Media clips
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The question of whether college is worth ithas put higher education under the microscope for several years.
With the average student loan debt at $29,400, according to the Institute for College Access & Success, and unemployment of recent college graduates at 8.5% and underemployment at 16.8%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, it may be difficult for some to answer that college is worth it.
But the question is more complex than that. Here are some things to consider when deciding if you should choose any college at all.
USA Today July 3, 2014 -
Affirmative action in college admissions for African Americans has been losing support in the United States for some time, with new “colorblind” methods of ending gaining ground in the courts. In this powerful defense of affirmative action, Richard Rothstein explains why pretending color doesn’t matter doesn’t actually work and why it is unfair. Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. He is also senior fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law, and he is the author of books including “Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, and “Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.” He was a national education writer for The New York Times as well. This first appeared in the American Prospect.
Washington Post July 3, 2014 -
In March, President Obama announced an executive order to update the rules, which will readjust the classification exemptions as well as the salary threshold—although it’s not clear by how much as it is still in public comment mode. But if the limit were raised to $50,440 a year, as proposed by the Economic Policy Institute, about ten million people would be brought into overtime protection. That wouldn’t just mean extra pay in their pockets for working more hours. It could also make employers think harder about asking people to stay over 40 hours, thus bringing back the nine-to-five world we long said good-bye to.
The New Republic July 3, 2014 -
Also in U.S. News & World Report, Economic Times, Salon, Herald Online, The Kansas City Star, Daily Journal, The Telegraph, The News Tribune, MSN Money, Star Tribune, The Chronicle Journal, Fox News
Private payrolls provider ADP said Wednesday that businesses added 281,000 jobs in June. The figure suggests that the government’s jobs report could bring a pleasant surprise. But the ADP numbers cover only private businesses, and they often diverge from the government’s more comprehensive reportIn May, the economy surpassed its jobs total in December 2007, when the Great Recession started. But economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimate that 7 million more jobs would have been needed to keep up with population growth.
Many people who lost jobs during the recession and were never rehired have stopped looking for work. Just 62.8 percent of adult Americans are working or are looking for a job, compared with 66 percent before the recession.
Average wages, meanwhile, have grown just 2 percent a year during the recovery, below the long-run average annual growth of about 3.5 percent.
Associated Press July 3, 2014 -
(Also in Christian Science Monitor)
The “union shop” concept is based on the idea that, since government employees are covered by collective bargaining, they must help cover the costs of that bargaining whether they choose to join the union or not.Monday’s decision means that workers in the gray area of home health aides are no longer subject to paying that kind of fee. Labor-union allies say the ruling undercuts bargaining efforts that have won substantial wage and benefit gains in a very low-wage industry.
“Most home health care workers had no health insurance themselves” and earned around the minimum wage before they got union representation, says Ross Eisenbrey, a labor law expert at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The case pitted Pamela Harris, a home care worker who argued that the union fees violated her constitutional free-speech rights, against Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) and the union SEIU Healthcare Illinois (part of the Service Employees International Union).
Yahoo News July 1, 2014 -
Just two percent of the job losses during the recession occurred because businesses moved to another state or country, Mazerov said. “What accounts for how well states do … is stimulating the birth of new business,” he added.
Most states have no way of knowing if a tax break had a direct impact on business retention or hiring, said Joshua Smith, senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank focused on low-paid workers. But “it’s a zero-sum game, anyway,” since one state’s gain is another’s loss, he added. Smith said states would be better off using the revenues to fund infrastructure building and repair to create jobs.
The Rhode Island tax cut will drop the levy on corporations from 9 percent to 7 percent; the Indiana law, part of a long-term, phased tax cut, lowers corporate taxes from 7.5 percent to 7 percent.
USA Today July 1, 2014 -
(Also in Atlanta Daily World)
Sixty years after the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education integrated the nation’s classrooms, black and white students still largely attend different schools, even during their earliest years.A recent analysis from liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) outlines the severe segregation that exists among kindergarten classrooms. The analysis, which used data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11, looked at kindergarten classrooms through the lenses of race and income.
The Huffington Post July 1, 2014 -
Here, from the non-profit Economic Policy Institute, is a snapshot of how segregated public schools are, starting in kindergarten. It was written by Elaine Weiss and Emma García. Weiss has served as the national coordinator for the Broader, Bolder Approach to Educationsince 2011. García, who joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2013, specializes in the economics of education and education policy. EPI was created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers.
The Washington Post July 1, 2014 -
Courts for years have recognized the rights of unions to ask non-members to pay dues for union negotiating costs, but a group of home healthcare workers in Harris vs. Quinn are challenging dues they pay to a branch of the Service Employees International Union as a violation of free speech.
The case is pitting business groups and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation against labor giants like the SEIU, which worry the court could rule broadly to prevent all non-members of public sector unions from being compelled to pay dues.
Such a decision from the court, which is expected to rule on Monday, could deliver a “kill shot” to organized labor at a time when it is already struggling with a declining membership.
Still, some labor supporters say they’re anticipating a loss.
“I expect the worst,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
The case was brought by Pamela Harris, who receives money from the state of Illinois to take care of her son.
The Hill June 30, 2014 -
At this stage in the recovery —f ive years after the U.S. officially emerged from recession, labor economists would like to see the “quits rate” rise. It’s a measure of the percentage of people voluntarily leaving their employment — rather than being laid off or having a contract end. Workers might leave a job if they’ve been recruited for another one, or even to look for another job without having one already lined up. Or, they might quit to go back to school, or retire, or take a break from work altogether.
“When the economy is strong, people are more likely to be able to quit the job they’re in,” says labor economist Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute, “to take another job that has better opportunities for wage growth and advancement, perhaps it better matches their skills and interests.”
Since plummeting at the start of the Great Recession, the quits rate has been gradually rising. But (at 1.8 percent in April 2014, the most recent month for Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting), the quits rate is still nearly 20 percent below its pre-recession level, says Shierholz, and nowhere near what would be expected in a robust economy with plenty of job opportunities.
Marketplace June 30, 2014