“Are four years really enough?”
by Kelsey Samuels
Coming from a student who has changed her major four or five times in the past three years, four years sounds daunting to the average student, especially one who isn’t exactly sure what her career may be.
You have the biology major whose secret passion is writing, but she wants a stable and steady income for her family in the future and decides to take the long road with the pre-med track. There’s the aspiring architect who cannot pass a math class to save his life and is forced to give up his dream of constructing the next Eiffel Tower.
It seems as though you need to know exactly what you’re going to do before you do it. Not all students can or want to begin their first real time as adults making a map of their future; they want the freedom to explore.
CU Independent
University of Colorado, Boulder
Full article here.
“Weapons deal creates dangerous path”
by Dan Morgan-Russell
For decades, the world’s superpowers have operated under the pretense that chemical weapons should not be created or utilized in a time of war.
Most international laws and norms are enforced only by reciprocity, but some must be backed by force, and chemical weapons are an issue that absolutely requires enforcement and dissuasion through punishment.
What the looming agreement between the U.S., Russia and Syria fails to do is act as a deterrent to the rest of the world to demonstrate the absolute “line in the sand,” as President Barack Obama repeatedly put it before Assad launched his gas attacks.
Daily Trojan
University of Southern California
Full article here.
“Financial literacy course should prepare students for life”
by Ryan Nelson
Sometimes I wish I were as smart [as] the E*TRADE baby. When you see the investment firm’s ads on TV, the message isn’t subtle: Our financial tools are so good, a baby can use them and be successful.
Amazingly enough, when I started testing the murky waters of finances, I discovered there wasn’t a magical application that could spell it all out for me. In lieu of magic, UCLA should consider establishing a new general education requirement that mandates all students to take a financial literacy course in order to better prepare them for life after college.
Daily Bruin
University of California, Los Angeles
Full article here.
“STEM students must hold on until help arrives”
by Corrine Harris
As a student majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math, you have a 60 percent chance of dropping out or changing majors, according to a study by the University of Central Florida. Only 15 percent of the United States student population declares a major in these fields, according to the aforementioned study.
Due to the high dropout-rate associated with STEM degrees, of the 3.6 million total students in the U.S., only six percent will graduate within six years.
To increase STEM retention rates, students need to speak up about what does not work for them in the classroom. Science is science and that cannot be changed, but the way in which professors deliver the material to their students can be changed.
The Daily Evergreen
Washington State University
Full article here.
