As something of a nerdy birthday present to myself, I downloaded J.J. Abram's re-imagined Star Trek movie the other day from iTunes. If you haven't seen it, it's quite good; it's visually stunning, action packed and actually funny. The plot itself is a bit hard to describe (there's some time travel/alternate reality stuff going [...]

Following up on my post from last week about surging enrollments at community colleges, the New York Times ran a story last week about how the crush is affecting local schools: Historically, the city’s six community colleges, which are part of the City University of New York, have taken applications until about a week before the [...]

I must confess to the fact that I've never read Richard Hofstadter's classic work, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, cover to cover. However, I feel like I've read enough to know that, were he alive, Hofstadter would probably be morbidly fascinated by how presciently he'd described our current political moment. Of the paranoid style, Hofstadter [...]

A recent report released by the Pew Research Center revealed that almost 40 percent of the nation's 18-24-year-olds were enrolled in college last October, a record number driven in large part by an increase in the number of students attending community colleges. The increase in enrollment at community colleges closely correlates with the poor economic conditions [...]

One of the main reasons I decided to pursue a career in journalism was to try, perhaps in vain, to correct something I often see in the media, which is the easy acceptance of narratives pushed by one group or another in service of advancing their agenda. I understand the appeal if you're a reporter. [...]

The New York Times ran an interesting piece last week about the rise of for-profit colleges and the surging enrollment numbers they're seeing during the recession. In New York state, there's been a 61 percent increase in the number of students attending for profit schools over the last decade (compared to a 15 percent increase [...]

I wonder what Barack Obama thinks about when he hears the name Joe Lieberman. I wonder if it makes him angry. I wonder if it makes him feel like a dupe. I wonder if he feels betrayed. I wonder about these things because Lieberman, who was just a controversial Supreme Court decision away from being Vice [...]