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Balen Shah, 35 years, wins general elections in Nepal in March 2026 after student protests in 2025 ousted the government of PM Oli from the older generation of politicians.

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Helen Gao provides this exceptional story of how 544,000 Chinese students studying abroad far from being success stories are facing stress, anxiety, depression to an unusual degree. About 329,000 of them are in the U.S. where the $50,000 to $60,000 college tuition cost is ten times the disposable income of a Chinese family. For working class families study abroad means using up savings. Researchers at Yale in a 2013 survey found 45 percent of Chinese students on campus had symptoms of depression, 29% had anxiety. This is similar to other universities in the U.S., Australia and Britain with large Chinese student populations. Language barriers and cultural barriers pose a problem particularly in student interactions with advisers and professors. Liberal arts studies emphasize critical thinking and other skills that are not found in a results oriented, memorization from note cards oriented system in China, creating academic stress. Worse what awaits students who return is not enough recognition for years spent studying in a different environment- about 80% of Chinese students from abroad earn a mere $1500 a month, according to a Beijing think tank Center for China and Globalization report done with a recruitment agency Zhilian Zhaopin. As she talks about the experience of other students from China, Gao describes her own anxiety attacks during 8 years of study in the U.S. Her father sent pictures after his first visit to the U.S. in 1995 says Gao, with words about how he wanted his daughter to see the U.S. with her own eyes, the beauty of the country and its spirit. Years later Helen Gao of Beijing sees a different America as she walks from one Harvard campus building to another in 2015 during her last year of graduate study, one that brings anxiety, financial insecurity, and uncertainty about the future.   ...

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New information shows a crisis is developing in higher education as student debt passes $1 trillion with the unrelenting rise in the cost of college. Higher debt levels is leading to higher droput rates. According to think tank Education Sector, 30 percent of college students taking out loans dropped out of school, compared to 25% ten years ago. And work can be a large factor as students take parttime jobs to lower the loan burden- half of college dropouts attributed dropping out to work, according to a 2009 study by Public Agenda. It also adds another burden to the productive potential of the U.S. economy. The director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, Anthony Carnevale, estimates the cost to the U.S. economy at half a trillion dollars in terms of skills not available for increasing economic output and income lost for dropouts.

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Arne Duncan says that one cannot in good conscience let $87 billion in subsidies to banks to make student loans go to these banks at atime when these resources are badly needed to give students access to colleges and educational opportunities. $87 billion will be saved by ending the troubled FFEL program. The Education Department plans to substantially increase the PELL grant program and other financial aid for low ncome students, and to raise college graduation rates, and strengthen community colleges. And $10 billion will be applied to reduce the deficit.

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Schools in the US are offering less healthy options for school lunches as there are fewer cafeteria workers and supplies are dwindling with delayed shipments and shortages.

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Baby boomers born in 1955 had 2 more years of schooling than their parents by age 30. By contrast baby boomers born in 1980 had 8 months more schooling than their parents by age 30. This is the shown in a study by Harvard professors Goldin and Katz. A big part of the problem is the high dropout rates at some high schools in the U.S. Another part of the problem which is growing today is the high cost of tution discouraging students from going to college, and the large student debt being borne by parents. Student debt reached $1 trillion in the U.S. by 2012.

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PM Modi opens the Vidya Samiksha Kendra, Command and Control Center setup by the Gujarat state Education Department in Gandhinagar. 

This center uses modern technology to monitor the work of 55,000 secondary schools, 400,000 teachers and 12 million students in the state. The aim is to improve learning outcomes, making certain teachers are conducting the classes, and tracking students if they migrate, looking out for possible dropouts. 

In the past it was seen that poor monitoring of teachers was leading to absenteeism and lack of seriousness. Dropout rates are also a concern and each child is tracked under the program, schools he or she has attended, tests taken and areas of the test where the student did not do well and should get help.

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Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, says the Obama plan for ratings of colleges in the U.S. will not add much value because much of the information is already available. More important she says is to tackle the bad actors in education leading to high student debt. She says she will cut costs by a couple of hundred million dollars in the next few years, and will keep pushing on costs as there is a natural tendency to revert back. With less state support the UC system is admitting a larger number of students from out of state who pay higher tution.