Colleges try to meet needs of first-generation students, By Marcella Bombardieri, September 30, 2013, Boston Globe: “To the legions of students who have been tutored and molded and prodded toward a top college most of their young lives, it would be an absurd question: How many of you had to explain to your parents what MIT is?…These students are ‘first generation,’ the first in their families to go to college. And they are the third class to whom MIT has reached out during orientation, not only to offer support but to instill pride in young people who have shown extraordinary drive yet often feel alone and inadequate amid affluent classmates who have already published papers or traveled the world…”
Day: September 30, 2013
Recession and Poverty
- After recession, economic gap widens, By Michael Pollick, September 29, 2013, Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “For Realtors selling million-dollar homes and wealth managers who control seven-figure nest eggs in Southwest Florida, the recession that began in 2007 was more of a bother than a crisis. Navigating the Great Recession, at least for the uber-rich and those who make handsome livings catering to them, provided as many opportunities as problems…”
- Great Recession won’t recede for many, By Michael Pollick, September 29, 2013, Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “When Joel Sugar moved to Sarasota from Illinois in 2006, Southwest Florida’s economy was humming along at an unprecedented pace. Housing prices were skyrocketing, jobs were plentiful, opportunities seemed endless. For Sugar and countless others, those days seem like a lifetime ago. ‘I honestly cannot believe how much our standard of living has dropped, and how we have accepted it,’ said Sugar, who in better times owned a jewelry store in Joliet, Ill…”
- In urban North Carolina, deep pockets of misery are masked, By Gene Nichol, September 29, 2013, News and Observer: “It’s common to think of North Carolina poverty on a rural-urban axis. We’ve become a state, the narrative goes, of booming, economically vibrant metropolitan centers accompanied by in many instances struggling, chronically poor rural communities. The traditional portrait is accurate, so far as it goes. Per capita income is markedly higher in urban counties. Poverty and unemployment rates, on average, are elevated in rural ones. Our policy framework, understandably, reflects the divide…”