Happy 2013!

It seems that at the beginning of each new year there is a plethora of lists naming the top 10 this or the worst ten of that from the previous calendar year.  There are a few categories and "winners" that might interest you.  Before we get into the lists - a word of caution.  Remember the recent dust up when it was discovered that George Washington University had "misrepresented" the data as to what percentage of freshmen in fall 2011 were in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes. (The Washington Post, November 9, 2012, "Data Errors Could Mean 'Slight Change' in GWU Ranking", by Nick Anderson)  As with any ranking it's important to know if the date on which the rank is based is accurate.  Basura in - basura out.  For you non-Spanish speakers - Garbage in (in GWU's case, inaccuracies) -garbage out.

On November 15, 2012, Colleen Kane posted "America's Deadliest Jobs 2012" on CNBC.com.  The statistics were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and used to rank jobs with the highest fatal work injury rates.  The number one "honor" fell to workers in the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industries with a rate of 24.4 fatalities per 100,000 full time workers.  By comparison, the industry with the lowest fatality rate is education and health services with .8 per 100,000 workers.

On November 29, 2012, Townhall.com ran a post "2012's Worst Paying College Degrees".  They used the 2012-2013 College Salary Report from a great site - Payscale.com.  Payscale used data from its online salary database to produce a list of college degrees that go along with the "lowest median pay".  Child and Family Studies is lowest at $37,700.  Their analyst, Katie Bardaro, stated, "According to our research, people in these majors typically believe their work makes the world a better place."  Townhall is blunt in response:
    To translate, the people in these majors are perhaps so disconnected from
    reality that they do not recognize that the reason their trades provide
    so little return on their educational investment is because they really
    do not require unique ability, which is why society does not
    reward them with greater compensation.
The authors assert that higher education then "exploits" these individuals by having them pay nearly the same amount of money as students pay for degrees leading to careers that society values a lot more. This is a brilliant observation.  It would seem to take a lot more money to build labs for biomedical students than to man a program for most social work majors, yet the tuition is basically the same, perhaps with the addition of a nominal "lab fee" for the biomed students.

Paul Toscano and Colleen Kane also use data from Payscale for  their CNBC.com post of September 27, 2012, "Colleges That Bring In the Highest Paycheck 2012".  They posted the top 10 highest earning schools whose grads make an average salary of $122,500 at mid-career.  In contrast, the bottom 10 schools' graduates earn an average of $44,490 by mid-career.  A point of interest to the "earnest" student - "...the top party school by salary potential is University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign (UIUC) with a mid-career salary of $95,900."

The Business Insider published a post by Abby Rigers and Gus Lubin on November 20, 2012 entitled, "The Most Dangerous Colleges in America".  They used data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report. The ranking was based on a "combination of violent crime rank and property crime rank, with violent crime weighted four times higher".  The post can be found at www.businessinsider.com.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has praised seven colleges as "best for free speech in 2012".  They are:  James Madison University;  The College of William and Mary; University of Mississippi; Mississippi State University; University of Tennessee - Knoxville; University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania.  FIRE's president, Greg Lukianoff, has written a book, Unlearning Liberty:  Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.

 In it, he argues "...that censorship on America's college and university campuses has broader, more insidious consequences that are not restricted to the boundaries of campus."  Their website is:  www.thefire.org.

Well, there's a lot of information within this first post of 2013.  I hope that you can use it to help you to make the choices you will need to make this year more wisely.