Redefining Community Roles: Omaha Public Library Is a Model for Summer Learning

Kids who aren’t involved in summer learning activities suffer the greatest learning losses in math and reading. Underprivileged students who have less learning resources available to them during the school year and the summer months are put at an increased disadvantage, setting them back from their more affluent peers and increasing the achievement gap. Low-income parents who arenâ€™t involved often suffer in exposure, awareness, and sometimes their own opportunity to prepare for the GED, community college, or better employment.
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The Value of Internships: Pros and Cons

Many college students are lining up internships for the summer months or the coming semester. Some college graduates are also getting internships to further their professional experience after college and possibly get their foot in theÂ door in careers and fields they have recently narrowed to match their interests and abilities.
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Earning Success: Why the Exceptional Get Results

It’s a harsh reality:Â average workers willÂ have a much harder time in today’s economic climate. The competition is heating up and those who are exceptional will have traction, gratification and fulfillment in theÂ workforce.

Average workers don’t put in the extra that sets them apart from other members of the team, whereas exceptional workersÂ draw energy from harnessingÂ Â their uniqueÂ abilities. It may sound like becoming an exceptional worker will be much more depleting than putting in average effort, but, in fact, it’s the opposite. People who feel “very successful” and “completely successful” at work are twice as likely to say they are happy than those who only feel “somewhat successful,” with their level of income making no difference in their levels of happiness, according to Arthur Brooks in the article “America and the Value of ‘Earned Success.'”¹ Exceptional people are driven to become exceptional for its intrinsic value (in happiness and fulfillment), not extrinsic value (in dollars and status).
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Launch Pad for College Grads: Skills for Entering the Digital and Global Workforce

The world of workÂ is ever-Â changing. However, new graduates will experience a heightened level of change over the span of their careers, as technology becomes more integrated and new software, tools, and gadgets make their work more efficient and far reaching.Â Â Add to that the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of todayâ€™s young people who will be launching many of the new businesses which will fuel our economic growth over the next several decades in areas that donâ€™t yet exist, and it could be hard to predict what the workforce will look like in 20, or even 10, years.
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Projections 2040: Looking Ahead by Looking Back

This Saturday, my oldest nephew, Carson, graduates from college. Twenty-eight years ago to the day, I graduated from the same university. As I think about the last twenty-eight years, I realize how many things have changed and how many ways life has improved, despite our challenges.
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Young College Grads Create Opportunity in a Challenging Economy

In past cycles of the U.S. economy, a college degree — or even a high school diploma — could be enough for a job seeker to land a well-paying position that afforded them staples of an American lifestyle, such as home and car ownership, leaving home as a teen or young adult, and starting a family. In the new economy, with high unemployment rates for teens and adults,Â neither a college degree or high school diploma comes with a job guarantee, and many young adults are reacting by living with their parents longer, delaying marriage and child birth and indefinitely postponing large purchases. ¹
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Where Are We in American Education Right Now? A Look at Patterns the Last Three Decades

Thirty years ago this summer, I was finishing my first unpaid internship in Washington, D.C with Common Cause, a lobbying Â group run at the time by Archibald Cox, John Gardner of Stanford, and, at times, Ralph Nader. The next year, the report,Â A NATION AT RISK¹, was issued as I began my internship in New York City at the Academy for Educational Development. During both summers, I waited on tables at night to be able to work for no pay at my valuable internships. This report was commissioned by the then President Ronald Reagan. I distinctly remember one of the most defining lines of that document: Â The educational foundations of our society areÂ presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as aÂ Nation and a people.
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Marching into a Recession: Class of 2012 Follows Generations Before

Recessions,Â ebb and flow. Between 1948 and 2011, there have been 10 recessions, according theÂ National Bureau of Economic Research¹.Â That means there are many people in the U.S. who have been in all 10 recessionsÂ and made theirÂ Â way out. The BLS describes a recession as: “A general slowdown in economic activity, a downturn in the business cycle, a reduction in the amount of goods and services produced and sold.”

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Responsibility of College Payoff: Colleges and Students

We are entering the months of graduation, inspiring speeches and anxious and excited graduates. With college debt exceeding a trillion dollars last month, the cost of college outpacing credit card debt, and the unemployment rate among graduates at a sixty year high, many Americans are asking what this means in the short run and the long run for these students and for our economy.Â What we should also be asking is: Â a) what responsibility do colleges have in doing a better job of delivering graduates who are both knowledgeable and capable in the professional world; and, b) what responsibility do those graduates have to get a clue before they start college about what the real world expects and demands of graduates?Â Letâ€™s look at both of these areas.
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The New Grad’s Economy: Preparing for Economic Challenges Ahead

Graduates in 2012 will be entering an economy with more debt and less job opportunities than they would have 20 or even 10 years ago.Â The last recession of this proportion was actually in 1984, the year I graduated from college.

But the surprise isn’t only on the new graduates. Employers are gaining new hires who have spent some of their most formidable years in a bad economy and who have responded with either apathy or a zeal to overcome obstacles in the professional world. For both kinds of young adults, and those in between, they will be up against some challenges that, although sometimes grim, are the reality of our current economy. Instead of Â being the apathetic new hire or job seeker, I encourage you to take on the following challenges with the mindset that you will keep moving forward until you can overcome.

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