Education, Training and Labor

The Gulf state of Qatar has repeatedly promised to reform its much-criticized labor system. Yet two years after its government announced plans to make major changes, the raft of proposed reforms still has not been implemented. What explains the delays? It certainly cannot be chalked up to lack of international pressure. This March, the UN’s […]

Education policy in Singapore has attracted much attention of late. In the recent parliamentary speeches, Ms Denise Phua (MP, Jalan Besar GRC) commented on how the Direct Admission System disproportionally benefits wealthy families. Mr Png Eng Huat (MP, Hougang) also expressed worries about the billion-dollar tuition culture. A good primary education is perceived to be […]

  BY CHANTE LANTOS-SWETT On Monday, March 7, at 11:30 a.m., more than 3,000 students from schools all across the Boston Public School District stood up from their desks and joined their peers in front of the State House to protest a proposed $50 million cut to the 2016-2017 school year budget. Armed with protest […]

Earlier this year, President Obama’s final State of the Union address discussed early childhood education, high school graduation rates, and community college access. But President Obama skirted a larger issue: poor academic preparation at the K-12 level is a root cause of a lack of people of color in higher education and in the fields […]

Our education system has served us well thus far. Presentation skills, deal-making skills, teamwork skills and the like are key components of our education system. Our vocational training is also up to par. So to many Singaporeans, and to the world at large, there seems to be no immediate pressing issue with our system. Singaporean […]

BY DANIEL TOSTADO Among all the numerous Latin phrases that I have picked up at law school, today this one is most apt: “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum,” –Do not speak ill of the dead. A war of words started innocuously enough on Sunday, when Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor issued a statement on behalf […]

BY LAUREN WINDMEYER Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would take two months paternity leave following the birth of his first child. This announcement exemplifies a trend in the tech world towards improved benefits for new parents – this year alone, Amazon, Netflix, and Microsoft have all announced extended parental leave. This is of […]

    As public awareness has risen about the dismal state of sexual assault prevention and response on college campuses, American universities have scrambled to improve their policies and programming. As administrators at a university in Iraqi Kurdistan with an American-style educational system, we decided to be proactive and create a sexual misconduct policy laying […]

Introduction Both French and post-independence Algerian rulers imposed a simplistic, narrow definition of identity on Algeria. These choices were dictated by ideologies associated with colonization and Pan-Arabism, marginalizing other key components of Algerian identity. In doing so, both the colonizer and the dictator were able to effectively maintain power in pitting cultural, linguistic, and ethnic […]

In telling your friends you’ve “discovered” a new restaurant, you imply to have found something you like; something your social circle is not yet “hip” to; something that should be on everyone’s radar but – because of your keen Googling skills or happenstance stroll down Massachusetts Avenue — has in it just a few more […]

BY HAYLING PRICE AND JACOB COHEN This piece appeared in our 2015 print journal. You can order your copy here.  Introduction The zip code a child resides in should not determine his or her life prospects. Yet, many neighborhoods of concentrated poverty struggle to provide children with pathways to opportunity. To address this intractable moral and […]

BY LUCY BOYD The second Republican debate in September covered everything from the Iranian nuclear deal to vaccinations. Climate Change. Immigration. Putin. China. All were given significant airtime during the lengthy three-hour time slot. One important topic left completely unaddressed: our failing public education system. But that may not be a bad thing. The Common […]