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Education
 
 
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Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:00 am

Asian countries pour money and resources into higher education, while American universities go begging. We’ll ask former MIT president Charles Vest, and more, where this goes.

Comments [54]
 
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Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:00 am

Paying thousands of dollars to land an unpaid internship — and what the trend means for the growing gulf between America’s haves and have-nots.

Comments [57]
 
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Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 10:00 am

Forget the SATs. Forget the “top college” rat race and high-priced American schools. Writer Maya Frost says it’s time for American students to go global, look abroad, and get a global education, for less.

Comments [122]
 
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 10:00 am

The class of 2009. They’ve got degrees, lots of enthusiasm, but few have found jobs. We’ll hear from them and experts on what the future holds.

Comments [57]
 
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Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 10:00 am

Former Senator Bob Graham says democracy has become a spectator sport, and he’s on a crusade to get young Americans back into the game.

Comments [43]
 
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 11:00 am

Hoop dreams, pushing ever-younger, and the story of one 13-year-old now groomed for basketball stardom.

Comments [16]
 
Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 3:51 pm

The education world is now listening carefully to the words of President Obama’s point man, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and trying to figure out how exactly the administration might reform No Child Left Behind.

Comments [13]
 
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Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 10:00 am

We talk with Arne Duncan, the new U.S. Secretary of Education, about President Obama’s big plans to revitalize the nation’s schools.

Comments [91]
 
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 11:00 am

Young Americans borrow 90 billion dollars a year to go to college. We’ll look at a student loan system one critic calls a “scam.”

Comments [161]
 
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Monday, December 8, 2008 at 11:00 am

American colleges in trouble. Students and families strapped by recession, endowments crushed. Costs, soaring. Is academia headed for Chapter 11?

Comments [27]
 
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Friday, November 14, 2008 at 11:00 am

Teenage students from West Philly High are competing for the X-Prize in hybrid-car design — and challenging the pros.

Comments [14]
 
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:00 am

Forget lipstick. We’re talking issues. This time: education, and what Barack Obama and John McCain would offer the country at school.

Comments [37]
 
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 11:00 am

The waiting list cases are wrapping up now. The acceptance and rejection letters are up on the fridge or in the trash. But the college admissions season of 2008 is one for the record books.
At 3.3 million, the high school class that just scrambled through admission hoops is the nation’s largest since 1977 — the [...]

 
Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 10:00 am

Here’s a headline you may have missed: a truce has been declared in the great American “Math War.”
For 20-odd years, mathematicians, parents, and teachers have been arguing over the best way to teach your children math. Well, a national panel formed by President Bush two years ago has just issued its findings, and is pushing [...]

 
Monday, February 25, 2008 at 11:00 am

It’s a globalized world, but that doesn’t mean we all live the same. Take high school students in the U.S., China and India. Different worlds.
A new documentary takes the two million minutes of high school life and compares them — in Indiana, Shanghai and Bangalore.
It’s a little shocking to see. Bright American kids on Xbox [...]

 
Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 10:00 am

The day-to-day news feed out of Iraq misses one of the country’s saddest, and most important, stories: the exodus of Iraq’s intellectual class.
While tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees are heading back, many professionals will never return. And they leave an enormous void — one that hurts the prospects for stability.
We’ll talk to three prominent [...]

 
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 10:00 am

After World War II, some 8 million veterans came home and went to college on the GI Bill, helping create the American middle class. Now, the latest generation of vets — battle-tried in Iraq and Afghanistan — is coming home, and many are going to college.
They’ve got less help from Uncle Sam, but they are [...]

 
Thursday, November 1, 2007 at 10:00 am

By host Tom Ashbrook:
At 8 am, do you know where your three-year-old is? Your four-year-old? A big new movement wants to put them — all the nation’s tiny tots — in school. Universal pre-kindergarten, it’s called. And it’s catching on fast, in red states and blue. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia — all leaders.
Now, the [...]

 
Friday, October 26, 2007 at 11:00 am

Sometimes a novel’s plot is unlikely. Sometimes it’s ripped straight from life — or life we can easily imagine. Novelist Tom Perrotta’s latest book, “The Abstinence Teacher,” is the second type.
Ruth is a broad-minded sex-ed teacher at the local high school — in a suburb where evangelical Christians are taking charge of the local culture. [...]

 
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 10:00 am

School shootings and the shadow of youth violence around them are very much in the news these days. In the last decade — from Columbine, to Amish country, to last week’s deadly shooting in a Cleveland school and images of an angry Philadelphia teen’s shocking arsenal — the headlines have become almost routine.
Gun. School. Mayhem. [...]

 
On Point Today
The Pandora Effect
Friday, November 20, 2009 image

We’ll talk with the founder of Pandora, the online music service that claims it knows what you’ll want to hear.

Comments [53]
 
Week in the News
Friday, November 20, 2009 image

Obama in China. Healthcare crunch time in the Senate. And the mammogram controversy rages on. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Comments [43]

Recent Shows
Poker: America’s Game
Thursday, November 19, 2009 image

Poker and American history. How the game of presidents, cowboys, gangsters, and online gamblers helped shape America.

Comments [9]
 
Google vs. Murdoch
Thursday, November 19, 2009 image

Rupert Murdoch wants to block the search giant from scooping free content from his newspapers. We’ll look at the staredown.

Comments [129]
On Point Blog
Michael Wolff and Jeff Jarvis on Murdoch v. Google

We had a rousing discussion about Google vs. Murdoch, and what it says about the whole future of news, with Michael Wolff, Jeff Jarvis, and Steven Brill. Here’s what Wolff and Jarvis had to say about the delusions of both Murdoch and Google.

More » | Comments [18]
 
Video: Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Last week, host Tom Ashbrook was on stage with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, asking him about some of the biggest technology and business issues of our time.

More » | Comments [4]
 
California, here we come! And we need your questions!

On Point is headed west!
No, no. Not for good. Only for one show. But it’s a very special show!  The NPR station in Thousand Oaks, California – KCLU – is celebrating their 15th anniversary. We’re lucky to have been on their airwaves for nearly seven years, and they invited us out west to host a live [...]

More » | Comments [10]