Building a Practical College Degree for the New Economy

This is not a great time to be a recent college graduate.

Average student-loan debt is $29,400. The underemployment rate is 44 percent for graduates ages 22 to 27, meaning they are holding jobs that don’t require bachelor’s degrees. And the average age of financial independence for college graduate these days is 30.

Such statistics have given rise to the narrative that a college degree is no longer worth it, although volumes of economic studies on lifetime earnings prove otherwise. Even so, given the number of college graduates struggling to launch their careers, a wide gap has emerged between what the workforce needs in employees and what colleges are producing in graduates.

Part of the problem is that we have high expectations for the bachelor’s degree today. Thirty years ago, when fewer people required a higher education to get ahead in life, the bachelor’s degree was seen as a vehicle for broad learning. The training part came later by going to graduate school or getting a job where the new employer trained you.

Now we demand that skills training move in tandem with broad learning, and expect both to be completed in the four years of an undergraduate education. For too many students, however, the bachelor’s degree is not providing that dual experience - high-impact, in-classroom learning and out-of-the- classroom, experiential, and hands-on learning necessary for success in today’s economy.

Because of student loan debt, graduate or professional school is no longer an option for many recent college graduates. They’re searching for quick and cheap add- on boot camps that give them what they’re missing. And a whole new set of providers are emerging outside of the traditional higher-education ecosystem to provide that lift.

Last year, General Assembly, which offers courses of a few hours to a few weeks in everything from digital marketing to web development, expanded to Washington, DC, where it is selling out of nearly all of its offerings. Its average student is in his mid-20s and just a few years out of college.

Gravity, review: “heartachingly tender”

Starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts adrift in
space, Alfonso Cuarón’s astonishing thriller is one of the films of
the year, says Robbie Collin

Watch an astronaut drifting through space for long enough and eventually you notice how much they look like a newborn baby. The oxygen helmet makes their head bigger, rounder and cuter; their hands grasp eagerly at whatever happens to be passing; their limbs are made fat and their movements simple by the spacesuit’s cuddly bulk. They tumble head-over-heels like tripping toddlers or simply bob there in amniotic suspension. Even the lifeline that keeps them tethered to their ship has a pulsing, umbilical aspect.
Gravity, the new Alfonso Cuarón picture, is a heart- achingly tender film about the miracle of motherhood, and the billion-to-one odds against any of us being here, astronauts or not. It’s also a totally absorbing, often overpowering spectacle - a $100 million 3D action movie in which Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play two Hollywood-handsome spacefarers, fighting for their lives 375 miles above the Earth’s crust.
A series of captions over the opening titles reminds us that this is a dead zone: no oxygen or air pressure, and nothing to carry sound. “Life in space is impossible,” the final message tells us, as the cinema shakes with Steven Price’s resonant score, and then suddenly falls quiet.
For Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock), a mission specialist in orbit for the first time, the lack of noise is welcome. She’s a medical engineer called up by NASA to install new software on to the Hubble Telescope, but also a mother in mourning for her four- year-old daughter, whom she lost in a senseless accident, and the silence enfolds her like a comfort blanket.

Available in: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

NASA Mission Points to Origin of “Ocean of Storms” on
Earth’s Moon

Using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), mission scientists have solved a lunar mystery almost as old as the moon itself.
Early theories suggested the craggy outline of a region of the moon’s surface known as Oceanus Procellarum, or the Ocean of Storms, was caused by an asteroid impact. If this theory had been correct, the basin it formed would be the largest asteroid impact basin on the moon. However, mission scientists studying GRAIL data believe they have found evidence the craggy outline of this rectangular region – roughly 1,600 miles (2,600 kilometers) across – is
actually the result of the formation of ancient rift valleys.
“The nearside of the moon has been studied for centuries, and yet continues to offer up surprises for scientists with the right tools,” said Maria Zuber, principal investigator of NASA’s GRAIL mission, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. “We interpret the gravity anomalies discovered by GRAIL as part of the lunar magma plumbing system – the conduits that fed lava to the surface during ancient volcanic eruptions.”
The surface of the moon’s nearside is dominated by a unique area called the Procellarum region, characterized by low elevations, unique composition, and numerous ancient volcanic plains.
The rifts are buried beneath dark volcanic plains on the nearside of the moon and have been detected only in the gravity data provided by GRAIL. The lava-flooded rift valleys are unlike anything found anywhere else on the moon and may at one time have resembled rift zones on Earth, Mars and Venus. The findings are published online in the journal Nature.
Another theory arising from recent data analysis suggests this region formed as a result of churning deep in the interior of the moon that led to a high concentration of heat-producing radioactive elements in the crust and mantle of this region. Scientists studied the gradients in gravity data from GRAIL, which revealed a rectangular shape in resulting gravitational anomalies.
“The rectangular pattern of gravity anomalies was completely unexpected,” said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL co-investigator at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, and lead author of the paper. “Using the gradients in the gravity data to reveal the rectangular pattern of anomalies, we can now clearly and completely see structures that were only hinted at by surface observations.”
The rectangular pattern, with its angular corners and straight sides, contradicts the theory that Procellarum is an ancient impact basin, since such an impact would create a circular basin. Instead, the new research suggests processes beneath the moon’s surface dominated the evolution of this region.
Over time, the region would cool and contract, pulling away from its surroundings and creating fractures similar to the cracks that form in mud as it dries out, but on a much larger scale.
The study also noted a surprising similarity between the rectangular pattern of structures on the moon, and those surrounding the south polar region of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Both patterns appear to be related to volcanic and tectonic processes operating on their respective worlds.
“Our gravity data are opening up a new chapter of lunar history, during which the moon was a more dynamic place than suggested by the cratered landscape that is visible to the naked eye,” said Andrews-Hanna. “More work is needed to understand the cause of this newfound pattern of gravity anomalies, and the implications for the history of the moon.”
Lunched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the probes, renamed Ebb and Flow, operated in a nearly circular orbit near the poles of the moon at an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) until their mission ended in December 2012. The distance between the twin probes changed slightly as they flew over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and by masses hidden beneath the
lunar surface.
The twin spacecraft flew in a nearly circular orbit until the end of the mission on December 17, 2012, when the probes intentionally were sent into the moon’s surface. NASA later named the impact site in honor of late astronaut Sally K. Ride, who was America’s first woman in space and a member of the GRAIL mission team.
GRAIL’s prime and extended science missions generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.
The GRAIL mission was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. GRAIL was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver.

Available in: http://www.nasa.gov

NASA Mission Points to Origin of “Ocean of Storms” on
Earth’s Moon

Using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), mission scientists have solved a lunar mystery almost as old as the moon itself.
Early theories suggested the craggy outline of a region of the moon’s surface known as Oceanus Procellarum, or the Ocean of Storms, was caused by an asteroid impact. If this theory had been correct, the basin it formed would be the largest asteroid impact basin on the moon. However, mission scientists studying GRAIL data believe they have found evidence the craggy outline of this rectangular region – roughly 1,600 miles (2,600 kilometers) across – is
actually the result of the formation of ancient rift valleys.
“The nearside of the moon has been studied for centuries, and yet continues to offer up surprises for scientists with the right tools,” said Maria Zuber, principal investigator of NASA’s GRAIL mission, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. “We interpret the gravity anomalies discovered by GRAIL as part of the lunar magma plumbing system – the conduits that fed lava to the surface during ancient volcanic eruptions.”
The surface of the moon’s nearside is dominated by a unique area called the Procellarum region, characterized by low elevations, unique composition, and numerous ancient volcanic plains.
The rifts are buried beneath dark volcanic plains on the nearside of the moon and have been detected only in the gravity data provided by GRAIL. The lava-flooded rift valleys are unlike anything found anywhere else on the moon and may at one time have resembled rift zones on Earth, Mars and Venus. The findings are published online in the journal Nature.
Another theory arising from recent data analysis suggests this region formed as a result of churning deep in the interior of the moon that led to a high concentration of heat-producing radioactive elements in the crust and mantle of this region. Scientists studied the gradients in gravity data from GRAIL, which revealed a rectangular shape in resulting gravitational anomalies.
“The rectangular pattern of gravity anomalies was completely unexpected,” said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL co-investigator at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, and lead author of the paper. “Using the gradients in the gravity data to reveal the rectangular pattern of anomalies, we can now clearly and completely see structures that were only hinted at by surface observations.”
The rectangular pattern, with its angular corners and straight sides, contradicts the theory that Procellarum is an ancient impact basin, since such an impact would create a circular basin. Instead, the new research suggests processes beneath the moon’s surface dominated the evolution of this region.
Over time, the region would cool and contract, pulling away from its surroundings and creating fractures similar to the cracks that form in mud as it dries out, but on a much larger scale.
The study also noted a surprising similarity between the rectangular pattern of structures on the moon, and those surrounding the south polar region of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Both patterns appear to be related to volcanic and tectonic processes operating on their respective worlds.
“Our gravity data are opening up a new chapter of lunar history, during which the moon was a more dynamic place than suggested by the cratered landscape that is visible to the naked eye,” said Andrews-Hanna. “More work is needed to understand the cause of this newfound pattern of gravity anomalies, and the implications for the history of the moon.”
Lunched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the probes, renamed Ebb and Flow, operated in a nearly circular orbit near the poles of the moon at an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) until their mission ended in December 2012. The distance between the twin probes changed slightly as they flew over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and by masses hidden beneath the
lunar surface.
The twin spacecraft flew in a nearly circular orbit until the end of the mission on December 17, 2012, when the probes intentionally were sent into the moon’s surface. NASA later named the impact site in honor of late astronaut Sally K. Ride, who was America’s first woman in space and a member of the GRAIL mission team.
GRAIL’s prime and extended science missions generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.
The GRAIL mission was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. GRAIL was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver.

Available in: http://www.nasa.gov