If an elementary school student has an excellent teacher even for a single year, it boosts their income by an average of about 2 percent per year. To put that in perspective, if we can find a way to raise gross domestic product (GDP) by 2 percent, you’re talking about nearly ending the Great Recession every year. By economic standards, it’s a huge deal.

Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a co-author of the study with Harvard Kennedy School’s John Friedman and Columbia Business School’s Jonah Rockoff. (Harvard Gazette)

(Source: brooklynmutt)

Student loan debt now stands around $1 trillion. Education is often a great investment – but the proposition is more in question every day. Higher education prices increased 440% over the last 25 years – four times the rate of inflation, and twice as bad as health care. Elementary and secondary ed prices have skyrocketed, too, with not even adequate outcomes. On the other side of the ledger is the Moore’s law ecosystem, the most ruthless force in technology and the world economy. Last quarter Netflix streamed two billion hours worth of video – or 228,000 years worth in three months. In just the last week of December, smartphone and tablet owners gobbled up 1.2 billion apps – 43% by Americans. Twenty years ago, a terabyte hard drive, if such a thing had existed, might have cost $5 million. Today, you can pick one up for $69. The price of information plummets. Yet the price of education soars. These two trends cannot both continue. Guess which will crack first.

Apple and the Education-Information Chasm - Forbes (via infoneer-pulse)

─ What's happening in the Persian Gulf explained. ─

motherjones:

Iran is talking tough, America is scrambling the aircraft carriers, and the world economy’s bobbing like a drunken sailor. Here’s everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask - from what it means to you, to how it relates to some mysterious explosions in Iran.

─ Italy's Berlusconi to resign as prime minister, president says ─

ATLANTA (CNN Wire) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said he will resign after the next budget is approved by parliament, a statement from the president’s office said Tuesday.

The news came hours after Berlusconi’s government passed a key budget vote, but fell eight votes short of a majority in parliament.

The announcement followed a visit by Berlusconi to the office of President Giorgio Napolitano.

The budget passed with 308 votes, as all but one of those present in the lower house voted for the measure. The lone holdout abstained.

However, more than half of the country’s 630 lawmakers did not take part in the vote, a clear indication that Berlusconi no longer commands the backing of a majority in parliament.

Opposition lawmakers chose to abstain as they did not want to prevent the budget being approved, since it is necessary for the government to function, but equally did not want to lend Berlusconi any support.

Berlusconi had been expected to visit the president Tuesday regardless of the result of the budget vote.

The 75-year-old prime minister has come under increasing pressure to resign in recent days.

International concern has focused on Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone, in the past few weeks as analysts worry that the financial crisis centered on Greece might spread.