More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized. Yet we still know little about this alternative to one of society's most fundamental institutions. Beyond a vague notion of children reading around the kitchen table, we don'...

In real life, Mitchell Stevens is a professor in bustling New York. But for a year and a half, he worked in the admissions office of a bucolic New England college that is known for its high academic standards, beautiful campus, and social conscience. Ambitious high schoolers and savvy guidance counselors know that admission here is highly competitive. But creating classes, Stevens finds, is a lot more complicated than most people imagine.Admissions officers love students but they w...

Law can be viewed as a body of rules and legal sanctions that channel behavior in socially desirable directions — for example, by encouraging individuals to take proper precautions to prevent accidents or by discouraging competitors from colluding to raise prices. The incentives created by the legal system are thus a natural subject of study by economists. Moreover, given the importance of law to the welfare of societies, the economic analysis of law merits prominent treatment as a subdisc...

There are Pretenders among us, geniuses with the ability to become anyone they want to be. In 1983 a corporation known as The Centre isolated a young Pretender named Jarod and exploited his genius for their 'research. Then, one day, their Pretender ran away…Written by the creators of the cult-hit TV show The Pretender – Rebirth is a slick mystery thriller about a brilliant human chameleon named Jarod who after escaping from the notorious Centre, plunges headlong into his newfound f...

Between 1945 and 1990 the United States built the largest and most productive higher education system in world history. Over the last two decades, however, dramatic budget cuts to public academic services and skyrocketing tuition have made college completion more difficult for many. Nevertheless, the democratic promise of education and the global competition for educated workers mean ever growing demand.Remaking College considers this changing context, arguing that a growi...

The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient.Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowle...

The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient.Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowle...

Very few mines in the world ever produced gold continuously for more than one hundred years. The Homestake Mine was one that did, producing 40 million ounces of gold from 1876 through 2001, when the quest for the yellow metal was brought to an end for good. Over the next few years after the mine was shut down, tens of thousands of ounces in additional gold were recovered as mine facilities were systematically decommissioned, and the mill site was reclaimed and converted to an open-air muse...

Law can be viewed as a body of rules and legal sanctions that channel behavior in socially desirable directions — for example, by encouraging individuals to take proper precautions to prevent accidents or by discouraging competitors from colluding to raise prices. The incentives created by the legal system are thus a natural subject of study by economists. Moreover, given the importance of law to the welfare of societies, the economic analysis of law merits prominent treatment as a subdisc...

An in-depth look at why American universities continue to favor U.S.-focused social science research despite efforts to make scholarship more cosmopolitanU.S. research universities have long endeavored to be cosmopolitan places, yet the disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology have remained stubbornly parochial. Despite decades of government and philanthropic investment in international scholarship, the most prestigious academic departments still ...

They said the meek would inherit the Earth.As far as Jarek can tell, though, they must've been speaking Dutch or something, because those "meek" aliens sure did make a bloody mess of things. Even so, Jarek wasn't about to make a fuss over the raknoth apocalypse. Not until those red-eyed bastards stole his exosuit.You don't steal a man's exosuit...But when Jarek's quest for vengeance runs him straight up against an alien stronghold, and a bl...

Jarek never meant to get involved...Following the Catastrophe, the plan was simple enough. Scavenge for food. Avoid marauders. And above all else, keep his head down. No problem at all. Especially not with a one-of-a-kind exosuit and a cheeky AI companion on his hands. But when Jarek stumbles onto a back alley mugging gone wrong, well... Problems.The word is out. Young Jarek Slater is packing a serious weapon. The kind he's not ready to use in earnest. The ...