Danny Crichton

This has certainly been China Week for both the domestic and international press. On the domestic side, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was grilled by the House Ways and Means Committee about China's currency exchange rates, in which the yuan is essentially pegged to the U.S. dollar. That panel is voting on legislation that would punish Chinese goods with tariffs ("countervailing duties", as described in this AFP article). Such a tariff would almost certainly result in some sort of trade war, the severity of which would likely be determined by the capability of Obama's diplomats and trade representatives. While the bill may not come to a vote given Congress' schedule before the midterms, few politicians will waste the opportunity to get behind such a populist initiative.

China was even more in the news on the international front. The week was filled with stories surrounding the Japanese arrest and continued detention of Zhan Qixiong, the captain of a Chinese fishing boat which collided with a Japanese patrol vessel near the disputed Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands in Chinese). The immediate crisis abated on Friday when prosecutors released the captain, indicating that Japan was ready to concede on the basic issue (while also vowing not to apologize to the Chinese).

More ominously, China threatened (then apparently backtracked) to block the export of rare earth metal to Japan. Despite their name, these metals are exceedingly common on Earth, but few places produce them in any quantity besides China. These metals are crucial for modern technology, ranging from cell phones to the Toyota Prius, and ultimately Japan is dependent on these Chinese-sourced metals for much of its economy.

The other story of note is that the People's Liberation Army and the U.S. Army are prepared to reopen bilateral discussions after they were

Polarization has reached a feverish pitch in American politics. It seems that every fringe group knows how to massage its media message to great effect - just witness the firestorm over the recent Burn a Quran Day idea initiated by Florida pastor Terry Jones. The media, once controlled by the hands of elite gatekeepers, has now been democratized, and every person has a voice.

At the same time, there are growing concerns that students lack the ability to critically analyze and judge sources for quality and bias - in short, to evaluate the information they read (for some discussion, check out the Project Information Literacy group at the University of Washington on key skills for the digital age). This raises enormous problems when coupled with the lack of editorial judgment displayed by the new media. As I have written about before, people can find websites to match any political point of view, making it difficult to find common ground.

It is here that I feel that high school newspapers offer tremendous positive skills, and why I believe that increasing funding for them is crucial if America is not only to weather these massive changes in the media landscape but also to increase the written communication skills of our workforce.

My story may shed some light on this value. I applied to join the newspaper staff in eighth grade, under recommendation from my English teacher. The decision was not easy, since my high school uses block scheduling and newspaper was considered a full-block class (which means that a quarter of my schedule would be used up). I chose newspaper over orchestra because it sounded interesting, and I liked to write.

I would stay with newspaper throughout high school (with a one year sabbatical of sorts my junior year). I rose from

This series of blog posts explores the experiences in my background that led to an admission to Stanford. Inspired by Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I began thinking about how my own circumstances and chance encounters shaped who I am today. This is the first of five parts.

Developing competence in computer programming and software design is a process of exploration as well as trial and error. It takes time to learn common programming idioms (for example, to test whether an integer is even - take the variable mod 2 and check if it equals 0).

In one chapter of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the background of the current computer titans such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Both were placed in environments that allowed them to explore technology at an early age (high school and college). For instance, Steve Jobs lived near Bill Packard of Hewlett-Packard fame, and would ask him questions about his work. Gladwell argues that their future success is a function of this early exploration along with serendipity that the computer revolution was timed just right for their ages.

On my first reading, I thought about how nice it would be to have such opportunities, forgetting the many opportunities that I had to develop my computer abilities along the way.

The first computer I actively explored was in kindergarten - a Macintosh Performa. The computer was used mostly for game playing (X-Wing, Titanic), but it began to solidify my understanding of basic user interface components of the computer like folders and hard disks (back then, I only had 300MB, and I had to constantly switch which programs were installed in order to play what I wanted).

However, the first critical milestone took place in second through fourth grade when I began to use my elementary school's computers.

My Stanford friend Andrew Linford spent the last year studying abroad in Poland, India, France, South Africa, United Kingdom and Japan. Be sure to check out his blog at http://www.discoveringsociety.info/ - Danny Crichton

"The Chinese are taking over the world. We should all just learn Chinese." Have you ever heard a statement like this one? Should we all just learn Chinese for this reason? Learning a foreign language takes time and commitment. Without both together, you will not be able to fully learn a language. So, when does it actually make sense to put in the time and effort, and when does it pay off?

As Americans, we are incredibly lucky to learn the lingua franca of the world as a primary language of the country, enabling us to communicate with many people globally without the effort to learn a second (or even third language). But the facility by which we can communicate with others does present a barrier to Americans, as it presents a situation in which language learning can seem particularly useless. Although Spanish may be a very important language, it is nowhere as important as English. However, all high schools and many colleges do require that we spend time learning a foreign language in order to graduate. Considering how much can be learned in one year of classes at a high school, does that extra year of a foreign language make sense in terms of opportunity cost?

The following are guiding principals I have come up with to decide when an American taking the time to learn a foreign language makes sense:

1. Your family speaks that language. For me, it makes complete sense to me that one should really be able to speak with all close family members at least decently well

Human beings have a tendency to hold onto perceptions far longer than evidence allows. This cognitive bias infects much of our decision-making in politics and in life. Once we learn something, we tend to hold on to that knowledge, even when the knowledge itself has changed. This is why professors who learn their field in the 1970s and 1980s can find it difficult to update their classes with the most recent advances. In politics, policy change can be wrenching precisely because the best course of action is different than a politician's previous experience.

Today, most people's perception of law school is vastly out-of-date. Once the ticket to the upper middle class and prestigious careers in cosmopolitan cities, a legal education is increasingly entering a grey zone: for some it can be helpful, but for too many, there is a mismatch between desires and reality. This post analyzes the current trends.

Law School Economics

Understanding the changes that have happened to the legal career path requires a basic understanding of law school economics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that there are 759,200 lawyers in the United States in 2008, and that growth should be around 13% over the next ten years, in line with the general growth in employment for the nation.

The number of graduates of law schools has increased in recent years as well, even over the highs of the late 1990s. According to the American Bar Association, in 1999-2000 there were 39,071 law school graduates compared to 43,588 in 2008, a growth rate of about 11.5%. Thus, the growth in the number of graduates is lower than the growth in the number of positions.

What is the problem then? Let's look at those numbers again. The number of legal positions is expected to

As the economic malaise continues for America and much of the world, political leaders continue to drive their nations to more pleasant pastures of high-growth industries. Unsurprisingly, these industries tend to be knowledge-intensive and require a deep reservoir of human capital. Creating new products and building fancy new widgets requires knowledge, and that knowledge comes directly from a strong and dynamic education system.

On August 8 and 9, two speeches illustrate the common goals -- yet divergent success -- in accomplishing this mission.

August 8 was Singapore's National Day, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong delivered a short address targeting increased investment in education as a chief priority of his government.

"Our goal is for all Singaporeans to enjoy the fruits of growth. When Singapore prospers, you will benefit from many government programmes: better designed HDB estates, higher quality schools and hospitals, more MRT lines and new places for recreation. But each one of us has to make the effort. Every student must be keen to learn and go as far as you can. Every worker must master the knowhow and skills to be productive and competitive. Every manager must train and motivate his staff to maximise their contribution and potential. Only then can Singaporeans do the better jobs that our economy will create, and enjoy higher incomes, brighter opportunities, and more fulfilling lives."

On August 9, President Barack Obama gave a lengthy address at the University of Texas-Austin in which he laid out his higher education agenda. His entire speech can be read here on the White House website.

A pull-quote:

"Now, when I talk about education, people say, well, you know what, right now we're going through this tough time. We've emerged from the worst recession since the Great Depression. So, Mr. President, you should

From the Wall Street Journal:

"Americans owe some $826.5 billion in revolving credit, according to June 2010 figures from the Federal Reserve. (Most of revolving credit is credit-card debt.) Student loans outstanding today - both federal and private - total some $829.785 billion, according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com."

Unfortunately, much of that debt goes to programs that fail to provide employment for their graduates (see recent stories of for-profit universities and the controversy surrounding income versus debt levels).

It is also important to note that student loan debt paralyzes recent graduates from taking risks in their early 20s. America needs more of its bright students to undertake entrepreneurial activities, but it is difficult to see how they will do so given the levels of debt they take on. A re-envisioning of this entire system seems well overdue.

As a regular commentator on higher education, I have covered a wide range of issues that currently plague the American university system. While the system certainly has its problems, it by and large remains one of the crown jewels of the American economy.

Treatises attacking the university system are not new, and a new book to be released next week, Higher Education?, is running over well-trodden ground. As part of the book's publicity campaign, the authors were interviewed by the Atlantic on some of their findings. You can read the interview here. My initial conclusion: the myopia in this article is breathtaking. Let me go through all of my favorite parts:

"Schools get status by bringing on professors who are star researchers, star scholars. That's all we really know about Caltech or MIT or Stanford. We don't really know about the quality of undergraduate teaching at any of these places. And it's the students who suffer."

I know a little about the quality of undergraduate teaching at top schools since I attend one. As with any people-oriented enterprise, there is inconsistency in the quality of teaching at Stanford University. No university is immune to this basic law of human performance. However, professors here are by and large excellent teachers. In fact, it is difficult for me to identify any professor who I felt over-prioritized their research instead of their teaching (and considering that we are on the quarter system, that is a lot of professors). Have there been classes that I avoided because the professor had a bad reputation? Absolutely. I do not feel suffering because I had to do a little research to pick my classes.

As for the "star scholar" argument, I like having academic stars teaching me their disciplines. It is one thing