Sonali Kohli

For everyone who says looking for a job is just like dating, well, app developers think so, too.

It’s already 2015 in Australia, and revelers can toast the new year without spending very much money at all—less than the cost of water, in fact.

The US Department of Education ‘s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has concluded its four-year investigation into Harvard Law School, and found that the school violated Title IX, a part of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits schools receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of gender—including how they address students’ sexual assault complaints.

The most pirated movie of the year in the US wasn’t about independent-minded cartoon princesses, or about an attempt to kill the dictator of North Korea. No, the movie that Americans chose to illegally download the most was, appropriately, a film about debauchery and breaking the law and reveling in it—that film was the Wolf of Wall Street.

Facebook is currently awash with year-end collages, compilations of users’ most popular and engaging photos, packaged under the tagline, “It’s been a great year! Thanks for being a part of it.” (These are the defaults—the text and photos can be changed.) If you look at a friend’s “Year in Review,” or just log on, you may find Facebook has generated one for these for you—ready-made and hovering in your feed until you share it.

The Great Recession might be over (in the US, at least) but it has left behind widened racial inequality in unemployment and wealth.

Santa Claus is coming to town, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) is on his tail.

There’s nothing wrong with kids watching television. At least that’s what Michael Petrilli, president of the education policy think-tank The Fordham Institute, believes. A little screen time can even be beneficial if done right, he says.

Feeling guilty about all the plastic you’ve been throwing out, and what it’s doing to the environment? Well it might soon be possible to eat that guilt away—or at least, eat some plastic.

After 13 years of post-9/11 airport security—the rituals of removing shoes and belts, unpacking electronics, putting tiny bottles of liquid in clear plastic bags—most travelers are still frustrated with it. Over 90% think queuing for more than 10 minutes at security is unacceptable (pdf, page 23). The American entity tasked with keeping travelers safe, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), is cutting back pre-flight security for the young, the old, and travelers willing to pay $85 and undergo a background check. More than 740,000 travelers are now enrolled in the TSA’s “Precheck” program, and the agency claims that over the Thanksgiving holiday, “99.6 percent of passengers waited in a line for less than 20 minutes.”

A group of Chinese medical workers are in trouble this week, after photos they took during surgery were posted online, garnering widespread attention.

Ebooks, tablets and computer-based learning might be pervading elementary and middle schools throughout the US, but college students are still old-school. A Student Monitor survey of about 1,200 students in 100 American colleges in October found that for almost every type of schoolwork, students prefer to use a book rather than a computer.

Instagram may have bruised plenty of egos this week, when the photo-driven social network took action to remove inactive and fake accounts, in the process diminishing many people’s follower counts.

Sony’s cancellation of The Interview may be the most extreme reaction to a film that does away with a world leader, but it’s not the first time Hollywood has staged a fictional killing of a world leader the US doesn’t particularly like.

About three months ago, a project management director at a large 3D design and printing company took a dog into foster care. His name was Derby, and he was born with deformed front legs. Lucky for Derby, Tara Anderson decided to use her job to help him.

You know you’re an industry in distress when your customer base is the same size as it was nearly three decades ago. Especially when, judging by capacity, your industry has grown.

So you think you’ve got it bad?

In the 2011-12 school year, 4.8 million undergraduate college students in the US had dependent children, according to a report from The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, based on US Department of Education data.

If love can’t conquer all, at least now there’s hope that it conquers fear.

A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine detailed a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia. It was a classic tale of sexual assault at American campuses: hard-partying, binge-drinking fraternity members, a stigmatized female victim, and an indifferent university administration.

Teens in Shanghai spend 14 hours a week on homework, while students in Finland spend only three. And although there are some educational theorists who argue for reducing or abolishing homework, more homework seems to be helping students with test scores.

Like Facebook before it, Google+ is  offering users more options for identifying their gender, moving social network profiles well beyond the basic male-or-female choices of years past.

You’re not alone if you cringe at the sound of the Marimba iPhone ring tone, the default for Apple’s alarm clock. I’ve hated it for about as long as I’ve had my phone, which would probably apply to any repetitive ring tone. But there’s a novel, if bizarre, way to get around the bone-chilling monotony of the ring-tone alarm: a call from a stranger.

Eva Moskowitz is the CEO and founder of Success Academy Charter Schools, responsible for about 9,000 students in 32 charter schools around New York City. Moskowitz sat down for an interview with the American Enterprise Institute this week, and talked about how to fit everything she deems important for students—coding, recess, science five days a week—into the school day. One recent solution, Moskowitz said, was to cut foreign languages.