Thriving at College

Scott Cohn, senior correspondent with CNBC, reports: In 2009, the most recent data available, 67 percent of graduates had debt, averaging $24,000 per student, up 6 percent from the previous year, according to the non-profit Project on Student Debt. The numbers are even higher at private institutions. The figures do not include the growing number of loans taken out by parents, and only limited data on for-profit colleges, where student debt is typically much higher, but relatively few institutions report it. Americans now owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards—a … [Read more...] about The College Debt Crisis

A Stanford University research study that came out in August 2009: People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time. Related to this, see Nicholas Carr's July/August 2008 Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? and my 2011 Modern Reformation article "Coming of Age in the Facebook Age" (subscription required). This matter is also discussed in Thriving at College. … [Read more...] about Stanford University Study on Multi-Tasking: We’re Bad At It

From a provocative lecture delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009 by William Deresiewicz. The speaker notes that many organizational leaders can be described as commonplace or ordinary: That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to … [Read more...] about Solitude, Leadership, and Multi-tasking