A recent Gallup poll found 53 percent of Americans think China has the world’s No. 1 economy; less than a third think America has the leading economy. In 2000, just 10 percent of Americans misidentified China as the world’s leading economic power.
After hours of endless studying, do have trouble focusing? Could you benefit from the ability to concentrate better? Who couldn’t, right? Well, over the course of the past few years, a trend has swept the nation: Doctors are diagnosing students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD and prescribing them medication to alleviate their symptoms.
With the effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker last summer, Wisconsin’s political divisions have captivated the nation recently. But other divisions in Wisconsin merit far more attention. According to an analysis of the 2010 United States Census Bureau data by William H. Frey, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Milwaukee—the state’s largest city—is the most racially segregated major metropolitan area in the United States.
The University of Wisconsin System recently released data confirming what students attending the state’s public universities already knew: The Great Recession and subsequent cuts to the UW System hurt students, and hit low-income students the hardest. In an era when Wisconsin should broaden both financial aid to students and funding to state universities to help students stay in school, the legislature has narrowed both—and not without consequences.
Journalism is struggling. People just don’t read like they used to—at least not in the same way. The rise and democratization of high-speed Internet access and new devices like iPads, smartphones and Kindles have revolutionized the way we consume information, communicate and, ultimately, the way we live our lives. I still have not-so-fond memories of waiting 30 minutes for my AOL Internet to dial up when I was a kid. While at work this summer, I almost had a heart attack when my phone struggled to load the live-stream HD video of Michael Phelps making his competitors look like fools at the Summer Olympics.
We’re a nation of 315 million constitutional law scholars. Most Americans avoid the legalese of their credit card contracts like the plague. But the Constitution and specifically the Second Amendment? No problem—we know exactly what it means. But the fact is what you or I think about the Second Amendment is pretty meaningless, because it’s the Supreme Court’s interpretation that counts.
Last year was a rough year for students at public universities, as state legislatures throughout the country continued to cut funding to their universities. Nationwide, states underwent one of the largest divestments in higher education in American history, slashing funding by 7.6 percent. And in 2011, for the second consecutive year, state and local funding to public universities reached a quarter-century low despite the fact that enrollment and the cost of educating students reached near-record highs.
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Solutions by The State News
