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Category: Education (Page 1 of 3)

Women Peace Security Index for 2023

2023-10-25 /

Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) seeks to promote a more stable, peaceful, and just world by focusing on the important role women play in preventing conflict and building peace, growing economies, and addressing global threats like climate change and violent extremism.

This fourth edition of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index ranks and scores 177 countries on women’s status. The results show that countries where women are doing well are also more peaceful, democratic, prosperous, and better
prepared to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This year, nine of the top ten best countries to be women are European, with Scandinavian countries leading the rankings. Denmark leads the 2023 rankings, scoring more than three times higher than Afghanistan.

1 Denmark
2 Switzerland
3 Sweden
4 Finland
4 Iceland
4 Luxembourg
7 Norway
8 Austria
9 Netherlands
10 New Zealand

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Proving it’s not too late » 72-year-old Sam Kaplan graduates from college while his 99-year-old mom cheers him on

2023-10-16 /

Good News Network »

Sam Kaplan of Lawrenceville, Georgia has added many items to his resume over the years. But on May 11th, in his 72nd year of life, he added a particularly late line item—a college degree.

Alongside classmates 50 years his junior, Kaplan crossed the stage in cap and gown to receive an undergraduate degree in Cinema and Media Arts from George Gwinnett College. His 99-year-old mother was there to see it all and cheered as well as she could.

Kaplan, who graduated from high school in 1969, had not considered college. He went right into the workforce in various roles.

Media Release »

Writing unfiltered thoughts writing for five to 20 minutes a day can improve health, diminish stress, increase self-confidence, and kindle the imagination

2023-10-12 /

Scientific American »

For decades, physician and author Silke Heimes has been leading groups in therapeutic exercises to put thoughts and feelings down on paper. Heimes, a professor of journalism at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, points to abundant evidence that writing for five to 20 minutes a day can improve health, diminish stress, increase self-confidence and even kindle the imagination. A writing routine, she argues, is a form of mental hygiene that almost anyone can benefit from.

Venice is charging a €5 entry fee due to overtourism

2023-10-01 /

BBC »

Over the past three decades, Venice has become one of the most notable victims of overtourism. The city currently welcomes an estimated 30 million visitors per year, far above the 50,000 residents that actually call it home. And more than two thirds of visitors come just for the day.

This month, Venice’s municipal authorities announced plans to fight these issues with a controversial move: charging day trippers a €5 entrance fee. This will make Venice the first city in the world to charge visitors to enter its premises. News of the entry fee has sparked controversies, and with travellers eager to understand how the new measure will affect them, BBC Travel talks to authorities and locals to understand when it starts, who will have to pay and how people can visit the city in a more sustainable way.

The Guardian looks at how Finland is a better place to have child

2023-09-20 /

Finland is a world leader when it comes to early years education. Childcare is affordable and nursery places are universally available in a system that puts children’s rights at the centre of decision-making.

Now the country is applying the same child-first thinking to paternity-leave policies in an attempt to tackle gender inequality in parenting. The Guardian’s Alexandra Topping travels to Helsinki to find out why the UK pre-school system lags so far behind and whether it really is easier to be a parent in Finland.

‘Why don’t men rebel?’: what the world can learn from childcare in Finland

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UNESCO has added war ravaged sites in Kyiv and L’viv on its list of World Heritage sites in Danger

2023-09-15 /

The World Heritage Committee, meeting in Riyadh until 25 September, decided today to inscribe the sites of “The Saint Sophia Cathedral and Related Monastic Buildings and Lavra of Kyiv-Pechersk” and “L’viv – the ensemble of the historic centre” on the List of World Heritage in Danger, due to the threat of destruction the Russian offensive poses.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee considers that “optimal conditions are no longer met to fully guarantee the protection of the Outstanding Universal Value of the property and that it is threatened by potential danger due to the war”. Faced with the risk of direct attack, these sites are also vulnerable to the shockwaves caused by the bombing of the two cities.

While noting the many actions taken by the Ukrainian authorities to protect their cultural property, the Committee stated that these two heritage sites of outstanding universal value have remained under permanent threat since the start of the invasion on 24 February 2022.

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Harvard U is advising graduate students sign up for government food assistance programs

2023-08-17 /

Vice »

This is notable in part because Harvard’s graduate student workers have gone on strike twice in the last several years in part over their low pay from the university. It’s also notable because Harvard is one of the richest academic institutions in the world, and has the largest endowment of any university in the world, with around $50 billion under management.

The Harvard Graduate Students Union says there are way better ways to help grad students—like, maybe, just paying them.

The economy is doing much better than the far-right scaremongers told you it would be

2023-07-23 /

Axios »

Why it matters: Last week’s great reports on weakening U.S. consumer inflation, slowing wholesale price increases, falling import prices and lower-than-expected claims for jobless benefits helped send the surprise index to the highest level in two years.

Flashback: It was almost exactly a year ago that the index was blaring alarms that a sharp slowdown was in the works, as the Fed sharply raised rates while inflation stayed stubbornly high.

The Economist names Vienna the world’s most liveable city for 2023

2023-07-22 /

Vienna has retained its crown as the world’s most liveable city, according to Economist’s annual index.

The 2023 Global Liveability Index quantifies the challenges presented to an individual’s lifestyle and standard of living in 173 cities worldwide. The 2023 Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual ranking has also included three Canadian cities among the worlds top 10 most liveable. Australia and Switzerland each have 2 entries. Denmark, Japan, and New Zealand each had one city in the top rankings.

1. Vienna 🇦🇹
2. Copenhagen 🇩🇰
3. Melbourne 🇦🇺
4. Sydney 🇦🇺
5. Vancouver 🇨🇦
6. Zurich 🇨🇭
7. Calgary 🇨🇦 (tie)
7. Geneva 🇨🇭 (tie)
9. Toronto 🇨🇦
10. Osaka 🇯🇵 (tie)
10. Auckland 🇳🇿 (tie)

The Global Liveability Index 2023: optimism amid instability

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The Economist »

Only 1 in 10 Americans give high ratings to the way democracy is working in the U.S.

2023-07-14 /

AP »

Majorities of adults say U.S. laws and policies do a poor job of representing what most Americans want on issues ranging from the economy and government spending to gun policy, immigration and abortion. The poll shows 53% say Congress is doing a bad job of upholding democratic values, compared with just 16% who say it’s doing a good job.

The findings illustrate widespread political alienation as a polarized country limps out of the pandemic and into a recovery haunted by inflation and fears of a recession. In interviews, respondents worried less about the machinery of democracy — voting laws and the tabulation of ballots — and more about the outputs.

Half of humanity lives in countries that are forced to spend more on servicing their debt than on health and education

2023-07-12 /

UN »

Last year global public debt reached a record $92 trillion, of which developing countries shoulder 30 per cent – a “disproportionate amount”, the UN chief stressed.

He warned that 3.3 billion people suffer from their governments’ need to prioritize debt interest payments over “essential investments” in the Sustainable Development Goals or the energy transition.

“And yet, because these unsustainable debts are concentrated in poor countries, they are not judged to pose a systemic risk to the global financial system,” the UN Secretary-General added.

The cost of tuition has increased 710% in the U.S. since 1983

2023-07-12 /

Statecraft, Arman Madani »

Tuition cost and fee inflation have outpaced CPI Inflation 4-to-1 over the last 40 years:

The cost of tuition has increased 710% in the US since 1983

The cost of tuition has increased 710% in the US since 1983

The resulting $1.78T of debt includes $1.65T that is federally owned (93%). 45M Americans have federal student loan debt. Roughly half of all the debt belongs to individuals with graduate degrees while the other half belongs to individuals with undergraduate degrees; though it’s worth noting that there are fewer graduate students overall so the debt held per student is higher for graduates:

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America’s drive to compete with China requires lots more skilled workers. Tennessee’s free technical education, and its partnerships with Volkswagen and Nissan, offer a glimpse of the future

2023-07-07 /

Bloomberg »

Federal incentives are driving investments in the electric-car industry worth more than $100 billion. Every state wants a piece of the action, and Tennessee is getting plenty. It’s a lynchpin of the new Battery Belt that stretches from Michigan to Georgia. More than $16 billion in EV capital has poured into the state since 2017. Last year, Ford Motor Co. broke ground on a giant new plant near Memphis that’s slated to open in 2025 and churn out half a million electric trucks per year.

But the drive to reboot manufacturing and claim national leadership in strategic technologies is about to crunch up against a shortfall in trained workers — and impose new demands on technical education all across America.

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