Campus Grotto posted a list of the top 100 most expensive colleges/universities in the U.S. based on the total cost for the 2009-2010 school year. Total Cost = Tuition + Room and Board.

The three MIT students are doing real remote sensing, but in the cheapest way. No need to buy expensive satellite images to have photos of the earth from the upper atmosphere or near-space. You can do it yourself for under $150.

I visited the students’ Project Icarus website and they said they will be posting a step-by-step illustrated guide on how they did their $150 launch. The guide will be free of charge.

Here is my column for this week’s Collegian issue.

Studying overseas will open a new world outside the conventional quarters; a sphere from a completely new dimension will spring forth. The most austere of affairs will take on a new meaning when you are in a distant land. As you discover new things by living on your own and advance your intellectual capacities, you will also be so far away from your loved ones – families and friends would be missed constantly.

I was browsing for some graduate study links online and found an interesting post from The Chronicle about the declining number of American Ph.D. degree holders. What is the trend? The U.S. is luring foreigners into taking graduate studies. You most likely notice it in action with all the foreign students eagerly wanting to get their graduate degrees in SDSU. But why the decline? Why would a young American hate science and brush aside the big opportunity of having a Ph.D. degree?

The answer is simple: it does not pay! Here are some statistics between 1993 and 2001 as gathered by E. Rubenstein, a financial analyst, economics journalist and consultant:

The efforts of the Department of Education in the Philippines are nothing but little in comparison to the major bottlenecks facing the nation’s education system today.

I share the same thoughts with those who desire that the education in my country be given much bigger priority with regards to government attention and annual budget. You would agree with me that everyone has the right to quality education. It is the sure key to breaking the cycle of poverty and providing every youth better opportunities and venues to lead better lives. The quality of life for the future Filipino generations depends on the augmentation of the knowledge and skills through good education.

Whenever you hear a non-native English speaker, a Filipino specifically, uttering broken “carabao” English, or a version you are not used to hearing, please reserve your criticism. Entertain, instead, the notion that the English language might be evolving, that nobody owns the language any longer. To a certain extent, it is already shared across continents and cultures. Just as there are American English (read: the ever prestigious), British English, Canadian English, Australian English and Indian English, there is also Philippine English. In this day of unimaginable innovation, English is no longer a singular term. Numerous Englishes exist around the world!

“You are like constipation, you take my breath away.” Here are two more: “My blockmates and I took on different roles as Supreme Court Justices.” “I stayed in some barong-barong in town.” These are sample lines to show that we, Filipinos, are fond of coining, compounding and innovating words to make it our own. The use of mate is basically abused. We can connect it to any existing noun to create new words with new meanings. So what if “every now and then” means “often” to majority of our locals when in standard American English it means “occasionally”?

In a third-world country where people breed like rabbits causing the population to grow to tens of thousands each year, anyone who knows the facts and figures must worry about the future state of the Philippines.

The Department of Education attempted, at the start of classes last year, to bring forward to the whole country the program on “sex education”. Such program was seen as a positive step by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. It was supposedly be integrated to the general curriculum, beginning in the 5th grade, via subjects like Health, Filipino, Science, and Livelihood education. This way, schools could help bottle up the issue of overpopulation and educate students on the dangers of pre-marital sex, including “unwanted pregnancies”. However, everything went down the drain.