As it happens, two separate — and ambitious — recent academic studies have looked at precisely this issue. The economists and education researchers tracked thousands of people over the last two decades in Florida, Georgia and elsewhere who had fallen on either side of hard admissions cutoffs. Less selective colleges often set such benchmarks: Students who score 840 on the SAT, for example, or maintain a C+ average in high school are admitted. Those who don’t clear the bar are generally rejected, and many don’t attend any four-year college.
Such stark cutoffs provide researchers with a kind of natural experiment. Students who score an 830 on the SAT are nearly identical to those who score an 840. Yet if one group goes to college and the other doesn’t, researchers can make meaningful estimates of the true effects of college.
And the two studies have come to remarkably similar conclusions: Enrolling in a four-year college brings large benefits to marginal students.

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.
Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.

WASHINGTON — The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists.
The report is the first to examine the association’s role in the interrogation program. It contends, using newly disclosed emails, that the group’s actions to keep psychologists involved in the interrogation program coincided closely with efforts by senior Bush administration officials to salvage the program after the public disclosure in 2004 of graphic photos of prisoner abuse by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

(TBKTSG Online) - Sáng nay 18-4-2015, tại đường Nguyễn Văn Bình, Q1, TPHCM, chương trình Phố Sách đã được khai mạc nhân Ngày Sách Việt Nam lần thứ hai. Dự kiến hoạt động Phố Sách này sẽ kéo dài đến hết 21-4 tới.
Hàng trăm độc giả, đặc biệt là độc giả trẻ đã đến tham quan, mua sách ngay trong buổi sáng khai mạc Phố Sách.
Chương trình hoạt động tại Phố Sách sẽ gồm có: triển lãm sách hay, sách quý về lịch sử, thành tựu phát triển của TP.HCM, sách ngoại văn phục vụ du khách nước ngoài, trao đổi sách cũ, giao lưu tác giả - tác phẩm, phát động xây dựng tủ sách công nhân…

At 84, she sits comfortably as one of the greatest authors in American history, even as her uncompromising dream for black literature seems farther away than ever.

In keeping with the spirit of Charlie Hebdo, the book does not shy away from harsh jabs at religion. “The problem is neither the Quran nor the Bible, sleep-inducing, incoherent and badly written novels,” Mr. Charbonnier wrote. The problem, he said, is the faithful who read the holy books “like instructions for assembling Ikea shelves.”

The decision by PEN American Center to give its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has prompted six writers to withdraw as literary hosts at the group’s annual gala on May 5, adding a new twist to the continuing debate over the publication’s status as a martyr for free speech.
But Salman Rushdie, a former PEN president who lived in hiding for years after a fatwa in response to his novel “The Satanic Verses,” said the issues were perfectly clear. “If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” Mr. Rushdie said.

Is pleased to invite Vietnamese and international friends
to join us for the Vietnam premiere of You’re the Enemy – Welcome Back!
a documentary film by PANKAJA BROOKE
and to meet members of the Veterans Peace Tour of Vietnam 2015
at the Hanoi Cinematheque -- 22A Hai Ba Trung | Tel 04 3936 2648
Saturday, April 18, 2015 -- 6:00 – 9:30
contact: Chuck Searcy : chuckusvn@gmail.com

In “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten,” that troubled history is the backdrop for a rich musical cast, most of which perished in the Khmer Rouge period. It includes Yol Aularong, a charismatic proto-punk who mocked conformist society, and women like Ros Serey Sothea, the nation’s sweetheart; Pen Ran, her worldly, wisecracking foil; and Pou Vannary, who warbled a bilingual version of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”
The music they made remains treasured not only by Cambodians but also by rock connoisseurs around the world, for a spunky inventiveness that now, in retrospect, makes Cambodia seem a sparkling outpost of world pop.

Though China’s censorship of the Internet is widely known, its aggressive efforts to intercept publications being carried into the country have received less notice. Ms. Li hopes to change that with a lawsuit she has filed in Beijing challenging the legality of the airport seizures. She doubts she will get her books back, but she is seeking something perhaps more potent: an official explanation for an act of censorship.