Links for 8/17/09

by Andrew Gillen

Al Roth points us to a UK finding that

Law, medicine and other professions have become more exclusive in the past 30 years, drawing recruits from better off, middle-class families, a government report has found

Other former trades, such as journalism, have evolved into “modern professions”. They are increasingly colonised by middle-class graduates and offer fewer opportunities for young people with lesser qualifications to get a foot on the ladder.

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How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education HT: TR

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Olivia Judson: HT: MT

Ecology is one of the hardest branches of biology, possibly of all science. Real ecological communities are fantastically complex — think of a rainforest, or a coral reef — and hard to dissect and understand. Experiments in the wild are difficult to control, and important variables are often hard to measure. Imagine trying to measure the impact that, say, earthworms have on oak trees: it’s damnably difficult.

Experiments in the laboratory are problematic too.

Seems like ecology and economics have a lot in common.

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Tim Ranzetta:

By changing the economics of the business, the College Cost Reduction Act (which could also be known as the Borrower Benefit Elimination Act) led lenders to rein in benefits previously offered to borrowers

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This is fiendishly clever.