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Centuries of neglect of Asian education and students by European nations during colonization is now turned on its head. Which is also not a good thing, in fact something just as bad.  A British professor has to remain anonymous to ask for an honest conversation on why British universities are so dependent on foreign students. Seven of ten University students in Britain studying for Masters degrees are overseas students. This is a shocking statistic and only goes to show the lack of the same opportunity for higher education for students from England, Scotland and Wales. Students at home cannot afford the 30,000 pounds that students from China or other countries pay. Not too long ago British funding made it possible for British people to attend British universities. It points to the lack of funding of higher education in Britain to give the same opportunities as students from other countries to the British education system that has taken hundreds of years of gradual investment to establish. It points to the consensus in society that neglects the importance of higher education which is as important for the future as the system which channels young people based on aptitude to take the course of apprenticeship training after high school for better incomes in industry and manufacturing. ...

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Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish educator and author, describes Finland's education model.

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The UK Education Report from Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson as shown in The Times says “In practice, high standards currently too often means high standards for some — our ambition is high standards for all”. It sees the basic emphasis on knowledge depth and excellence in education, the infrastructure as working well and intends to keep this. The change is to bring all schools up to these higher standards. Childcare infrastructure and services would be made available to all.  Rote education and stress on memorization, taking too many GCSE exams, student stress from the large number of exams more than Ireland and twice that of Canada, not enough apprenticeship training programs, will be points that will receive attention. “The national curriculum should remain relevant and up to date while embedding and recognising the importance of cultural knowledge stemming from the past.” More emphasis on developing this kind of national curriculum. ...

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Sir Kevan Williams sets forth his vision for British education recovery after coronavirus disrupted students lives. He was appointed education recovery commissioner in February 2021. Keven resigned yesterday after his 15 billion pound plan for students getting extra time at school was rejected by Boris Johnson, the British prime minister. Boris Johnson has only 3 billion pounds set aside for education recovery at what the Times cites at 50 pounds per student, compared to 1600 pounds per student in the US under president Biden. Mrs. Biden is a teacher at community college for most of her life and is a strong supporter for free education at community colleges.

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Changes that president Biden is making to make certain that students who took out a loan of $30,000 for college do not end up paying for two decades, and be still owing $60,000. WSJ explains that the original student loan law written decades ago does not take into account the realities of today as young people are forced into long repayment plans and still cannot complete payment. President Biden has stated that no student loan borrower would be expected to pay more than 5% of his or her income for student loan payments each month. This helps student borrowers across the country and makes college education affordable. Most Americans have failed to realize the importance of higher education and its affordability for the US economy, the US ability to compete with China, India and the EU, and the damage done to US education by outdated laws. The general failure to support education and its affordability has come at a great cost to the US economy and its strength in the world, similar to the damage done by the neglect of manufacturing and communities across America that depend on good manufacturing jobs. The failures of laissez faire theory under Reagan and it becoming part of exiting culture leading to lack of government support for education, manufacturing, and infrastructure has weakened America and neglected communities across the country. ...

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UK joins Erasmus for 570 million pounds in 2027 one hundred thousand students benefit in first year. UK government says it will “create educational and training opportunities for British apprentices, further education students and adult learners, as well as those in higher education”. It is a new reset with the European Union and part of Labour's manifesto. This is one program that deserved support and has added great value to the community of Europe. It also opens up UK universities for EU students widening the impact to millions of students over a decade that understand the importance of the community of Europe. Shown here are students from UK at Humboldt University campus in Berlin.

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Misallocation of huge amounts of US capital (trillions of dollars) away from healthcare, seniors and retirees, childcare and education into AI in the US is becoming an issue in the midterm elections of 2026.

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Currently Asian-Americans make up 62% of students at top high schools in New York. Mayor Blasio aims to give 20% of the seats to students who almost reach the qualifying scores on an entrance exam for Stuyvesant and seven other specialized high schools. Under Blasio's plan Discovery program for economically disadvantaged students would get 800 of the 4000 specialized high school seats for ninth graders in fall 2020 up from 250. 

Another view is presented by Parenting While Black organization of low income parents and children, who say that more important is to improve the quality of education for the city's 1.1 million students and start at the early grades. They see the high school debate for these 7 specialized schools as taking attention from the real problem to focus on s small sliver of students. The mass of students, the vast majority, they say are left to dangle in the wind.

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Google Alphabet able to raise $80 billion by issuing more stock with the share price only down slightly by about 3%. The huge amounts of money raised have an impact on borrowing rates (which increase) for other borrowers and reduce the amount of capital available for needs other than AI.  About 60% of the capital raised from share issuance, IPO's and other ways of raising capital is going into AI, making capital scarce for everyone else and for the economy's needs other than AI. Education, Healthcare, Infrastructure will all suffer. Infrastructure that is crumbling in the US and some of it from the middle of the last century needs to be rebuilt. AI is sucking up all these funds meant for infrastructure projects meaning that much of it is put further away in time. DJT and Biden promised infrastructure projects would get first priority. Will this happen? And who gets to decide what the Nation's priorities are?

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Children engaging in learning in parks under Gujarat education department's parks education as schools are closed. This was launched in last week of June. A scene of children being taught in a park setting in Ahmedabad, India.

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BBC says "tech's seedy side exposed" by Musk- Altman trial 2026. Let's face it there is a seedy side, and a much less benevolent side to Tech than it likes to show. The overspending on AI is a sign of misplaced priorities when so much of US infrastructure is dilapidated, much of it from before 1945, that badly needs to be rebuilt. Much of the promise of hardware from Tech that would change education is a failure so much so that Sweden is shifting on a nationwide effort in its schools to a program - "from screens to binders" that gives children binders with notebooks to write in and books to read, removing screens altogether, and for good reasons of the educators of Sweden. Tech in its grandiose style pretends it is about the technological revolution when it is simply the companies Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, three of which are from the last 15 years. The technological revolution and the scientific revolution date back to Copernicus and Newton and the hundreds, thousands of scientists and pioneers of the industrial revolution of the last 250 years, and the men of vision and wisdom that gave us the British and American Constitution, the principles of self-government of civilized societies. ...

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Reading a physical book is better than seeing some on on You Tube reading a book- this becomes a problem with You Tube targeting schools and school children with its Chromebooks in American schools. You Tube has become prevalent in American classroom and its marketing works closely with parents and teachers. Problems are that children can end up spending too much time watching You Tube, neglecting reading and home work. Watching a person read on You Tube gives verylittle of the benefits from reading a book oneself. The practice of reading is an important skill and can be developed only by reading and reading a physical book. Attention spans become shorter when watching You Tubes and more You Tubes. Sweden has studied the problem of using screens with teachers, education experts and curriculum experts and is now moving all its classrooms from screens to binders that include exercize books for children to write in. Writing is similar only when takes up a pen and paper can one write and write more till one gets better at it. Sweden should be closely followed and the US should start using a similar approach to fight the lack of reading comprehension skills in American schoolchildren as part of the Movement for Global Literacy of lyrarc.com. ...

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Missing 8th grade algebra in San Francisco school curriculum is the subject of this editorial in the WSJ. The Department of Education calls algebra a gatekeeper course to future success. Taking Algebra 1 before high school can set students up for a foundation of STEM education and open the door for various career options. Yet San Francisco dropped 8th grade Algebra in the name of reducing inequities in 2014, says WSJ.

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Sweden has a progressive system of taxes. Higher taxes are willingly paid because much of the taxes go into producing public goods such as infrastructure, transportation, healthcare and education. Not a welfare state but a well funded plan for public goods that are essential for all citizens. The perception and the plan are together so that people do not worry about getting sick or getting a good education, and to have good transportation and other services.

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Online classes 90 miles from Srinagar across the Jhelum river in Kashmir in a village of 650 households during the pandemic. The online classes are downloaded from the Education Department and teachers meet students for the classes in the mountains. Children study, socialize and log in for exams. The struggle to get an education during the pandemic goes on for children in Kashmir just as it does in other parts of the world.

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Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, on the flaws in the No Child Left Behind Act that need to be corrected.

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The renewal of America requires new leadership at the helm of America's institutions for higher learning when men's enrollment in college education is endangered as reported in WSJ. This WSJ report shows presidents choosing to retire at Dartmouth, NYU, Columbia, U Penn, MIT. Lee Bollinger is 75, he started at Columbia as president in 2002. He helped raise $13 billion and expanded the 13 acre Manhattanville campus. Yet what does it say for so many college presidents when during the period when they raised vast sums of money and during the last 2 decades college education is harder and harder to afford for ordinary Americans? During the pandemic WSJ reports in 2021 even show that American men are having a hard time paying for college education and rates of enrollment are dropping for men to alarming levels. Never before in America's history has it been said that American men are becoming endangered for higher education. One rarely hears college presidents talk about these social issues that are top and center for ordinary Americans. It is not just Columbia or what are called Ivy League institutions, most of the leading colleges in America have forgotten why they are here in the first place and what made America what it was and again can be, a land of opportunity for all. It is time for anew generation of leaders in American higher education to dedicate themselves to this task - so that we hold these rights to be self-evident, to renew America in the face of many challenges and set a model for the free world. ...

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Interview with Bill Gates on the Gates foundation's educational activities and his thoughts on the budget cuts in education. The Gates Foundation launches an effort to improve education in selected school districts- Memphis, Tennessee, Hillsborough, Florida, Pittsburgh, and a charter consortium in California. The foundation has awarded $290 million for this effort to improve teacher effectiveness and set up new personnel systems. The idea is to raise the average level of quality in these schools through teacher effectiveness using a system designed by the foundation. Gates sees the need for more targeted investment in schools and close cooperation with teachers, principals, superintendents and administrative people. For this reason he sees the current budget atmosphere as counterproductive, as it will cut spending on education and act as a distraction from the hard work that needs to get done. On education spending Gates points out that one has to be careful as a society not to neglect the young as one uses resources to support the elderly. He points out that the only way to get this whole thing to work is for some increases in taxes and putting a lid on increases in medical costs, so that education in America does not get shortchanged. Recent polls show preference for some increase in taxes when it comes to supporting education spending....

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New York Governor Cuomo gives unions and the state's Education Department 30 days to settle a lawsuit brought by teachers. The lawsuit delays job performance evaluations for teachers which include student test results. Cuomo said the alternative was for him to pass new legislation requiring this. He gives school districts 1 year to implement the new system using the framework setup by the state or loss of $805 million in state aid. Cuomo said: "No evaluation, no money. Period." This money comes from the Obama administrations Race to the Top education program which provides additional funding to states that make such improvements.

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Social and economic changes in American society have come down to an alarming statistic. There are three young women for every two young men in American colleges. At Tulane the freshman class has two thirds women students. At liberal arts colleges the class is usually 60% women. As noted in this report by Susan Dominus in NYT there is a devaluing of college education because men have choices that are higher paying, conservatives have not emphasized college education, and "male drift" is a serious problem leading to male enrolment declining. And once in college men are dropping out at afaster rate. All this adds up to a serious problem in America, one that the Biden administration has to take seriously as it looks at rebuilding not just the economy, but also the education system that supports the US economy in the world.

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Saving for child at 30 years when she is 7 years the situation for young family finances in 2025, with outrageous college tution up 40% in 10 years, and other costs such as child care. Colleges seem to be impervious to increasing college costs so called  "upper tier" college leagues intent on taking advantage of the disproportionate increases in upper class incomes exacerbating class divisions, and trying to perpetuate their brands with the notion that they offer a better education for undergraduates at $50,000 to $100,000 a year at a Northwestern or Brown when state universities in Michigan, California and Arizona among many in the whole Nation at $15,000 a year instate tution offer the same education as long as the student puts in the necessary effort to study hard.

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In the middle of the pandemic US Congress approved $190 billion in aid to schools. Of this 20% was to be spent addressing learning loss for children. The pandemic period taking 50 million children out of schools is now seen as the biggest disruption in history of American education. It set student progress in math and education back by two decades and widened the gap between wealthy and poor children. These learning gaps remain unaddressed even as money runs out in 2024.