It’s better in to live in your mother’s basement, drink beer and play video games all day than to major in English or sociology, go into debt and then live in the basement, says Aaron Clarey, author of  Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major.

Would-be rock stars in Britain will be able to earn a two-year degree in heavy metal music at New College Nottingham. A group called the Campaign for Real Education says the degree is a waste of time, reports BBC News. Liam Maloy, a lecturer in music performance, said students will learn how to compose and perform [...]

A high school graduate, Anthony Oliveri earned $30 an hour building cars at NUMMI’s Fremont, California plant, until he was laid off in 2010 along with 4,700 other unionized auto workers. He now earns $12.80 an hour as a security guard patrolling high-tech campuses. It’s a different story for Greg Bostick, who studied machine technology [...]

Thirty-eight states are measuring 11th-graders college readiness, reports the Community College Research Center in Reshaping the College Transition. Some use state exams,while others use the ACT, SAT or community college placement tests. Even more states are expected to start testing when Common Core State Standards’ assessments are available. Twenty-nine states are using catch-up courses or online [...]

Most community college students aren’t ready for college or the workforce concludes a National Center on Education and the Economy study. Colleges have lowered standards to accommodate poorly prepared students, writes the NCEE’s Marc Tucker. Very little writing at all is required in most programs.  The writing that is required is of a very simply sort.  Students, for [...]

MOOC enthusiasts should consider a Community College Research Center survey that found many college students want “in-person discussion and on-the-spot feedback,” writes Mandy Zatynski on The Quick and the Ed. There’s a generational divide in online learning separating young students from those 30 and older, she writes. . . . my brother and I are galaxies apart in terms [...]

INGLEWOOD, Calif.—In the back of a tenth-grade geometry classroom on a recent morning at Washington Preparatory High School, nine miles southeast of Los Angeles, Landon Yurica and Alycia Jones bent over the papers in front of them. At 23 and 24, respectively, the two could almost blend in as students as they tried the assignment [...]

NORTHRIDGE, Calif.— It took less than a minute for Mario Martinez to finish the first six questions of the algebra exam that his professor, Ivan Cheng, had just handed to him. The high school-level test was supposed to be a good example of an exam, so that the graduate students in Cheng’s math methods course [...]

NORTHRIDGE, Calif.—On a recent afternoon at California State University, Northridge, Nancy Prosenjak was attempting to quiet the graduate students spread out across conference tables in the back of her classroom. She was still missing nearly a third of the class, but she was eager to debrief with her students about their first day of student [...]

The decision to close more than 50 struggling schools in Chicago has fueled outrage among many parents and teachers. But others see the strategy as a way to improve education for the city’s most vulnerable students. Patricia Hunter, 28, a stay-at-home mom, sends her daughter Danielle to Dulles School of Excellence on the South Side. [...]

The Chicago school system plans to shutter 54 schools next year to save money and improve academics. Among them is Lafayette Elementary in Humboldt Park on the West Side of the city, a school with a treasured school orchestra and a program for autistic children. Valerie Nelson, 43, is a home health care worker who [...]

Unless California helps low-income parents learn basic skills, train for jobs and pursue higher education, the state’s prosperity is at risk, concludes Working Hard, Left Behind. The Campaign for College Opportunity, the Women’s Foundation of California and Working Poor Families project collaborated on the report. California leads the nation in low-income working adults and in [...]