The Wall Street Journal reports that the earnings gap between college graduates and non-college high school graduates is actually much narrower than most of us previously thought. As Anya Kamenetz points out in DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, a degree isn't necessarily the golden ticket to a prosperous future the conventional wisdom would have you believe. Fuzzy math and wishful thinking based on a 2002 Census Bureau report ballooned the actual figure to the point that choosing college—and the often-crushing debt that goes with it—seemed like a ...

At the 2010 Eco Farm Conference in California, Chelsea Green's own Makenna Goodman (small farmer and blogger extraordinaire) rubbed elbows with potato farmers, rice growers, and CEOs of mega-corporations, all there to try to find the answer to one question: what is the future of farming and food? Is big the new small? Must we sell out to Wal-Mart and try to change the system from the inside, or is that the path to choking the life out of small businesses and local farms?

Last week I went to California for the 2010 ...

In his state of the union address, and his opening remarks in a meeting with House Republicans the same week, President Obama was inspiring and optimistic, once again reaching across the aisle in the hopes of getting the opposition to meet him halfway. After months of frustrating obstructionism from the GOP, you'd think he'd have learned his lesson. There is nothing coming from that side of the aisle. Nothing. And what the American people need now is true leadership—not conciliation.

Robert Kuttner sees not just Barack Obama's presidency but the country as a ...

James McCommons's Waiting on a Train celebrates the history of the railroads while striking an optimistic chord about the future of passenger rail in the U.S. At the same time, McCommons doesn't flinch from the reality: the state of modern passenger rail in this country is an embarrassment. As James Howard Kunstler said in his introduction, "We had a system not so long ago that was the envy of the world; now we have service that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of."

In this radio interview with Arthur Frommer, McCommons explores the ...

By Elizabeth Henderson

I heard last night the sad news that Howard Zinn had died. I guess we should be grateful that he died quickly and was spared a long slow illness. Here is my contribution to our great celebration of his life.

When I landed my first full-time teaching job at Boston University in 1975, I moved to Boston as a young widow with my four year old son hardly knowing anyone. I had spent the previous decade in New Haven, Connecticut where I had a dense community of friends and fellow activists from ...

In this interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, author and editorial director of the Center for Investigative Reporting Mark Schapiro explains Cap-and-Trade legislation: its drawbacks, its benefits; and what it means for the future of the planet.

From Fresh Air with Terry Gross (transcript by NPR):

Mr. MARK SCHAPIRO (Journalist): So the basic idea behind cap-and-trade is that the government issues emission limits, limits on the amount of greenhouse gases that major industries can omit into the atmosphere. And then it permits companies to exceed those limits, to go and purchase an ...

Chelsea Green is going to be interviewing one of our new authors this Sunday, and we want you to be a part of it.

The price of college tuition has increased more than any other major good or service for the last twenty years. Nine out of ten American high school seniors aspire to go to college, yet the United States has fallen from world leader to only the tenth most educated nation. Almost half of college students don’t graduate; those who do have unprecedented levels of federal and private student loan debt, which constitutes ...

It's easy to get cynical and discouraged by the Supreme Court ruling that:

Easy to get discouraged, yes. Understandable to be disgusted with the whole system, yes. But not constructive. Author Riki Ott has some practical steps you can take to ...