By Laura B. McGrath. I get nostalgic as summer arrives each year; I remember neglecting my homework to go play outside, so excited for the lawn sprinkler. And when school was finally over, well, life just couldn’t get better. In my rose-colored memory, my summers looked a lot like The Sandlot and Troop Beverly Hills (I neither played baseball nor scouted, but I have an active imagination). Read more...

By Kaitlin Gallagher. All good things must come to an end. I’ve had a wonderful time writing for GradHacker over the past two years, but this will be my last post. Many of my previous posts have centered on how to manage the stress and the overwhelming nature of grad school. My guest post before I became a permanent author was about the mid-degree crisis I was facing. Read more...

By Matt Reed. One of my favorite classroom exercises -- I didn’t invent it, but I used it -- involved a close reading of “Mary had a little lamb.” It’s a surprisingly ambiguous sentence, if you pay attention. For example, what does “had” mean?  Does it mean “once, but no longer?”  “Ate?”  “Gave birth to?”  “Copulated with?” And in “a little lamb,” what does “little” mean?  Just a few bites?  A lamb that was itself small?  Or modestly endowed?  Shorn of context, it could mean that she owned a small lamb, or that she ate a few lamb mcnuggets, or that she gave birth to a baby lamb.  Context matter. Read more...

By Matt Reed. The Boy turned 13 this week. We officially have a teenager in the house. Nothing really brings home the speed with which time passes than an adolescent boy in a growth spurt.  As of this week, he’s six feet tall, and wearing a size 13 shoe.  (I wear a 12; the shoe salesman helpfully told us that if the 13 feels tight, he could wear a 14 comfortably.)  He’s the kind of young-skinny that makes him invisible when he turns sideways, despite inhaling food at every opportunity.  Sometimes, on a quiet night, you can hear him growing. Read more...

By Paul Fain. Up to 44 percent of students at for-profit colleges could lose access to federal financial aid under proposed “gainful employment” regulations, according to a new report from the sector’s trade group. And many of those students lack other educational options in their academic field or geographical area.
“The impact will be very large” if gainful employment is enacted, the report said. Read more...

By David Leonhardt. Some newly minted college graduates struggle to find work. Others accept jobs for which they feel overqualified. Student debt, meanwhile, has topped $1 trillion. It’s enough to create a wave of questions about whether a college education is still worth it. Read more...