DealBook: A $250 Million Pledge to a College Evaporates as a Deal Collapses

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The Boss: A College President, Drawn to Uncertainties

My parents were in a mixed marriage: Dad was Irish Catholic; Mom was Irish Protestant. My mother was a voracious and indiscriminate reader and loved the tiny library in Paoli. My dad washed the dishes, ran the vacuum, played baseball and taught Sunday school; my mother earned more money than he did and balanced the checkbook. So rigid gender roles have always seemed a mere convention to me.

I graduated third in my high school class, yet the guidance counselors, who knew my family background, told us that we could only afford community college. I got into Duke on scholarships and loans. Both my parents’ places of work provided added funding.

When I decided to major in religious studies, my mother worried that I was trying to make her happy. I told her that I wasn’t sure I believed in religion but that I wanted to understand why others did. While envious of the certainty that some of my more religious friends experienced, I’ve been drawn to the greater challenge that uncertainty presents.

I came out as a lesbian in college. When Anita Bryant, who was known for her views against homosexuality, came to the South to speak, a group I was involved with staged a protest. When she said the word “homosexual,” our group got up and walked out in silence. People in the audience spat on us. These were middle- and working-class people whom I could have known from my own neighborhood. They were beyond rational discourse. This moment politicized me.

I also learned that universities are not immune to sexism or homophobia. In my first teaching job after earning a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a student told me that a female teacher of biblical materials was “the devil incarnate.” Later, at another college where I taught, a colleague told me that I wouldn’t have been hired had it been known I was a lesbian.

At Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., which I joined in 1988 as assistant professor in the religious studies department, the attitudes were somewhat different. I designed and taught a course on AIDS and H.I.V. with David Craig, a chemistry professor. Our course won an award from the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

I worked at Hobart and William Smith as an educator and administrative leader for almost 25 years. I’m often asked why I left a secure position there a year ago to head up Shimer College, a relatively unknown school with 125 undergraduates. I suppose I liked its unofficial tagline: “Dangerously Optimistic Since 1853.”

More important, Shimer is based on the Great Books Program. We read texts in the natural and social sciences and the humanities that have enduring historical significance. By remaining intentionally small, we can model how to live in a participatory democracy.

The hardest part of my job is the commute. My partner, Betty Bayer, remains in Geneva as professor of women’s studies at Hobart and William Smith. We own a house there built in 1806; I take the train back East when I can.

Over the course of a lifetime, I have come to understand that I cannot pursue ideas alone. Nor can I strive to change the world unless I engage others, whether those who spit on me or those with whom I share my life. I still wrestle with the tensions of differences and uncertainty. As Shimerians say, we steer between reality and utopia.

You're the Boss Blog: A ‘Not-to-Do’ List for Recent College Graduates

College graduation: lofty commencement speeches are given, bright futures anticipated and, for some lucky college graduates, new jobs await. While commencement addresses may be inspiring, I wish someone would take the opportunity to deliver a more practical message to new college graduates who are about to enter the work force. It would go something like this:

“Congratulations. You’ve just earned your college degree. I’m glad to be here as the first person to speak to you as college graduates. I have good news and bad news. First, the bad news: Despite your newly obtained degree, you don’t know anything. You have no skills. If you are really lucky, you will soon land your first job. You are not entitled to that job. Quite the contrary, there are many people just like you who would love to have that job. If you get it, you should be grateful for your good fortune and make the most of it. It will be hard work, sometimes backbreaking work, and you may feel that the work is beneath you. But the reality is that nothing is beneath you, because you don’t know anything — yet.

Now, the good news: You live in the United States of America, the greatest country in the world. If you work really, really hard, if you are happy to start at the bottom and work your way up, if you are ready to grind and scratch and claw, and if you catch a bit of luck, anything is possible. Anybody can be anything in America. You just have to be willing to learn fast from those around you and work really hard.”

Unfortunately, I was not invited to deliver any commencement speeches this year. So I’m doing the next best thing and reflecting in this post on my first job. I hope that it can provide a bit of help and guidance.

I’ll start with a summary: I totally whiffed on my first job experience. When I graduated from college, I knew nothing, had no skills and was not owed anything. But that’s not how I felt at the time.

I had just graduated from the Wharton School, the country’s oldest undergraduate business school and one that consistently lands the top slot in college rankings. I studied entrepreneurial management and tried to drop out of school to start a business during the winter break of my junior year. (Thankfully, my parents forced me to stay in school.) I finished my studies early in my senior year and spent the remaining weeks waking up early to read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and then using the rest of the day to consume voluminous amounts of coffee while devouring Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” I was biding my time until I left academia to do what I thought I was meant to do: run a business.

Like all Wharton undergraduates, I interviewed with companies that came calling on campus: investment banks, strategy consulting firms and technology companies. At the time (I graduated in 1997), there was a company called Trilogy, based in Austin, Tex., that was getting a lot of press. Trilogy had been started by Joe Liemandt, who dropped out of Stanford to start an enterprise software company that was selling multimillion dollar software applications to big companies like Boeing, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. While the software seemed esoteric — who understands what product configuration software does and why another company would spend millions of dollars for it? — Joe’s success was tangible. He was on the covers of business magazines and was ranked as one of Fortune’s 40 richest under 40 in 2001. He was the type of entrepreneur from whom I could have learned a tremendous amount.

But I didn’t think there was anything I needed to learn.

I was recruited to Trilogy by Ajay Agarwal. Before joining Trilogy, Ajay had graduated from Stanford, then Harvard Business School and worked in strategy consulting at McKinsey & Company. Today, Ajay is a managing director at the venture capital firm Bain Capital Ventures. Ajay’s recruiting pitch was particularly compelling: come to Trilogy to work in an entrepreneurial environment with extremely smart people. The problem was that I believed I was ready to be the entrepreneur immediately.

Still, I accepted the job, and after a summer schedule meant to shed a wanderlust that I assume most college seniors have, I moved to Austin. I was paired with Jason Wesbecher, another Wharton undergraduate who had been working at Trilogy for about six months. (Today, Jason is the founder and chief executive of Handshakez in Austin.) Jason was the epitome of inherent intelligence, hard work and focus. He was driven to acquire customers for Trilogy, understanding that revenue was the lifeblood of a fast-growing start-up. At the time, I could not have been less impressed with that role.

I was ready to start a company. I felt it was my destiny to do so. It was what I had dreamed about since I was a child. In retrospect, I was terribly, utterly, naïve. Now, 16 years later, here are my reflections:

1. I knew nothing. Yes, it is true I studied business in college, and the college I went to is a good one (if you were to ask Donald Trump, it is without question the best). But there is a vast difference between studying business and doing business. Until I had actually done it, I knew nothing at all.

2. I didn’t know that I didn’t know anything. This is actually worse than not knowing anything. I thought that I had something to contribute. In fact, I thought that my presence at Trilogy was a real gift to the company. I was wrong.

3. I missed the opportunity to learn. Because I believed that I already knew everything, I missed the chance to learn from the incredibly smart people who did know something. Trilogy was an exceptionally good company at recruiting. It produced a Trilogy Mafia well before anyone talked about the Paypal Mafia. Former Trilogians have gone on to accomplish absolutely amazing things. And the people I had the chance to work with directly — Joe, Ajay, Jason and many others — were all truly extraordinary businessmen.

4. I thought I was entitled to something. Somehow, I arrived at Trilogy thinking that it was to their great benefit to have me as an employee. As a result, I thought I was entitled to the opportunity of doing something “strategic.” What I came to understand afterward was that many college graduates would have loved to have that job, and that it was my opportunity, but not my right, and certainly not something to take for granted.

5. I was confused about the meaning of hard work. I thought I should spend my time thinking big thoughts. I assumed that if I were in the office a lot, I must have been working hard. I didn’t know that I should have been doing what Jason was doing — the hard work of calling potential customers, learning about their problems and presenting our solutions. That was hard work and meaningful work. I didn’t realize it until after I had left.

My time at Trilogy was a missed opportunity. I realized it at the annual Trilogy Prom, where the entire company gathered at a luxurious location to celebrate the year’s success and to recognize extraordinary individual performance. Jason (deservedly) won a Trilogy Star Award based on his exceptional contribution to the company. As I watched him walk to the front of the room to accept his prize, I was of mixed emotion: proud of him but disappointed with myself. The experience proved to be a turning point.

After just over a year at the company, I decided to leave. Thankfully, I started to figure out what it took to achieve success. It was Jason’s focus and do-whatever-it-takes attitude that caused me to re-evaluate my own disposition. Once I did, I realized that I needed to start afresh. I looked for a small start-up where I could join on the ground floor. If I proved my mettle and the company grew, I might be able to take on more and more responsibility, learning essential skills to start my own company someday.

Next week, I’ll talk about my second job experience — what I did when I joined Callidus Software.

Bryan Burkhart is a founder of H.Bloom. You can follow him on Twitter.

Shortcuts: What It Takes to Make New College Graduates Employable

It’s that last part of the equation that I’m going to focus on. My heart sinks every time I read a news story or opinion piece quoting employers who charge that four-year colleges and universities are failing to provide graduates with the skills they need to become and remain employable.

Of course, in many ways, this isn’t a new story.

“A four-year liberal arts education doesn’t prepare kids for work and it never has,” said Alec R. Levenson a senior research scientist for the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California.

Mara Swan, the executive vice president of global strategy and talent at Manpower Group, agreed.

“There’s always been a gap between what colleges produce and what employers want,” she said. “But now it’s widening.” That’s because workplaces are more complex and globalized, profit margins are slimmer, companies are leaner and managers expect their workers to get up to speed much faster than in the past.

“Employers are under pressure to do more with less,” Ms. Swan said.

Unemployment rates for those with bachelor’s degrees or higher are still much better — at 3.8 percent in May — than those with only a high school diploma, which was 7.4 percent in May, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonetheless, a special report by The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace published in March found that about half of 704 employers who participated in the study said they had trouble finding recent college graduates qualified to fill positions at their company.

But, surprisingly, it wasn’t necessarily specific technical skills that were lacking.

“When it comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and problem solving,” the report said.

Jaime S. Fall, a vice president at the HR Policy Association, an organization of chief human resources managers from large employers, said these findings backed up what his organization was hearing over and over from employers.

Young employees “are very good at finding information, but not as good at putting that information into context,” Mr. Fall said. “They’re really good at technology, but not at how to take those skills and resolve specific business problems.”

This isn’t a dilemma just in this country, but around the world, Ms. Swan said. A global study conducted last year of interviews with 25,000 employers found that nine out of 10 employees believed that colleges were not fully preparing students for the workplace.

“There were the same problems,” she said. “Problems with collaboration, interpersonal skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity, flexibility and professionalism.”

But it’s easy for the issue to degenerate into finger-pointing.

“If you sat down with a committee of professors, and told them students are not coming out with the skills they need, they would say, ‘you’re smoking something,’ ” Mr. Levenson said. “The trouble is, those skills are applied in a college context, not a workplace context.”

But, he added, “you can’t create a school-based curriculum that can help someone transition to being highly productive on the job in 10 days.”

In other words, the onus shouldn’t just be on universities; employers also need to step up to the plate.

The in-depth training programs and apprenticeships of the past are unlikely to come back, so companies must become more innovative in helping young employees come up to speed, according to a report released in May by Accenture, a management consulting and outsourcing company.

“Rather than simply bemoaning the inability to find employees with the skills required for available jobs, organizations must step up with new and more comprehensive enterprise learning strategies,” Accenture stated in a summary of The Accenture 2013 College Graduate Employment Survey, which queried 1,010 students graduating from college in 2013 and 1,005 who graduated in 2011 and 2012.

The problem, it said, is that most recent college graduates expect employers to provide on-the-ground training, but most of them don’t actually receive it.

Bucks Blog: Incentives to Start a 529 College Savings Plan

EPA Students at Morehouse College’s commencement ceremonies.

College graduation season is in full swing, marking an annual rite of passage — and serving as a reminder that higher education isn’t getting any cheaper. One option available to help families put away money for college, and avoid borrowing too much, is a 529 college savings plan.

In general, 529 plans are college savings and investment accounts sponsored by state governments. Money deposited in the accounts grows tax free, as long as the funds are used for educational purposes when withdrawn. You don’t have to be a resident of a particular state to use its plan, although some states offer additional tax benefits to in-state plan participants.

Most 529s are designed as traditional savings-and-investment vehicles, but some states offer prepaid 529 plans, which allow savers to pay tuition at certain schools in advance at current rates.

To raise awareness of the savings plans, the College Savings Plans Network, a nonprofit group that represents the plans, is promoting Wednesday (that is, 5/29), as National 529 College Savings Day. More than 30 states are organizing events to promote their 529 plans, and some are offering incentives for families to create accounts.

Florida, for instance, is waiving the $50 enrollment fee for plans opened from May 20 through June 30.

Washington State is also waiving a $50 enrollment fee, for plans meeting certain conditions; the account must be established by midnight Wednesday.

And Utah is offering matching contributions of $25, for accounts opened on Wednesday with contributions of at least $25.

The College Savings Plans Network itself is offering a chance to win $529 toward a new or existing savings plan. To enter, you must “like” the network on Facebook.

The network has created an interactive map showing what various states are doing. To see what your state’s plan is offering, click on your state.

Do you take part in a 529 savings plan? If not, will your state’s promotional event entice you to start?

College Graduates Fare Well in Jobs Market, Even Through Recession

The unemployment rate for college graduates in April was a mere 3.9 percent, compared with 7.5 percent for the work force as a whole, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. Even when the jobless rate for college graduates was at its very worst in this business cycle, in November 2010, it was still just 5.1 percent. That is close to the jobless rate the rest of the work force experiences when the economy is good.

Among all segments of workers sorted by educational attainment, college graduates are the only group that has more people employed today than when the recession started.

The number of college-educated workers with jobs has risen by 9.1 percent since the beginning of the recession. Those with a high school diploma and no further education are practically a mirror image, with employment down 9 percent on net. For workers without even a high school diploma, employment levels have fallen 14.1 percent.

But just because college graduates have jobs does not mean they all have “good” jobs.

There is ample evidence that employers are hiring college-educated workers for jobs that do not actually require college-level skills — positions like receptionists, file clerks, waitresses, car rental agents and so on.

“High-skilled people can take the jobs of middle-skilled people, and middle-skilled people can take jobs of low-skilled people,” said Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. “And low-skilled people are out of luck.”

In some cases, employers are specifically requiring four-year degrees for jobs that previously did not need them, since companies realize that in a relatively poor job market college graduates will be willing to take whatever they can find.

That has left those who have spent some time in college but have not received a bachelor’s degree to scramble for what is left. Employment for them fell during the recession and is now back to exactly where it began. There were 34,992,000 workers with some college employed in December 2007, and there are 34,992,000 today.

In other words, workers with four-year degrees have gobbled up all of the net job gains. In fact, there are more employed college graduates today than employed high school graduates and high school dropouts put together.

It is worth noting, too, that even young college graduates are finding jobs, based on the most recent data on this subgroup. In 2011, the unemployment rate for people in their 20s with at least a bachelor’s degree was 5.7 percent. For those with only a high school diploma or a G.E.D., it was nearly three times as high, at 16.2 percent.

Americans have gotten the message that college pays off in the job market. College degrees are much more common today than they were in the past. In April, about 32 percent of the civilian, noninstitutional population over 25 — that is, the group of people who are not inmates of penal and mental facilities or residents of homes for the disabled or aged and who are not on active military duty — had a college degree.

Twenty years ago, the share was 22 percent. Given the changing norms for what degree of educational training is expected of working Americans, employers might assume those who do not have a four-year degree are less ambitious or less capable, regardless of their actual ability.

These forces might help explain why there is so much growth in employment among college graduates despite the fact that the bulk of the jobs created in the last few years have been low-wage and low-skilled, according to a report last August from the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy group. Today nearly one in 13 jobs is in food services, for example, a record share.

Clearly, positions in retail and food services are not the best use of the hard-earned skills of college-educated workers, who have gone to great expense to obtain their sheepskins. Student loan borrowers graduate with an average debt of $27,000, a total that is likely to grow in the future.

But nearly all of those graduates are at least finding work and income of some kind, unlike a much larger share of their less educated peers. And as the economy improves, college graduates will be better situated to find promotions to jobs that do use their more advanced skills and that pay better wages, economists say.

The median weekly earnings of college-educated, full-time workers — like those for their counterparts with less education — have dipped in recent years. In 2012, the weekly median was $1,141, compared with $1,163 in 2007, after adjusting for inflation. The premium they earn for having that college degree is still high, though.

In 2012, the typical full-time worker with a bachelor’s degree earned 79 percent more than a similar full-time worker with no more than a high school diploma. For comparison, 20 years earlier the premium was 73 percent, and 30 years earlier it was 48 percent.

And since a higher percentage of college graduates than high school graduates are employed in full-time work, these figures actually understate the increase in the total earnings premium from college completion, said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an independent research organization.

So, despite the painful upfront cost, the return on investment on a college degree remains high. An analysis from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington estimated that the benefits of a four-year college degree were equivalent to an investment that returns 15.2 percent a year, even after factoring in the earnings students forgo while in school.

“This is more than double the average return to stock market investments since 1950,” the report said, “and more than five times the returns to corporate bonds, gold, long-term government bonds, or homeownership.”

Bump in Ratings for Men’s College Basketball Final

Let’s install webcams in slaughterhouses so we can see how we get our meat.

A look back at Margaret Thatcher’s mutual admiration society with Mikhail Gorbachev in the final years of the Cold War.

Jobs Compete With College in Montana Oil Country

It is a lucrative but risky decision for any 18-year-old to make, one that could foreclose on his future if the frenzied pace of oil and gas drilling from here to North Dakota to Texas falters and work dries up. But with unemployment at more than 12 percent nationwide for young adults and college tuition soaring, students here on the snow-glazed plains of eastern Montana said they were ready to take their chances.

“I just figured, the oil field is here and I’d make the money while I could,” said Tegan Sivertson, 19, who monitors pipelines for a gas company, sometimes working 15-hour days. “I didn’t want to waste the money and go to school when I could make just as much.”

Less than a year after proms and homecoming games, teenagers like Mr. Sivertson now wake at 4 a.m. to make the three-hour trek to remote oil rigs. They fish busted machinery out of two-mile-deep hydraulic fracturing wells and repair safety devices that keep the wells from rupturing, often working alongside men old enough to be their fathers. Some live at home; others drive back on weekends to eat their mothers’ food, do loads of laundry and go to high school basketball games, still straddling the blurred border between childhood and adulthood.

Just as gold rushes and silver booms once brought opera houses and armies of prospectors to rugged corners of the West, today’s headlong race for oil and gas is reshaping staid communities in the northern Plains, bringing once untold floods of cash and job prospects, but also deep anxieties about crime, growth and a future newly vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust.

Even gas stations are enticing students away from college. Katorina Pippenger, a high school senior in the tiny town of Bainville, Mont., said she makes $24 an hour as a cashier in nearby Williston, N.D., the epicenter of the boom. Her plan is to work for a few years after she graduates this spring, save up and flee. She likes the look of Denver. “I just want to make money and get out,” she said.

The shift appears to be localized around centers of oil production like Sidney. School counselors in western Montana, far from the boom, said that few of their students were abandoning college for energy jobs. And even here, a majority of graduates are still choosing universities and community colleges.

But school officials in eastern Montana said more and more students were interested in working for at least a year after graduation and getting technical training instead of a four-year degree.

Last year, one-third of the graduating seniors at Sidney High School headed off to work instead of going to college or joining the military, a record percentage. Some found work making deliveries to oil rigs, doing construction and repairing machinery. Others decided to first seek training as welders or diesel mechanics, which pay more than entry-level jobs.

Meanwhile, enrollment at Dawson Community College in Glendive, about an hour from Sidney, has fallen to 225 students from 446 just a few years ago, as fewer local students pursue two-year degrees.

“It’s the allure of the money,” said Thom Barnhart, a guidance counselor at Sidney High.

As more families arrive from Florida and Michigan and throughout Montana, seeking a new start after bankruptcies and layoffs, schools in places like Sidney are buckling. School enrollment leapt to 863 students from 723 in three years. The district is scrambling to hire good teachers who can get by on a $32,000 yearly salary in a town where apartments can rent for $1,500 a month. Freshmen are sharing lockers, and the district reopened a school that had been shuttered for years.

But every year, hundreds of those new students depart within a few weeks, tugged along by parents heading off to another job in another town.

“It’s a revolving door,” said Daniel Farr, the district’s superintendent.

At the end of a gravel highway in northeastern Montana, graduating seniors in Bainville are asking similar questions about their future. Should they get an education and pursue their interests? Or should they stick close to home and surf a wave of cash and jobs that will only grow as companies begin to build a new industrial rail terminal and worker camps, forever transforming this quiet farm town where residents say the population has doubled since the 2010 census found 300.

Judge dismisses lawsuit over college donation

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that attempted to recoup a $2 million donation to the College of St. Benedict made by a businessman convicted of fraud.

Singer Jeremih Beats Down Dorion From Bet College Hill

A few days ago, a BRUTAL fight broke out between Dorion and R&B singer Jeremih at the LA hot spot Supperclub.

According to the streets, Dorion had some kind of problem with Jeremih and asked him to CATCH A FADE outside. Bad move. Jeremih reportedly popped him in the face and then began stomping him out. And we’re told that once Dorion was on the ground . . . Jeremih’s people got in and gave Dorion some FOOT ACTION too.

According to our snitch, Dorion started BEGGING FOR HIS LIFE . . . and eventually Jeremih and his peep got tried and left him on the side of the road.

The below pics are the result of the BRUTAL BEATING that Dorion suffered. It’s not clear if Dorion plans on taking any LEGAL ACTION against Jeremih.

Bucks Blog: Morningstar's Latest Ratings of College Saving Plans

Morningstar Inc. has updated its rankings of the country’s largest 529 college savings plans, giving its top rating to plans offered by four states: Alaska, Maryland, Nevada and Utah.

Morningstar, a provider of investment research, is best known for its rating of mutual funds. But it also tracks 529 plans, which are state-sponsored plans named for the tax code that created them. Money in the plans grows tax free, and  stays that way as long as it’s used for educational expenses when you withdraw it. Many states also give tax breaks for money saved in the plans. (Families aren’t restricted to investing in the plan in the state where they live.)

Morningstar rated 64 plans representing 95 percent of assets held in the plans. Factors that it said it used in the rankings included the plan’s strategy and investment process; the plan’s risk-adjusted performance; the skill of the plan’s manager; the practices of the plans administrator and parent firm; and the fees involved in managing the plans.

Over the last year, many plans have showed a trend toward better-quality investments and lower fees, said Laura Pavlenko Lutton, who oversees Morningstar’s 529 Ratings.

Twenty-seven of the plans were given medal rankings (gold, silver and bronze) and are “likely to outperform their peers, based on Morningstar’s analysis. But just four plans were given a “gold” rating, meaning they were “highly regarded” by Morningstar analysts. “Over all, these plans stand out as best of breed for their ability to help college savers meet their goals,” the company explained in a statement.

The gold star plans went to these plans:
• Alaska’s T. Rowe Price College Savings Plan, managed by T. Rowe Price;
• Maryland College Investment Plan, managed by T. Rowe Price;
• Nevada’s The Vanguard 529 Savings Plan, managed by Upromise Investments; and
• Utah Educational Savings Plan, managed by the agency of the same name.

Four more plans were rated silver, and 19 were rated bronze.

A “neutral” rating means the analysts don’t think the plans are likely to deliver “standout” returns, but also that they’re unlikely to significantly under-perform. Most plans — 33 of them — fell into this category.

And these four plans were rated negative because of poor-quality investments or high fees:

• Kansas’ Schwab 529 College Savings Plan, managed by American Century Investment Management;
• Minnesota’s College Savings Plan, managed by TIAA Tuition Financing;
• Rhode Island’s CollegeBoundfund (Advisor-sold), managed by AllianceBernstein; and
• Rhode Island’s CollegeBoundfund (Direct-sold), managed by AllianceBernstein.

More details on the plans and their rankings are available on Morningstar.com’s 529 plan Web site, but a subscription is required.

Are you surprised by your 529 plan’s Morningstar rating? What has been your experience with your 529 plan?

Police Brutality - LAPD Officer Caught Beating College Student

The police brutality must stop. This college student deserves proper justice. This LAPD officer needs to get his badge stripped and thrown off the force.