A Cosmetology License Takes More Training, on Average, Than an EMT's. The Barber Behind the Chair Still Almost Certainly Isn't Anyone's Employee.
September 7, 2026 · 3 min read
Cutting hair for pay requires a license in all fifty states, and nationally it takes more days of training than becoming an EMT. None of that regulation, though, decides who…
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High School Graduates Peak This Year, Then Decline for Sixteen Straight Years. Palantir Pays Teenagers $5,400 a Month to Skip College Entirely. Neither Trend Needs the Other to Be Real.
September 6, 2026 · 6 min read
American higher education is being squeezed from two independent directions at once. From below: a demographic decline in college-age Americans locked in since the 2008…
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The Average Electrician Out-Earns the Average New College Graduate. The Training Costs 90% Less and Takes a Fraction of the Time.
August 22, 2026 · 3 min read
The average 2025 college graduate started at $59,384. The average trade-occupation salary is $68,480 -- higher, reached through training that costs 90% less and takes a fraction…
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For Most High-Achieving Low-Income Students, the Elite College Would Cost Less. They Never Apply.
August 21, 2026 · 3 min read
Between 25,000 and 35,000 low-income American high schoolers score in the top 10% nationally, but only 34% of the highest scorers from the bottom income quartile end up at a…
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The great equalizer, for sale
August 12, 2026 · 5 min read
Horace Mann called public education "the great equalizer." Even in Fairfax County and Palo Alto -- some of the best-funded, highest-ranked public school systems in the country --…
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The school was built to make the people, not just educate them
August 12, 2026 · 9 min read
Benjamin Franklin argued for public education in 1749. Horace Mann called it "the great equalizer" in 1848. Both were solving the same problem: a country with no shared ethnicity…
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What school lunch actually costs — one price to make it, three mechanisms for what you pay
August 5, 2026 · 4 min read
Making a school lunch costs about the same $3.99 almost everywhere. What a family is charged for it swings from free to $5.50 a tray, and the gap isn't regional cost of living --…
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Why so many more degrees — government, the market, access, and prosperity, pulling at once
August 4, 2026 · 4 min read
The US population grew 1.6x since 1970. Bachelor's degrees grew 2.7x. That gap isn't population -- it's four separate forces, each with its own date and its own mechanism, that…
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