ontheuniversity.com

Astra Taylor, Brian Kalkbrenner, David Graeber, Mike Konczal, Sarah Jaffe
N+1 Magazine | Original Article 

A panel discussion held at the Occupy! Gazette‘s Occupy Onward Conference, December 18, 2011, at the New School for Social Research, New York City. Transcript from Occupy! Gazette Issue 4.

David Graeber, Debt, The First 5,000 Years
Mike Konczal, The Roosevelt Institute
Brian Kalkbrenner, Occupy Student Debt
Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Moderator: Astra Taylor, Occupy! Gazette
Transcribed by Elisabeth Asher

Astra Taylor: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our hastily arranged conference. It’s really nice to see you all here.

So, debt. It’s nice to talk about this subject here at the New School, the institution responsible for my debt, the institution I have begrudged for the last decade, every month when I pay $400 in interest.

One of my favorite moments of Occupy Wall Street was the second or third night. I walked up to Zuccotti Park–it was early on, I was shocked that there were so many people there—I’m sort of walking along the corner of Broadway and Liberty, and there’s this guy, he’s playing a carnival barker, and he says, “Step right up! Write down what you owe to the bank; write down what you’re worth to the 1 percent!” He had these huge sheets of paper, and he had probably, you know, two dozen markers, and people were writing down what they owed and what type of debt. I actually walked by and went into the park and had this weird hesitation about putting that number down—because I would have to think about it. I would have to think about how much money I owed. But, as we were leaving, I went and I took the marker and I wrote it down, and it was $42,000. I felt sick to my stomach. Behind me, a girl who couldn’t have been more than 22 or 23 years old writes down $120,000 of student debt. And I thought, this is a radical moment, because we are articulating this number out loud, and we are putting it in a political context, and this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I’ve known that something was wrong with this, people haven’t been really discussing this issue, something’s happening. More…

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Steven Leckart | Wired.com | Original Article

Stanford doesn’t want me. I can say that because it’s a documented fact: I was once denied admission in writing. I took my last math class back in high school. Which probably explains why this quiz on how to get a computer to calculate an ideal itinerary is making my brain hurt. I’m staring at a crude map of Romania on my MacBook. Twenty cities are connected in a network of straight black lines. My goal is to determine the best route from Arad to Bucharest. A handful of search algorithms with names like breadth-first, depth-first, uniform-cost, and A* can be used. Each employs a different strategy for scanning the map and considering various paths. I’ve never heard of these algorithms or considered how a computer determines a route. But I’ll learn, because despite the utter lack of qualifications I just mentioned, I’m enrolled in CS221: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, a graduate- level course taught by Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig.

Last fall, the university in the heart of Silicon Valley did something it had never done before: It opened up three classes, including CS221, to anyone with a web connection. Lectures and assignments—the same ones administered in the regular on-campus class—would be posted and auto-graded online each week. Midterms and finals would have strict deadlines. Stanford wouldn’t issue course credit to the non-matriculated students. But at the end of the term, students who completed a course would be awarded an official Statement of Accomplishment.

People around the world have gone crazy for this opportunity. Fully two-thirds of my 160,000 classmates live outside the US. There are students in 190 countries—from India and South Korea to New Zealand and the Republic of Azerbaijan. More than 100 volunteers have signed up to translate the lectures into 44 languages, including Bengali. In Iran, where YouTube is blocked, one student cloned the CS221 class website and—with the professors’ permission—began reposting the video files for 1,000 students. More…

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Richard Anderson | The Nation | Original Article

This article was originally published by the Daily Titan.

Public universities in California may have been dethroned as being cheaper than private schools for middle-income students. According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, schools like Harvard and Princeton provide a cheaper alternative to schools like San Jose State and University of California, Berkeley.

Private schools are generally even cheaper than Cal State Fullerton. To go to Harvard, it costs $4,000 for a family with an annual income of $30,000. At CSUF, it costs $16,331 for a full-time student.

According to the Bay Area News Group, a family of four making $130,000 a year would have to pay $24,000 for tuition, room, board and other expenses to send one child to a CSU. Harvard costs $36,000, but financial aid makes it the cheaper option.

Financial aid drops Harvard tuition costs down to $17,000 a year, under San Jose State’s $23,557 and even under the $19,500 it costs to go to UC Berkeley. While Princeton may be slightly more expensive ($19,830) than UC Berkeley, it is still considerably cheaper than San Jose State.

Private schools used to be considered more expensive than public, but that trend has changed for a couple of reasons. More…

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