnish blog. Check it out. You’ll enjoy it. Here are the nine myths that the blogger exposes about Californians and the state they call home . . .

Myth: Everyone in California knows how to surf
Myth: We all hang [...]

ABOVE – See president Obama sworn in as president of the United States in 2009
As you know by now, Barack Obama will be inaugurated for his second four-year term as U.S. president on Monday, January 21st. Nearly a million people are expected to visit our nation’s capital to see it happen.
Over the next four years [...]

There’s no doubt about the fact that a flu epidemic (or near-epidemic anyhow) is happening right now across the United States. If you doubt it, a map that you can see online at the KYPost blog will convince you that the epidemic really is happening.
That post also contains state-by-state information on just how bad the [...]