The Real Price of College: College Completion Series: Part Two

The high price of college is the subject of media headlines, policy debates, and dinner table conversations because of its implications for educational opportunities, student and family pocketbooks, and the economy. Some people caution against giving too much weight to the advertised price of a college education, pointing out that the availability of financial aid means that college is not as expensive as people think it is. But they overlook a substantial problem: for many students, the real price of college is much higher than what recruitment literature, conventional wisdom, and even official statistics convey. Our research indicates that the current approach to higher education financing too often leaves low-income students facing unexpected, and sometimes untenable, expenses.Financial challenges are a consistent predictor of non-completion in higher education, and they are becoming more severe over time. Unexpected costs, even those that might appear modest in size, can derail students from families lacking financial cushions, and even those with greater family resources. Improving college completion rates requires both lowering the real price of attending college -- the student's remaining total costs, including tuition, books, and living expenses, after financial aid -- to better align with students' and families' ability to pay, and providing accurate information to help them plan to cover the real price of college.Many policymakers argue that bringing the personal and public benefits of higher education to an expanded population of Americans is important for the economy and to address inequality. Financial aid policies, they assume, help those with scarce resources to earn their degrees. But these policies often fall short, and when students have difficulty paying for college, they are more likely to focus their energies on working and raising funds rather than studying and attending classes, and are less likely to complete their degrees

Unsettling Redemption: The Ethics of Intrasubjectivity in 'The Act of Killing'

Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary 'The Act of Killing' adopts a novel experimental approach to addressing mass atrocity. Perpetrators of Cold War era anti-communist purges in Indonesia are invited to narrate their acts through familiar film genres. The resulting narrative appears to fit within the ideology of transitional justice, with its emphasis on practices of healing, remorse and redemption. Yet the structural dimensions of violence remain unaddressed within this frame. The moral economy of affect and empathy displaces a political analysis of enduring power imbalances and ongoing injustice

‘The beauty…is that it speaks for itself’: geospatial materials as evidentiary matters

This essay takes up the incorporation of geospatial materials into international criminal law and its institutional locations, focusing on the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC). We consider how geospatial materials such as satellite imagery are conscripted as legal materials for international criminal trials, and how these relatively novel forms of evidence require interventions of technical knowledge through expert witness testimony. The assemblage of satellite imagery, expert testimony, and submitted reports are subjected to what we call ‘juridical mediation’ – the vetting of materials through interpretive processes that bring them into a relationship with textual forms, such as statutory principles and the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. What appears on the other side of this mediated process is a complex and composite relationship between textual, technological, and hermeneutic forms, troubling the claim that geospatial material ‘speaks for itself’

Physiological Behavior of the Propionic Acid Group of Bacteria

The group constitutes a number of species of bacteria producing large quantities of propionic acid from carbohydrates. The generic diagnosis of the group is: Propionibacterium, Orla-Jensen, 1909. Gram positive, non-sporulating non-motile short rods showing marked morphological variation in acid media or when grown under aerobic conditions; normal growth anaerobic. Cultures are catalase positive. Carbohydrates, glucosides and alcohols attacked with the production of propionic acid, acetic acid and CO2. The species are differentiated on the basis of sugar fermentation, nitrate reduction, pigment production and morphology. A key to the species is given with a description of each