College Towns See Lower Unemployment

In student survey, Ohio U. finishes second

(NEWSER) - Good news for parents paying for their kids to study at the University of Georgia: The school is finally No. 1. The bad news: The Princeton Review list ranks the nation's top party schools. "UGA has been on the party school list for a while, but it’s one we prefer not to lead," a university rep tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . Too late. "People need to understand the parties go on at night," says a rising senior. "We do actually go to class and study." More»

Princeton Review dons a toga and lists the top party schools

(NEWSER) - Students are knocking back celebratory shots and administrators are tearing their hair over the Princeton Review's annual list of the top 20 party schools. The full list appears in the 2008 edition of The Best 366 Colleges, on sale today.

1. West Virginia University
2. University of Mississippi
3. University of Texas, Austin

Harvard, Princeton top universities list

(NEWSER) - US News and World Report has released its latest college rankings, and it’s full of the usual suspects, with Harvard, Princeton, and Yale topping the list; not much has changed since last year . Among liberal arts colleges , Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore lead the pack. The magazine also presents its best universities in the world : The UK is on top, with Cambridge at No. 1, followed by Harvard and Yale (don’t ask us why Yale beats Princeton worldwide but not nationally). More»

'Consumer-based' education to blame for loosening standards, says report

(NEWSER) - A is for "average," especially at American colleges and universities today—a stunning 43% of all grades in the United States are now A's, according to a new report on grade inflation . That's up from just 15% in 1960 and 31% as recently as 1988, notes the Economix blog at the New York Times . At the same time, the number of bad grades have plummeted, with C's going from 35% in 1960 to just 15% today; D's have dropped from about 11% to 5%. More»

This essential question needs to be answered, but it's complex

(NEWSER) - We toss around the phrase all the time, but how do we define what makes a “good job” good? It’s a key question—and a complex one—as we look to the future of our economy, writes Michael Lind in Salon . Among the factors:

• Unions: We often call manufacturing jobs “good” ones, but that wasn’t the case until they were unionized. Service-sector jobs, meanwhile, are often seen as "bad" jobs, but they might see huge benefits from unionization.