Justine Marie Sherry

This brilliant hemispherical cake depicting the Earth's surface and approximating its core was baked by Rhiannon of Baking Adventures in Melbourne, Australia. She baked a cake inside a cake, formed a crust of chocolate buttercream, and then applied the seas, continents and islands with marshmallow fondant.

When I started this cake I was determined for pin-point accuracy. I was going to make every country and every island so damn accurate a pilot could use it as their navigation system. But by the time I got to Europe, it was more like, "Yeah, that's the general shape." By the time I got to the Americas I was wondering if that continent was even necessary. I missed a whole heap of islands above Australia and settled instead for the main ones. Cutting out the countries wasn't that cake walk I'd imagined it to be.

I finally got to a finished look for the cake and let my sister take it off my hands. She brought me back a slice so I could share a picture of the inside with you all. The red layer is orange Madeira sponge, the yellow is lemon Madeira sponge and the white cake was a vanilla buttercake.

Commission: Earth Structural Layer Cake (via Geekologie)

It's tough to be a kid. You may not have a job to commute to or bills to pay, but you do have to navigate a world that is, in every way, too big for you -- a world that is, understandably but also frustratingly, optimized for adults.

The video above is a nice (and ADORABLE) reminder of that: the kid-perspectived footage that resulted when a 2-year old tried on his dad's Google Glass. And so is the video below: the viral hit from 2012 that showed a hide-and-seek game from a kid's perspective (via the MacGyvered version of Glass, the helmet-cam).

Google Glass, if it catches on, promises to make these types of POV videos more common -- and, in the process, to make it an ordinary thing to show other people what the world looks like to you, and for you. Glass video takes the idiosyncratic perspective -- the vision of the world that is uniquely yours -- and turns it into a media product that can be consumed by an old surfer of the Internet. It shows us what the world looks like to other people ... with bonus points when those people happen to be adorably precocious toddlers.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A big boy.”

PROBLEM: Under Obamacare, major fast food chains will be required to print calorie counts on menus. The idea presumes that we still don't really know what we're getting into with fast food. Don't we?

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• Athletes Perform Better Under Pressure When They Make a Fist With Their Left Hand
• Meditation Improves Attention, Memory
• Beer's Taste Alone Gets People a Little High

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METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Dr. Jason Block at Harvard surveyed people at fast food restaurants across New England. They talked with 1877 adults, 1178 adolescents, and 330 children at places like McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, KFC, and Subway, among others. They asked customers to save their receipts, then estimate how many calories were in their meals. Most of the customers ended up being non-white, 65 percent of the adults and 57 percent of the school-age children were obese, and 40 percent reported eating at that same restaurant chain at least once per week.

RESULTS: The average meal was 836 calories for adults, 756 for adolescents, and 733 for kids. Two-thirds of people underestimated that. One quarter underestimated it by at least 500 calories. 

The underestimation in adults averaged 175 calories and got larger as the number of calories in the meal increased. Subway was the most insidious, with adolescent estimates averaging around 500 calories on the low side. Adults and adolescents eating at Subway estimated 20 and 25 percent lower than those at McDonald's, respectively. Here's how the underestimation looked between restaurants:

Calories estimated minus actual calories [BMJ]

IMPLICATIONS: Most people eating at these restaurants were obese, and most underestimated how many calories they were actually taking in. So, maybe calorie-counts on menus are a good thing. The researchers also discuss Subway's branding as a sort of "health halo" of which to be wary.

Of course, calorie count isn't the only measure of foods' healthfulness -- a 230-calorie veggie sub is better than 230 calories worth of jelly donut -- it's just the only measure in this study.

A footnote: 41 people were excluded from the study as outliers because their meals exceeded 4000 calories.

In 1940, an 18-year-old apprentice mechanic named Marcel Ravidat was walking with three friends and a dog named Robot in the woods near Montignac, France. Ravidat happened upon a hole that happened to lead, Alice in Wonderland-like, to an underground cave. And that cave, it happened, was the home of some 600 paintings and 1,500 engravings, the work of humans who lived some 17,000 years ago. The caves' walls were the craggy canvases for humanity's oldest known experiments with art.

We may have another Lascaux on our hands. Only this one is set in Mexico. Archaeologists just announced that they've uncovered nearly 5,000 cave paintings at 11 different sites in the Sierra de San Carlos, a mountain range in the state of Tamaulipas. The paintings, which are striking in their vividness, are thought to be the work of hunter-gatherers who traveled the area in their wanderings. The artwork has not yet been dated, but the Tamaulipas region overall, archaeologists believe, was occupied by nomadic tribes as early as 6000 BC -- so there's a chance the paintings could be some 8,000 years old.

The paintings depict humans, as well as animals (deer and lizards and, delightfully, centipedes).  They depict weapons used in the hunt. They depict seemingly abstract scenes. They depict skyscapes. They hint at their painters' concepts of religion and astronomy. And they do all this in bright shades of red and yellow and black and white -- the products of organic dyes and minerals that have proven remarkably long-lasting. "The paintings," io9's George Dvorsky put it, "are offering an unprecedented glimpse into [Mexico's] pre-Hispanic culture and life, including depictions of hunting, fishing, and gathering."

Indeed. One cave alone contains some 1,550 different scenes.

The paintings, archaeologists say, were likely produced by at least three distinct groups of hunter-gatherers in the region. Which is a remarkable estimation on its own, since, prior to their discovery, archaeologists didn't believe that pre-Hispanic people would have lived in the mountainous area. "Before it was said that there was nothing," archaeologist Gustavo Ramírez, of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, said of the region, "when in fact it was inhabited by one or more cultures."

The paintings should offer valuable insight into those cultures -- in part because they seem to be the only evidence that the cultures have left behind. "We have not found any ancient objects linked to the context," Ramírez explained: the pottery and bones and other objects that form the detritus of civilization are, in this case, missing. "And because the paintings are on ravine walls and in the rainy season the sediments are washed away, all we have is gravel."

Gravel, that is, and awesome, vaguely impressionistic cave paintings. And also, just as importantly, we have the dyes and minerals used to make the paint itself. Now that the discovery of the caves has been announced, the archaeologists will perform a chemical analysis to determine the exact components of the colors that cling to the rocks. And from there, they hope, they'll be able to figure out just how long ago it was that some ancient human, roaming the mountains of Mexico, took sight of a centipede and decided to turn it into art.

Lost in the crushing disappointment shuffle of last night's match was the historical relevance. The first openly gay player to play professional sports in North America is Robbie Rogers, and hopefully he will be remembered as a sort of Jackie Robinson equivalent. Even in today's world, it is so tough to be the one symbolizing change (I should know; I was the first Afro-panda blogger) and things might not always be as rosy as today for Rogers and those who follow in his footsteps. But the reported 24,000 in attendance witnessed a great moment. And on top of all that, Rogers will probably make the Galaxy better to boot.

(allow me to be petty for one more minute; there were NOT 24,000 in attendance. That is a lie.)

Now that the 20th team has been picked, speculation has immediately jumped to number 21 and beyond. Here are 10 municipalities pushing and shoving (or just waiting in many cases) to be part of the league. Doubtful that they'll be paying the 100 million dollar expansion fee NY2 offered up. Phoenix, San Diego, St. Louis, and Miami are my favorite options.

It is championship season in other parts of the soccer world. The Champions League Final went to Bayern Munich on a late winner. Robin van Persie is rubbing in his team's Premiership victory with a certain CNN anchor. You may have seen part of the Mexican final Sunday, where Club America came back from two goals down 89 minutes in to win it all. And Barcelona, not content with being perhaps the best club in the world, is adding some guy called Neymar.

Some people deal with adverse situations better than others. Jay Heaps is one of those people. When a phone went off during his press conference, he picked it up and talked to the reporter's mom.

In a really fantastic post at Shakesville, Time Machine argues that rape jokes are problematic, even when uttered by people who would never assault anyone, because they signal to actual rapists that their behavior is acceptable and normal.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?  Rapists do.

So, when someone drops a rape joke and people laugh, the small percent of men who are rapists think that they’re surrounded by like-minded friends.  Speaking to the joke-teller:

That rapists who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

What’s interesting about this observation is that it reminds us that we need to be more aware of the impact of our words not on victims (as the usual argument against the rape joke goes), but on perpetrators.  This is a much-needed re-framing of the problem that we call, passively, “violence against women,” but should really be called “men’s violence against women and men.”  While both men and women are victims, the vast majority of interpersonal violence is committed by men.

The need for a shift in frame — from the survivor to the perpetrator — is also a theme of this TedTalk by anti-violence educator Jackson Katz. He uses another really interesting way of showing the linguistic erasure of men in this discussion (at 4:08).

He also dismisses “sensitivity training” because it, too, centers the survivor of the violence instead of drawing our attention to the perpetrator (sensitivity to who?).  Instead, Katz argues, men need to step up and be leaders in the fight against men’s violence against women and men.  Because violence is not a “women’s issue,” it’s a men’s issue.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

In 2006, Amherst College made a decision that administrators at some other schools considered radical. The critics said it would dent the value of the school's degree, or force it to "lower its standards." The school's then-president pushed back by saying that Amherst needed to reach a broader group of students.

What was the decision? Today's readers might be forgiven for guessing it must have had to do with online courses, also known as MOOCs. But Amherst wasn't debating online courses. (That would have been quite early for the online course debate. In fact, this April the Amherst faculty voted down a proposal to join the nonprofit MOOC coordinator EdX.) Rather, in 2006, Amherst decided to reserve the majority of its transfer slots for students coming from community college. In some ways, the decision represented potentially a more radical commitment to underprivileged students than online courses -- as it came at an actual cost to the school, while online courses are highly profitable.

Seven years later, Amherst president emeritus Anthony Marx argues claims the program has worked brilliantly, just as his administration had expected. Broadening its search for transfers to the roughly one million students who graduate from community college every year, "we could find amazing jewels that no one else is looking for," he told an audience at a panel hosted by The Century Foundation on Thursday.

If other top-tier schools reached out to such students the way Amherst does, maybe more students would be able to transfer. Instead, Marx said, many have restrictive transfer policies that heavily weight factors like SAT scores. Coupled with a lack of funding for community colleges, the consequences of the transfer policies have been dire. The report The Century Foundation released this week found that while 81.4 percent of students enter community college plan to transfer and complete a four-year degree, just 11.6 percent are able to do so within six years.

And so, because community colleges overwhelmingly serve low-income people and minorities, the higher education system remains two-tiered -- an arrangement those invited to the think tank to discuss the report called "separate but equal." "You basically cannot join the middle class without a postsecondary credential at this point," said Eduardo Padrón, the president of Miami-Dade College, America's largest community college.

The students who enter his school, like those at all community colleges, face the challenge of chronic underfunding. A lot of the U.S.'s money for higher education flows to elite research universities, not the community colleges and state schools that do the day-to-day work of educating large numbers of Americans. (TCF's report notes that 44 percent of Americans who are in college attend a community college.) If you add up the value of the direct and indirect help it receives, including tax breaks, Princeton gets about $54,000 a year per student in federal subsidies. The College of New Jersey, a community college 12 miles away, receives a total of about $1,600 a year per student in federal and state subsidies.

Students like Padrón's then find themselves deflected by polities at some four-year schools, as Marx noted. Public schools tend to have broader transfer programs, but they struggle to meet the demand from community college students on their own.

The overriding message of the TCF report -- that America needs to buttress its existing brick-and-mortar education system, not tear it down and build a more efficient alternative -- was a little jarring coming at a moment when every elementary-school superintendent in America seems to be tossing around words like "disruption." But listening to Padrón talk about the challenges students at Miami-Dade face, it became clearer why some teachers find the vogue for online education reckless. The students at Miami-Dade need a lot of support -- not just academic support, but personal support. Community colleges "serve a population that the university doesn't even want to deal with," Padrón said, among them older students and mothers who are raising kids.

Yet the community college system as it's currently funded can't really provide the services these students need. Padrón noted that despite repeat attempts to restructure for the sake of efficiency, Miami-Dade's counselors are struggling with a burden of about 2,000 students per advisor.

At least as Padrón and Marx see it, the only solution will come from reforms to the existing higher-education system. But that doesn't just mean better funding for community schools like Padrón's. It also means cultural changes for more four-year schools like Marx's.

This is pretty simple but really seems to confound some folks.

If you wish to enter a subway car, an elevator, a bus, an alcove - whatever small but key space - let those who wish to leave that same space do it first.

You see, human beings have mass, and take up space in the universe. Therefore, this elevator/subway/whatever will be better able to hold you once there are less humans in it.

This step brought to you by my fellow MAX riders. It won’t leave without you! Just wait seven goddamn seconds!

The funny thing about national holidays in the United States is that they're not really national holidays. Unlike the rest of the developed world, we don't guarantee every worker paid time off. Not for summer vacations. Not for Christmas. Not for Memorial Day. So while most of us will be kicking back with beer and overcooked burgers this long weekend, many will still be on the clock because they need the check. 

As the Center for Economics and Policy Research reminds us, European workers are entitled to at least 20 days off, not counting holidays. Even Japan guarantees ten. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Sweden, employers are even required to pay their employees a vacation bonus to help cover the cost of travel expenses. 

Even if the vast majority of full-time employees do ultimately get time off here, only 40 percent of part-time workers get paid vacation, and only 35 percent get paid holidays. This might seem like common sense -- why should a part-timer be given extra days off? -- unless you remember that many low-wage employers, especially in retail, cut worker hours down just below the full-time mark in order to avoid paying out benefits. In the end, among the bottom 25 percent of all earners, both full-time and part-time, just about half get paid holidays or vacation. Among the top 25 percent of earners, about 90 percent do. Vacation inequality, it turns out, is an actual problem. 

Don't you just love American exceptionalism?

“Everyone should find God’s voice, and follow it.”

“How do you tell the difference between God’s voice and your own?”

“Practice meditating everyday. You’ll realize that there’s a silence underlying everything. That’s where God lies.”

“Seems like it’d be tough to listen to a silent voice.”

“That’s why you need to practice meditating.”

Around 1660, a French mathematician and theologian named Blaise Pascal set out to explain logically why one should believe in God. Whereas previous thinkers had tried to prove God's existence, Pascal chose a different path. His argument, now known as Pascal's wager, stated that if you believed in God, and there was no God, you lost nothing. But if you did not believe in God, and there was a God, you lost everything. So why not believe in God?

The Pope is saying that by doing good, whoever we are, we draw close to each other-- and that we must draw close to each other.

Did Pope Francis just lay out a wager of his own? At mass on the 22nd, he said:

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: we will meet one another there."

Some have reacted to this as a doctrine articulating the salvation of atheists. Having read all reported versions of Francis' homily, in both English and Italian, I do not find an explicit statement that an atheist who does that which is good, il bene in Italian, will be saved. However, Francis does emphasize the universality of Christ's redemptive power, and it is through that redemptive power that salvation becomes possible. He is clearly open to the idea that Christ may well redeem even those who are non-believers. More fully articulated, that would open up a new wager, in which whether or not one believed, one's actions in the world would determine one's access to paradise. Even the hint of such an idea from man whose spiritual power stems from being the heir to St. Peter, holder of the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, is striking. Still, that God might save those who neither believe nor participate in the sacraments is not a new idea. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one finds the statement, "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments." If God wants to save someone, they will be saved.

Perhaps the focus on atheism, as breathtaking has this issue has proven to be for the media and blogosphere, misses the more powerful concept at the core of Francis' homily: the culture of encounter. In the documents from the Second Vatican Council, as well as much older texts, one finds numerous explicit statements about our shared humanity, universal rights, and the necessity to find common ground. This idea of encounter lays out a pathway for us to locate and recognize those commonalities.

Last week, Cardinal Sean O'Malley refused to attend the graduation of Boston College because they were honoring the Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny, who is supporting an abortion bill in his home country. I suggested, in another essay for The Atlantic¸ that rather than turn his back on Kenny, the Cardinal might instead seek to create opportunities for dialogue. Dialogue does not mean we will always agree, but that there is the potential to focus on that which unites rather than that which divides. In his homily, Pope Francis is laying out his roadmap for just how this might happen. The question now is whether this was just one of many thoughts expressed in a daily homily, or whether encounter will emerge as a new idea around which to shape the church in our complex, pluralistic, 21st-century world.

And that's been a startling pattern over the first few months of Francis' pontificate. He keeps making statements that make sense, that seem to shift the Church in new directions, and that open the door for more change. Supporters of these new directions worry that the conservative forces of the Curia, the rigid hierarchal minds behind the worst decisions of the last decades, will undermine Francis, who is often perceived as very much alone. But he was elected in what amounts to a landslide. The Cardinals assembled from around the world and chose, quickly, to change the Vatican's direction. Francis may prove a radical, but he's not a rebel: the establishment chose to pursue encounter over cloister. The cardinals and their Pope have made a wager. It will be a long time before we know if it pays off.

Miss Korea 1960, left, and 2012, right. (AP)

When 17-year-old Hailey Kim looks in the mirror, she doesn't see a pretty person. Her face is too round, she thinks; her lips too thin, her nose not quite right. Her reflection fuels a cosmetic surgery wish list -- bigger lips, higher cheeks, and a more delicate chin. Unhappiness with appearance is de rigueur for most teenagers, but for Korean American ones, perhaps far more than those of any ethnic group in America, this is being addressed with a scalpel.

California-born Kim has already undergone two procedures: a nose job and double eyelid surgery. These have given her eyes a Western crease and made her nose small and high. Kim had full support from her family for these operations. And why shouldn't she? Her mother and aunts have all had similar operations too. Kim hopes to study psychology when she goes to college, but she's deferring for a year so she can work and save money for more surgery.

"My cousin had her nose and eyes done, my mom had her eyes done, and my aunts had noses and eyes done, all in Korea," she says. "I found out about this when I was in elementary school."

None of these operations, however, are as radical as what she wants to do next.

One in five South Korean women has had some form of cosmetic surgery, compared to around one in 20 in the United States.

Kim recently read about a relatively new cosmetic procedure that is colloquially known as V-line surgery. It involves breaking and shaving the jawline to create a V-shaped face. This surgery is popular amongst young Korean pop stars, who have their faces reshaped to give them elfin, anime-like appearances. The V-line shape gives the face a certain fragility, and its childlike appeal has won Kim over.

"I hope to achieve a slimmer, oval face from the procedure," Kim says. "I just want to better myself. My wants may be drastic, but I'm not trying to look exactly like someone else."

Dr. David A. Koslovsky, a maxillofacial surgeon at Columbia College of Dental Medicine. performs the V-line operation regularly, though he has a different name for it. "I perform corrective jaw surgery," he says. "This is first and foremost a functional procedure for when teeth are misaligned. It does have an aesthetic benefit, but that's not why we do it. It's a complex, risky procedure. You could have permanent numbness, and there have been cases where people have died from this operation."

It's also extremely painful. The jaws are wired together for six weeks, and it can take six months for the swelling to disappear. But the danger and the physical pain -- and the possible confusion of seeing a totally different person in the mirror -- is seen as a small price to pay by many Korean American women. To understand why, you have to go to South Korea.

Remarkably, one in five South Korean women has had some form of cosmetic surgery, compared to around one in 20 in the U.S., according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. A powerful Korean consumer culture over the past two or three decades has made Korean women equate beauty with professional and economic success. Feminist criticisms of body objectification are barely heard, and the racial argument that this surgery is a form of "trying to look white" has faded -- due to the rise of Korean pop music culture. K-pop has created a completely new beauty aesthetic that nods to Caucasian features but doesn't replicate them.

K-pop culture -- think "Gangnam Style" -- and its look have spread across East Asia and into the Asian community in the United States. This popularity -- and the value placed on the surgery behind the stars -- has meant that South Korea is now synonymous with medical tourism, and has established itself as an epicenter for all sorts of cosmetic surgery.

K-pop group Girls' Generation performing in Seoul (Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters)

Miss Korea 1960 looks nothing like the winner of Miss Korea 2012. Miss 1960's face is full, her nose is flat, and her eyes are small. Beauty in the 1960s had a very natural slant to it. Women were expected to enhance rather than alter their physical beings. This is in direct contrast to the identikit images of contestants in pageants over the last decade, where contestant pageant teams often feature a consulting surgeon on staff.

"Older standards of beauty were big body, wide hips, and good to make baby," says Bae Seonghee, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Gumi, South Korea. "Eyes there were slanty and sleepy." Seonghee giggles and hides behind her long bangs. She's elbowed by her classmate Kang NaYeon on her left, and she shrugs and looks up again. "Pretty is a small head, big eyes, and high nose and forehead," she says earnestly. Seonghee is practicing English as part of her school curriculum, and she motions to different parts of her face as she speaks.

Gumi is a small rural town, 115 miles south of Seoul, and the girls at Gumi High School are less sophisticated than their city counterparts. Out of the seven girls I spoke with, only one had even been to the capital. But cosmetic surgery isn't an urban, cosmopolitan phenomenon in South Korea. It's becoming a nationwide obsession.

For the girls of Gumi, it's driven by videos from the WonderGirls and Girls Generation, girl groups that launched with 17 to 20-year-old singers. They all have small faces, large eyes, and tiny button noses. Chins are pointed, cheeks are wide, and their faces glow artificially, imbuing them with the anime quality.

A big industry ensures they stay that way. Everything, from their vocals to their face shape, is manufactured by their management companies. Cosmetic surgery is a large part of creating the K-pop image. Many of the K-pop idols even act as spokespeople for surgical companies. In a video on the Cinderella Clinic website, singer G.Na says, "This clinic is where Dr. Jong Phil is. As you are aware he gives a really kind consultation. Come and become more beautiful." The stars don't actually admit to actually having had the surgery, but it is so rampant among them that numerous websites exist dedicated to analyzing who got what where.

"I like Girls Generation," said Korean schoolgirl Kim RyeoGyeong. "They have double eyelid and a small face; a round forehead -- from an implant. They say they didn't do any surgery, but I know they did."

As James Turnbull, a writer and lecturer in Korea on feminism and pop culture, noted, "The idea here is that you like the appearance of the 'idols' and you should try and look like them."

"K-pop is a package that's not confined to the music," he said.

Before the K-pop boom, Korean youth already were being brought up on a diet of surgery, so the idea of an operation to look like their favorite starlet is socially acceptable. Children are considered an embodiment and reflection of their parents' status, and to this end they are shaped and molded -- through intense schooling, but also through surgery to be the best they can be. Notions of beauty and productivity are married together.

The surgery quickly caught on, and its first clientele were Korean prostitutes, who were trying to appeal to American soldiers.

16-year-old Chae Jeongwon, a schoolgirl at Gumi High School, has grown up with the understanding that she'll have double eyelid surgery one day. "It's a present for senior schoolgirls," she wrote, in an essay about Korean surgery. "They say, Mommy, if you get my eyes or nose, my scores are better than before. Please!"

The stress on aesthetics-by-knife is part of a strange cultural mix of the modern and the ancient in South Korea today. Families embrace traditional routines such as dining and living together, but equally encourage their children to work 18 hour days at school. The country is the most wired in the world, with the highest rate of smartphone usage -- 67 percent -- and 95 percent of Korean homes having internet access. Technology pervades every part of life, from keyless doors -- you type in a passcode -- to karaoke studios on trains. In this setting, women need to juggle the cultural expectations of being productive, engaged citizens, with the expectations of femininity and beauty that is also demanded from them.

"There are strict rules about women's appearance in the workplace," Turnbull said. "Standards are far harsher than Western countries."

Job applicants, for example, are commonly required to submit a headshot with their resume. Beauty is prized almost everywhere in the world, but in South Korea its value is upfront and open. South Korean employers scrutinize the looks of the applicants -- in search for physical attractiveness -- in addition to their professional qualifications.

Sharon Hejiin Lee, an assistant professor in the department of social and cultural analysis at New York University, explains that, right or wrong, Korean women are themselves propagating these expectations.

"There's a real problem when you make generalizations about a whole country full of women, that they're all culturally duped," Hejiin Lee said in an interview. "There are certain economic situations happening in Korea and America that might impel different choices. We -- Americans -- might not see plastic surgery on the same level here that we see in Korea. But we do see people looking to the consumer market for help in their personal lives. Weigh that through an economic framework, and it's what you're seeing in Korea today."

"In Korea, for a woman to be capable, it's not enough just to have a certain skill set " she said. "You have to be beautiful as well. After the Korean economic crisis in 1997, competition for jobs led to the surgery boom; people trying to get a leg up in the job market any way they can."

In Gumi, Kang NaYeon is getting eyelid surgery as a present from her parents when she finishes her school exams. "Companies don't like to hire people who have had eye and nose surgery," she said. "There's a small backlash against it now, but they still only hire pretty people. Because of this, parents let children have surgery even younger so it looks more natural as they mature." Kang NaYeon said she is a "little scared" about having surgery. "They use a knife or scissors. A cut here and here and then stitches," she gestures.

None of this was so when the American plastic surgeon Dr. Ralph Millard arrived in South Korea in 1954. Korea was a Japanese colony during the first half of the twentieth century, and then was virtually leveled during the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. Millard was chief plastic surgeon for the United States Marine Corps. Part of his role was to help treat Korean accident and burn victims. However, Millard decided to "help" in a different way than planned. He performed what Korean academic journals say was the first recorded double eyelid operation in South Korea.

Millard's reasoning was that creating a more Western look would help Asians assimilate better into an emerging international economy. "The Asian eyelid produces a passive expression which seems to epitomize the stoical and unemotional manner of the Oriental," he wrote later in The American Journal of Ophthalmology.

The surgery quickly caught on, and its first clientele were Korean prostitutes, who were trying to appeal to American soldiers. Surgery for beautification purposes worked its way into mainstream culture. It became commonplace for Korean women to have eyelid operations to give themselves the Western crease, or "double eyelid."

A patient is prepared for nose lifting and double eyelid surgery. [Nir Elias/Reuters]

The first cosmetic surgery clinic opened in Korea in 1961, and year on year, the numbers of women undergoing cosmetic operations doubled and then tripled. Double eyelids are still today the most popular procedure. Asian rhinoplasty -- a nose job -- is second. It extends and shapes the nose, to make the Asian profile "less flat." The two operations are so common that they are not called surgery, but a "procedure."

These two procedures have led to questions of whether Korean women were trying to look Western. "Often times when Asian American women opt to get surgery, people automatically assume it's because they want to look white, but often you find the pressure to engage in these surgeries coming from their own families, from their connections abroad," said Lee, the NYU professor. "When we think of it as just the desire to look white, we're not really giving credit to the surgery industry that flourishes by reprinting people's features."

Dr. Hyuenong Park, a surgeon at the OZ Cosmetic Clinic in Korea, agrees. "A small and slim face is ideal to most of people now," he said. "Even though many Caucasians have small and slim faces, it doesn't mean Asians want to look like Caucasians. If you inspect some Caucasian celebrities, you find many examples of prominent jaws and high cheekbones. But if you inspect Asian celebrities, they all have small jaws and cheekbones."

Dr. Park said that changes to ethnic features are the main reason patients come to him. "Most Asians have wide skulls and big faces," he said. "Even a slightly wide jaw can make them look heavy, dull, and mean. Jaw reduction can make their face smaller, slimmer, and nicer."

This perspective ties into what Dr. Eugenia Kaw calls the "self-racism subtext." Her research paper, "Medicalization of Racial Features,"focused on how Asian Americans viewed themselves, and how they were influenced by cultural perspectives. "It boils down to physical traits being connected to negative characteristics," she said. "Now it's written as if one was trying to right racial ideology. It's insidious -- not like women who opt for surgery out of empowerment and choice."

Dr. Kaw's background is in anthropology and her paper has been established as one of the first discourses on Asian American surgery. Two decades later, much of her research is still highly relevant. She wrote that the "alteration of Asian American women of facial features is less of a transforming process, and more of a normalizing one, "to allow them to fit in with their Western peers.

While this might be true for some procedures -- such as rhinoplasty and eyelid surgery -- the V-line face is unique to Asians. It stands out rather than conforms to American sensibilities of beauty. Dr. Kaw is unfamiliar with V-line surgery. "It was never mentioned when I did my research at all," she said. "It's a new thing -- it wasn't around 20 years ago."

Helping the rise of V-line surgery is the laissez faire attitude about recovery implications. This is due to the relatively short recovery time of nose and eyelid surgery, traditionally viewed as operations with minimal side effects. These surgeries are so common that patients rarely take more than a day or two off to recover. The same can't be said for the V-line surgery, but not everyone is aware of that.

Typically, a surgeon will make a three-centimeter incision through the mouth, and then insert a three to six millimeter saw or rasp. This is done under general anesthesia. Parts of the jawbone may be removed and the remaining jaw slid backwards or forwards, depending on the agreed-upon outcome. The jaw may then be fixed into place with a titanium plate, using titanium screws or gauge wires.

Side effects vary from bleeding and infection to hematoma and facial nerve palsy. What is considered a heavy-duty operation in the maxillofacial dental world is considered a common everyday, operation in Korea, and the altered face shape has created a distance between the women and their ethnic background. It also has created an identikit model, a face stamped out of a mold, and a replacement of one's identity with one of conformity.

"When you go to the Gangnam area in Seoul, many girls' faces are similar," said schoolgirl Chae Jeongwon. "So many people have plastic surgeries in Gangnam, but famous doctors are limited. So, many girls have had surgery by same doctor."

"Many people will look and say: I know that pretty girl. She did rotation cut, nose, and eye."

***

Back in New York, Dr. Edward Kang's practice is benefitting from the Asian American desire to have cosmetic surgery. He has two offices. One overlooks Central Park, with baroque style fireplaces and a marbled floor. His other is in Flushing, Queens, a predominantly Asian area. Dr. Kang offers consultations and injectables in the Manhattan office and performs surgery in Queens.

"I'm all about creating a more harmonious look to the face," he told me. His face is smooth and unlined, and his skin is bright and clear. When he talks, his hands hit the mahogany tabletop for emphasis. "Good surgery is like a vase," he said. "Surgery gives it a nice strong base, but you see the vase." Dr. Kang's philosophy is about helping nature along. "I always try to copy the natural look, give face the ideal shape it should have been born with," he said.

Twenty-four-year-old Miss Lee sits on a leather dentist chair in Dr. Kang's office. Her dark hair is pulled back from her face and a small gold cross rests on her neck.

Methodically, Dr. Kang marks up her face with a black felt tip pen, drawing dots along the bridge of her nose and circling spaces on her chin. Her hands twitch in her lap, idly stroking the rabbit ears on her iPhone case. She is here for fillers, hyaluronic acid, and calcium extracts that will sit inside her face and reshape her profile. They are a temporary alternative to a nose job and a chin implant, and she will have product under her skin for around six months. A fashion student at NYU, Lee wants a more feminine face.

Her nose turns crimson as the syringe enters it, and Dr. Kang taps the top of the bridge. "See this," he says. "This is a barren area. I'm going to bring it up for elegance. Nothing extreme, just working with what she has got." More injections follow. Miss Lee looks into a hand mirror. Her nose is red and her chin a little puffy, but her profile has noticeably changed. "Is it going to stay this big?" she asks the doctor. "This is just swelling from the injections," he assures her. "Within a week it will be much smaller."

He turns to me. "If she likes this, we might do the real thing next time. I'm a surgeon, I can't help but view the face that way."

"I think if technology gets more advanced, maybe in the future everyone will get surgery, and then everyone will be beautiful!"

Dr. Kang's gently, gently approach means he doesn't offer V-line surgery. He does offer a non-surgical V-line procedure though, injecting Botox into the Masseter muscle of the face. This muscle is what enlarges when you chew. By using Botox, it hypertrophies, minimizing the look of the jaw.

Hailey Kim doesn't feel that Botox would give her face enough of a change, and she is reluctant to trust an American scalpel. "Korea is way more advanced and does not charge so much," she said. "Just because a doctor is Korean, it doesn't mean they have the experience a doctor in Korea would have, nor the similar advanced techniques."

The cost of all surgeries in Korea are, in fact, about a third of the U.S. South Korean doctors also constantly innovate and experiment with cutting edge technology.

Professor Hejiin Lee said that many Korean Americans have only been in the U.S. a few generations and still have deep roots to Korean culture. "They believe in K-pop culture and want to look like their favorite actresses," she noted. "They probably know an aunt who had surgery in Korea and looks amazing. We often think of America and us flowing in one direction -- and culturally dominant in this direction. And what this illustrates is that it's really circular and moving in many different directions."

Clinics in Korea offer the V-line operation to medical tourists and say they only need "stay a week" to see the procedure out. Dr. Spiegel, a U.S.-based surgeon who offers this procedure, says he is wary of people going abroad for surgery.

"There are some great surgeons for this abroad," said Spiegel. "But just because the price is low, there may be other complications. I often see people who need revisions -- and a doctor in another country might end up costing you more if you have any issues."

Dr. Park disagrees. "After a week all the postoperative care is ended and there is nothing that I can help them with."

Doron Ringler, chief resident at the maxillofacial oral surgery unit of Columbia College of Dental Medicine, has other ideas. "When we perform the V-line -- we call it orthognathic surgery -- we have regular follow-ups with the patients. We see them every week for six weeks, and then every three to five months for a year or two." Ringler frowns, and adjusts the collar of his starched lab coat. "A small percentage of patients have some form of relapse, so it's important to monitor them."

***

Korean culture is still changing, and the shifting nature of the attitude towards physical appearance -- like the economy -- will surely continue to change. The mad rush to economic growth and wealth will likely weaken as the economy matures. The pressure on beauty may diminish.

This February, cabin crew for Korean Airlines participated in makeup training, a mandatory requirement for all new stewardesses. This year, there were more than the usual numbers in the room. Korean Air now requires male cabin crew to attend -- and to learn how to blush and bronze themselves. Male cosmetic surgery is also on the rise, though they still only make up a small percentage of operations. Here we can see an equality of inequality emerging; both sexes are placed under similar beauty pressures.

On a more uplifting note, during the same month, stewardesses at Asiana Airlines were successful in changing their restrictive dress code, which forbade them to wear pants. They were supported by The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRC), which disputed the airline rule that a "skirt-only policy was to emphasize the company's brand of high-class Korean beauty." The NHRC argued this by saying that "no other Korean airlines compel female flight crew to wear skirts, so the regulations could be viewed as excessive."

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Professor Hejiin Lee finds this mini revolution positive: "Korea is an amazing place because it changes so quickly. The Korea that my parents left in the seventies is vastly different from the Korea that exists today." She pauses, smiles, and continues, "The ability for young generations of Asian Americans to have this dynamic relationship with Asia is on a much larger scale than it was before; due to the Internet. We'll see Asian American identities merging with Asia proper, but it will be different. It is pop culture that really introduces the idea of how transformation of your body can lead to success; maybe you too can become a pop star."

Ringler, from the Columbia College of Dental Medicine, said he has never had a patient ask for jaw surgery for aesthetic reasons. "There are plenty of other ways to change the jaw without surgery," he said. "There are all sorts of implants and things like that. Remember, when you move the jaw backwards you make the airwaves smaller."

Schoolgirl Kang NaYeon is still unsure about having surgery in Korea. "A small face is pretty," she says. "But creating a V-line is so dangerous. When people do it here, they update their will first in case of emergency." NaYeon shudders. She has some hope for change in Korean beauty -- but it's not what you might think. "I think if technology gets more advanced, maybe in the future everyone will get surgery, and then everyone will be beautiful!"

Hailey Kim is still saving up for her operation, and sees no reason not to go through with it. "There is nothing wrong with accepting yourself or changing yourself to be happy. Whatever you decide to do, people will always judge you, but they can only bring you down if you let them."

As Koreans and Korean Americans embrace this possibility of transformation and take it to what may seem to be extremes, it can also be seen as a natural progression for those raised in a culture with enormous pressure on its citizens -- another box ticked on the way to being the best.

Cross-posted at PolicyMic, Huffington Post, and BlogHer.

Writer Peg Streep is writing a book about the Millennial generation and she routinely sprinkles great data into her posts at Psychology Today.  

Recently she linked to at study by Net Impact that surveyed currently-enrolled college students and college-graduates across three generations Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers.  The questions focused on life goals and work priorities.  They found significant differences between students and college grads, as well as interesting generational differences.

First, students have generally higher demands on the world; they are as likely or more likely than workers to say that a wide range of accomplishments are “important or essential to [their] happiness”:

In particular, students are more likely than workers to say it is important or essential to have a prestigious career with which they can make an impact.  More than a third think that this will happen within the next five years:

Wealth is less important to students than prestige and impact.  Over a third say they would take a significant pay cut to work for a company committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR), almost half for a company that makes a positive social or environmental impact, and over half to align their values with their job:

Students stand out, then, in both the desire to be personally successful and to make a positive contribution to society.

At the same time, they’re cynical about other people’s priorities.  Students and Millennials are far more likely than Gen Xers or Boomers to think that “people are just looking out for themselves.”

This data rings true to this college professor.  Despite the recession, the students at my (rather elite, private, liberal arts) school surprise me with their high professional expectations (thinking that they should be wildly successful, even if they’re worried they won’t be) and their desire to change the world (many strongly identify as progressives who are concerned with social inequalities and political corruption).

Some call this entitlement, but I think it’s at least as true to say that today’s college youth (the self-esteem generation) have been promised these things.  They’ve always been told to dream big, and so they do.  Unfortunately, I’m afraid that we’ve sold our young people a bill of goods.  Their high expectations sound like a recipe for disappointment, even for my privileged population, especially if they expect it to happen before they exit their twenties!

Alternatively, what we’re seeing is the idealism of youth.  It will be interesting to see if they downshift their expectations once they get into the workforce.  Net Impact doesn’t address whether these are largely generational or age differences.  It’s probably a combination of both.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

artistandstudio:

9 contemporary women artists at work in their studios

chief-little-flying-eagle:

Uuuuuhh…..Tink?

skullpies:

smashing

Heather Underwood – a 2009 UW CSE bachelors alumna now completing her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado’s ATLAS Institute working with long-ago UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus John Bennett – will be recognized on June 15th at the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Awards Banquet as the First Place Graduate winner in the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals for 2013.

Heather’s research innovation is the PartoPen – an application of digital pen technology to enhance the partograph system used throughout the developing world to monitor labor and reduce labor complications.  Every day, 800 women die due to preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.  99% of these deaths occur in the developing world.  Heather’s interest in ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) was sparked by research she carried out as a UW undergraduate.

The ACM SRC attracts 200 students worldwide and runs at major conferences.  It is made possible by generous sponsorship from Microsoft Research every year for students to travel to these conferences and present their work.

Learn about PartoPen here.  Read Heather’s ACM submission here.

Congratulations Heather!

We like to view higher education as the "great equalizer" that leads to social mobility. But selective colleges have long been accused of perpetuating class divides, rather than blurring them.

A recent landmark study by Stanford's Caroline Hoxby and Harvard's Christopher Avery lent further empirical evidence to this accusation, finding that high-achieving low-income students do not have access to selective schools. The study showed that the mismatch is due to a lack of knowledge, not quality. Low-income students outside of major urban centers do not even apply to the top-tier colleges for which they are qualified.

Many commentators and the study authors themselves have looked for ways to alleviate this mismatch. A follow-up study found that supplying basic information to applicants could substantially increase the number of low-income students applying to more selective schools. Just giving low-income kids packets of information helped them apply to better schools.

Yet while the information gaps are real and need to be addressed, there is a much deeper structural problem. If most top colleges wanted to be truly equitable, they could not be with their current business model. There is not a golden pot of low-income applicants that schools want but are failing to reach. Instead, many schools don't want more low-income students because they won't be able to pay for them without a major overhaul of school funding practices. Outside of the handful of super-elite universities with fortress endowments, colleges' finances are currently designed around enrolling a disproportionately high number of high-income students. These schools could not afford to support more low-income or middle-income students absent either a huge increase in tuition, a commensurate reduction in spending, or a dramatic change in public funding.

In fact, schools are already moving away from a more equitable system. Colleges actively recruit "full pay" students who can attend and will not need financial aid. A 2011 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that about 35 percent of admissions directors at 4-year institutions, particularly public colleges, had increased their efforts to target "full pay" students. Far from wanting to enroll more low-income students, colleges recruit more affluent ones who will pay full price to attend. A follow-up survey of college business officers found that the most common strategy to deal with financial challenges in the next few years was to "raise net tuition revenue." More than 7 in 10 college CFOs cited this answer. In other words, schools are becoming more reliant on the inequality in the system than ever before.

If colleges cannot even currently support their business model with enrollment skewed toward higher-income students, a fairer distribution would make the system completely dysfunctional. What's really holding back a more equitable distribution of access to selective colleges is the financial model of colleges. For systemic reform to work, the government will have to take a leading role in fixing incentives and stopping the college spending arms race in its tracks.

High-Aid, But Not Enough Poor Students

What would selective college populations look like if their student body perfectly reflected the population of qualified students? The short answer is: They would have many more poor students -- and it would wreak havoc on their finances.

High-income students account for about a third of the high-achieving students graduating from high school (see graph above). But estimates suggest that 74 percent of students at the top 146 top colleges came from the richest quartile of households. The Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) at Stanford looked at 174 top schools and noted that richest 20 percent of households were seven to eight times more likely to enroll in a selective institution than those from the poorest 20 percent, even though Hoxby and Avery's research suggests that a fairer distribution should be two to one. The CEPA team also found that the gap between the highest and lowest income groups in college enrollment has increased over time, "as more and more seats in highly selective schools have been occupied by students from high income families."

What would the current high-tuition, high-aid model look like with an enrolled student body that reflects the true distribution of high-achieving students?

At The George Washington University, right around the corner from my office in Washington, D.C., the advertised price is $58,985 for the 2012-2013 school year. For the more than 4,000 undergraduate students (out of about 10,000) who are judged to be unable to afford the advertised cost, GW provides an average of $36,789 in aid to offset this cost.

If GW's demographic profile matched the actual distribution of high-achieving students - that is, if there were one bottom-quartile student for every two top-quartile students -- GW's revenue would plummet by about 20 percent. The school would have to raise its tuition for students that are paying full price. But there would be far fewer of them. To take in the same amount of money as they currently do, GW would have to raise its price by approximately $30,000 per full-pay student, for a sticker price of about $90,000 a year. The actual increase would likely need to be more, given that families making $120,000 per year are classified as high income but cannot afford a college cost that would consume three-fourths of their annual income.

This is not a sustainable model. Colleges will not be able to raise sticker prices to these levels while preserving enough aid for low- and middle-income students. They will either raise prices across the board or recruit more affluent students.

Either way, the unequal system will remain.

How to Keep Prices Down: Be Really Rich

Not all colleges, however, would need to raise tuition drastically to pay for a larger number of low-income students. Schools with large endowments can cover the shortfall in tuition by drawing money from these reserves. But keeping tuition constant and paying more from the endowment is only an option for schools with monstrous endowments.

Many writers cite Amherst College as a success story, which has "aggressively recruited poor and middle-class students in recent years" and has increased its share of low-income students. But Amherst has a very large endowment for the size of its student body. Its strategy is only viable when backed with an endowment of more than three quarters of a million dollars per student from which it can draw additional funds to cover its costs while remaining competitive in its levels of spending.

Amherst is better than others, however. Some schools that already do have sizable endowments and could increase aid are instead decreasing it. Cornell, which has an endowment of about $5 billion, took $35 million from its endowment in 2009-2010 to fund financial aid. It is now changing its policy to draw less from the endowment, which includes lowering its financial aid policies.

For GW, with $1.33 billion in its endowment (about 1/18 of Amherst's per student), it's more difficult to use the endowment as a primary backstop. GW only has around 11.7 percent of its endowment, or $155 million, available for student aid. As such, GW - and most selective schools - would only be able to preserve student revenues by raising tuition.

The Public College Crisis

This problem is not reserved for private colleges and universities like GW. In fact, the problem is even worse at public universities.

In addition to competing with private schools, public universities are dealing with cutbacks in public funding as state governments turn to austerity to restore their balance sheets. State funding for colleges and universities dropped substantially after the 2001 and 2008 recessions. States are now spending 28 percent less per college student than they were in 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the College Board reports that average state appropriations for higher education per $1,000 in personal income have declined from $9.74 in 1990 to $5.63 today. These budget cuts have forced states to raise their tuitions in turn. Over just the last 10-year period, combined tuition, fees, and room and board at public 4-year universities have increased 45 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Flagship public universities illustrate this trend. Every flagship state university has seen its tuition increase faster than inflation over the last five years. The biggest price increases are enormous. The University of Arizona raised its tuition 81 percent above inflation, and five other schools saw tuition increases of more than 50 percent in real terms. As one CFO of a public university explained to Andrew Delbanco, the author of College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, the issue at public schools is "not so much the cost of college, but the shift of the financial burden from the state to the student." If these trends continue, public universities will limit access to low-income students and increase the number of affluent students. This will create a more unequal system than the already unequal one we currently have.

Can the Drive for Reputation Save Us?

All of these calculations assume that colleges do not, and will not, change their spending. But perhaps the key to fixing the structural problem lies on the spending side, rather than the revenue side. Spending is not bad per se. If increased spending is necessary to contribute to the quality of the education or on increased financial aid, it would be good for colleges to continue to spend this money. Unfortunately, much of the spending has been on new buildings, administration, or "amenities" spending, rather than on the education itself.

Financial aid demands will rise for schools that want to attract more low-income students, as David Leonhardt of The New York Times notes. He is hopeful that the drive for reputation that includes a commitment to equity and supporting low-income students will encourage colleges to ditch the arms race of spending on new buildings and sports teams. If the spending arms race is a fight for more spending on financial aid, rather than other expenditures, it would be an arms race worth having. He writes:

"It is hard to think of a form of spending more consistent with top colleges' self-image and mission than scholarships for low-income students who have managed to overcome barriers and excel."

The problem, however, is that the capital arms race burnishes a school's reputation far more than a greater commitment to low-income students. Under the current set of incentives, colleges are rewarded for providing more of these "amenities" expenditures but not greater access.

A recent NBER working paper found that students value non-instructional amenities and are more likely to attend an institution that spends more on consumption amenities. While high-achieving students also value more spending on instruction (whereas low-achieving students do not, and even think additional instruction is bad), both high-achieving and low-achieving students tend to favor amenities. Universities, responding to this "demand-side pressure," spend more money on these consumption amenities, thus driving up the need for revenue.

Moreover, the current amenities expenditure arms race has succeeded for schools. Before Stephen Joel Trachtenberg took over GW in 1988, the school was "a nonentity in national rankings." Last year it was ranked 51st in the annual U.S. News and World Report list. "Spending more money can lead to higher rankings," writes the Center for College Affordability. This perverse incentive encourages the higher spending that leads again to the need for more revenue. Colleges then compete to outspend each other, leading to the never-ending arms race.

A recent report by my colleague at the New America Foundation, Stephen Burd, tracked colleges' net price for low-income students and what percentage of their students receive federal Pell Grants. Pell Grants can serve as a proxy for how many low-income students are enrolled. Of the 22 selective schools that enrolled a larger share of Pell Grant recipients and kept net price for these students low, only five schools had endowments smaller than $150,000 per student. None of these five schools were ranked in Barron's "most competitive" category. In other words, providing affordable access to more low-income students does not translate into a better reputation. Capital spending of the kind pioneered by GW's Trachtenberg does.

It is difficult to hope that colleges will change their path when the current one they are on has succeeded for their brand, even if it leaves lower- and middle-income students behind.

Perhaps the best example of capital spending trumping financial access is the story of Cooper Union, a small elite private school in New York City that has been free for students since its founding in 1859. Cooper Union used to fund itself on the proceeds from owning the land underneath the Chrysler building and other land assets in New York. To increase its reputation, the school tried to build its brand by building a fancy building. But facing large deficits after taking out a $175 million mortgage to erect the new building and incurring investment losses in the financial crash, the school's board of trustees announced that Cooper Union will start charging undergraduate students tuition in 2014. The consequence of the capital spending, combined with other financial struggles, is that something had to give. Undergraduate students will now be charged tuition (up to about $20,000 per year) for the first time in the school's history.

If reputation cannot slow the spending arms race, could technology? The rise of massively-open online courses, or MOOCs, raises the possibility that we could slash the price of college by replacing expensive college campuses with a broadband connection. But if digital colleges are going to have an effect, it will likely be felt at non-selective low-quality schools, such as for-profits, that currently leave students with few opportunities and plenty of debt. At selective schools, the introduction of online learning does not change the basic incentive structure that pushes schools to spend for the sake of their brand.

What Can Be Done?

In an optimistic scenario, finding ways to increase the information available to high-achieving low-income students would increase the number of applications and put pressure on colleges to end the amenities arms race, decrease costs, and spend more time and resources on learning and education supports.

But a more likely scenario is bleaker. Even if we end the information mismatch, colleges will find ways to preserve their existing business models to avoid fundamental reform. Once again, colleges already do this. Not only do they actively recruit full-pay and out-of-state students, they engage in a practice called "admit-deny." As Burd writes, admit-deny is when "schools deliberately underfund financially needy students in order to discourage them from enrolling." Nearly two-thirds of private colleges and one-third of public schools currently engage in this practice.

We need to fix the underlying incentives, and the best institution to lead these changes is the government. It is necessary to have a large public role to guarantee that a basic postsecondary education is not merely a luxury for the wealthy but is instead available, affordably, to every student who wants it.

A public sector that is not caught up in the arms race should serve as the proper "public option" to attempt to drive down costs at private schools in a semi-competitive sphere. The cutbacks in public funding of higher education have made it more difficult for public institutions to keep their prices down and provide a comparable quality of education. The fact that public schools are actively recruiting full-pay and out of state students means that they are moving away from their necessary function as the core provider of higher education to residents in its state. We need not only to restore funding of public universities, but substantially increase it.

Additionally, many of these schools are reliant on federal aid and federal loan programs to finance their students' educations. For example, the government provides Pell Grants to low-income students up to an amount of $5,550 and subsidizes student loans. Rather than continue to offer federal aid to schools that absorb these costs and continue to operate under the unsustainable high tuition, high-aid model, the government can tie its financial aid support to the elimination of the arms race.

As with a military arms race, no individual actor in the education arms race will voluntarily pull back. Only an external force, like the public sector, can make across-the-board changes to fix the problem. The government has leverage because of the importance of federal programs like Pell Grants and subsidized student loans.

To end the arms race, the government should decrease or eliminate federal money to students at schools that continue to increase prices while enrolling disproportionate levels of high income students. Schools would then need to prioritize costs and access, rather than spending and reputation, to be able to function. And no individual school would have to unilaterally draw back.

More broadly, the public sector can also help drive down runaway costs by pushing for policies to promote full employment and the creation of good jobs that do not require a college education. When college is all but required to be able to have access to decent quality jobs, colleges can extract economic "rents" because there is no alternative for people entering the labor force. For students who need access to college as an economic stepping-stone to future employment, simultaneous changes on both the educational and labor market fronts can increase the chances of successful reform. Labor market policies to put pressure on college costs can range from creating more useful, high-quality public sector jobs, like childcare and eldercare services, to increasing the minimum wage or supporting workers' bargaining power.

Any and all of these policies will help drive down the natural inclination for colleges to pursue the arms race and push schools back to the quality, accessible education they should be providing.

Until the underlying problems of arms-race expenditures and declining public funding are addressed, colleges will continue to use high-cost, high-aid strategies that are inherently unsustainable and inequitable. Many selective schools derive their status because of the information asymmetry, not in spite of it. It is the structural deficiencies in the higher education system that are pushing college further away from being the much-hallowed "great equalizer" and instead perpetuating privilege for those who can pay.