Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem compared antifa to the transnational criminal group MS-13, Hamas and the Islamic State group in October 2025, she equated a nonhierarchical, loosely organized movement of antifascist activists with some of the world’s most violent and organized militant groups.

“Antifa is just as dangerous,” she said.

It’s a sweeping claim that ignores crucial distinctions in ideology, organization and scope. Comparing these groups is like comparing apples and bricks: They may both be organizations, but that’s where the resemblance stops.

Noem’s statement echoed the logic of a September 2025 Trump administration executive order that designated antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The order directs all relevant federal agencies to investigate and dismantle any operations, including the funding sources, linked to antifa.

But there is no credible evidence from the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security that supports such a comparison. Independent terrorism experts don’t see the similarities either.

Data shows that the movement can be confrontational and occasionally violent. But antifa is neither a terrorist network nor a major source of organized lethal violence.

Antifa, as understood by scholars and law enforcement, is not an organization in any formal sense. It lacks membership rolls and leadership hierarchies. It doesn’t have centralized funding.

As a scholar of social movements, I know that antifa is a decentralized movement animated by opposition to fascism and far-right extremism. It’s an assortment of small groups that mobilize around specific protests or local issues. And its tactics range from peaceful counterdemonstrations to mutual aid projects.

For example, in Portland, Oregon, local antifa activists organized counterdemonstrations against far-right rallies in 2019.

Antifa groups active in Houston during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 coordinated food, supplies and rescue support for affected residents.

No evidence of terrorism

The FBI and DHS have classified certain anarchist or anti-fascist groups under the broad category of “domestic violent extremists.” But neither agency nor the State Department has ever previously designated antifa as a terrorist organization.

The data on political violence reinforces this point.

A 2022 report by the Counter Extremism Project found that the overwhelming majority of deadly domestic terrorist incidents in the United States in recent years were linked to right-wing extremists. These groups include white supremacists and anti-government militias that promote racist or authoritarian ideologies. They reject democratic authority and often seek to provoke social chaos or civil conflict to achieve their goals.

Left-wing or anarchist-affiliated violence, including acts attributed to antifa-aligned people, accounts for only a small fraction of domestic extremist incidents and almost none of the fatalities. Similarly, in 2021, the George Washington University Program on Extremism found that anarchist or anti-fascist attacks are typically localized, spontaneous and lacking coordination.

By contrast, the organizations Noem invoked – Hamas, the Islamic State group and MS-13 – share structural and operational characteristics that antifa lacks.

They operate across borders and are hierarchically organized. They are also capable of sustained military or paramilitary operations. They possess training pipelines, funding networks, propaganda infrastructure and territorial control. And they have orchestrated mass casualties such as the 2015 Paris attacks and the 2016 Brussels bombings.

In short, they are military or criminal organizations with strategic intent. Noem’s claim that antifa is “just as dangerous” as these groups is not only empirically indefensible but rhetorically reckless.

Turning dissent into ‘terrorism’

So why make such a claim?

Noem’s statement fits squarely within the Trump administration’s broader political strategy that has sought to inflate the perceived threat of left-wing activism.

Casting antifa as a domestic terrorist equivalent of the Islamic State nation or Hamas serves several functions.

It stokes fear among conservative audiences by linking street protests and progressive dissent to global terror networks. It also provides political cover for expanded domestic surveillance and harsher policing of protests.

Additionally, it discredits protest movements critical of the right. In a polarized media environment, such rhetoric performs a symbolic purpose. It divides the moral universe into heroes and enemies, order and chaos, patriots and radicals.

Noem’s comparison reflects a broader pattern in populist politics, where complex social movements are reduced to simple, threatening caricatures. In recent years, some Republican leaders have used antifa as a shorthand for all forms of left-wing unrest or criticism of authority.

Antifa’s decentralized structure makes it a convenient target for blame. That’s because it lacks clear boundaries, leadership and accountability. So any act by someone identifying with antifa can be framed as representing the whole movement, whether or not it does. And by linking antifa to terrorist groups, Noem, the top anti-terror official in the country, turns a political talking point into a claim that appears to carry the weight of national security expertise.

The problem with this kind of rhetoric is not just that it’s inaccurate. Equating protest movements with terrorist organizations blurs important distinctions that allow democratic societies to tolerate dissent. It also risks misdirecting attention and resources away from more serious threats — including organized, ideologically driven groups that remain the primary source of domestic terrorism in the U.S.

As I see it, Noem’s claim reveals less about antifa and more about the political uses of fear.

By invoking the language of terrorism to describe an anti-fascist movement, she taps into a potent emotional current in American politics: the desire for clear enemies, simple explanations and moral certainty in times of division.

But effective homeland security depends on evidence, not ideology. To equate street-level confrontation with organized terror is not only wrong — it undermines the credibility of the very institutions charged with protecting the public.

Art Jipson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why the Trump administration’s comparison of antifa to violent terrorist groups doesn’t track – https://theconversation.com/why-the-trump-administrations-comparison-of-antifa-to-violent-terrorist-groups-doesnt-track-267514

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Roshanak (Roshi) Nateghi, Associate Professor of Sustainability, Georgetown University

The Trump administration’s widespread cancellation and freezing of clean energy funding is also hitting essential work to improve the nation’s power grid. That includes investments in grid modernization, energy storage and efforts to protect communities from outages during extreme weather and cyberattacks. Ending these projects leaves Americans vulnerable to more frequent and longer-lasting power outages.

The Department of Energy has defended the cancellations, saying that “the projects did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.” Yet before any funds are actually released through these programs, each grant must pass evaluations based on the department’s standards. Those included rigorous assessments of technical merits, potential risks and cost-benefit analyses — all designed to ensure alignment with national energy priorities and responsible stewardship of public funds.

I am an associate professor studying sustainability, with over 15 years of experience in energy systems reliability and resilience. In the past, I also served as a Department of Energy program manager focused on grid resilience. I know that many of these canceled grants were foundational investments in the science and infrastructure necessary to keep the lights on, especially when the grid is under stress.

The dollar-value estimates vary, and some of the money has already been spent. A list of canceled projects maintained by energy analysis company Yardsale totals about US$5 billion. An Oct. 2, 2025, announcement from the department touts $7.5 billion in cuts to 321 awards across 223 projects. Additional documents leaked to Politico reportedly identified additional awards under review. Some media reports suggest the full value of at-risk commitments may reach $24 billion — a figure that has not been publicly confirmed or refuted by the Trump administration.

These were not speculative ventures. And some of them were competitively awarded projects that the department funded specifically to enhance grid efficiency, reliability and resilience.

Grid improvement funding

For years, the federal government has been criticized for investing too little in the nation’s electricity grid. The long-term planning — and spending — required to ensure the grid reliably serves the public often falls victim to short-term political cycles and shifting priorities across both parties.

But these recent cuts come amid increasingly frequent extreme weather, increased cybersecurity threats to the systems that keep the lights on, and aging grid equipment that is nearing the end of its life.

These projects sought to make the grid more reliable so it can withstand storms, hackers, accidents and other problems.

National laboratories

In addition to those project cancellations, President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2026 contains deep cuts to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, a primary funding source for several national laboratories, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which may face widespread layoffs.

Among other work, these labs conduct fundamental grid-related research like developing and testing ways to send more electricity over existing power lines, creating computational models to simulate how the U.S. grid responds to extreme weather or cyberattacks, and analyzing real-time operational data to identify vulnerabilities and enhance reliability.

These efforts are necessary to design, operate and manage the grid, and to figure out how best to integrate new technologies.

Grid resilience and modernization

Some of the projects that have lost funding sought to upgrade grid management – including improved sensing of real-time voltage and frequency changes in the electricity sent to homes and businesses.

That program, the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program, also funded efforts to automate grid operations, allowing faster response to outages or changes in output from power plants. It also supported developing microgrids – localized systems that can operate independently during outages. The canceled projects in that program, estimated to total $724.6 million, were in 24 states.

For example, a $19.5 million project in the Upper Midwest would have installed smart sensors and software to detect overloaded power lines or equipment failures, helping people respond faster to outages and prevent blackouts.

A $50 million project in California would have boosted the capacity of existing subtransmission lines, improving power stability and grid flexibility by installing a smart substation, without needing new transmission corridors.

Microgrid projects in New York, New Mexico and Hawaii would have kept essential services running during disasters, cyberattacks and planned power outages.

Another canceled project included $11 million to help utilities in 12 states use electric school buses as backup batteries, delivering power during emergencies and peak demand, like on hot summer days.

Several transmission projects were also canceled, including a $464 million effort in the Midwest to coordinate multiple grid connections from new generation sites.

Long-duration energy storage

The grid must meet demand at all times, even when wind and solar generation is low or when extreme weather downs power lines. A key element of that stability involves storing massive amounts of electricity for when it’s needed.

One canceled project would have spent $70 million turning retired coal plants in Minnesota and Colorado into buildings holding iron-air batteries capable of powering several thousand homes for as many as four days.

Rural and remote energy systems

Another terminated program sought to help people who live in rural or remote places, who are often served by just one or two power lines rather than a grid that can reroute power around an interruption.

A $30 million small-scale bioenergy project would have helped three rural California communities convert forest and agricultural waste into electricity.

Not all of the terminated initiatives were explicitly designed for resilience. Some would have strengthened grid stability as a byproduct of their main goals. The rollback of $1.2 billion in hydrogen hub investments, for example, undermines projects that would have paired industrial decarbonization with large-scale energy storage to balance renewable power. Similarly, several canceled industrial modernization projects, such as hybrid electric furnaces and low-carbon cement plants, were structured to manage power demand and integrate clean energy, to improve grid stability and flexibility.

The reliability paradox

The administration has said that these cuts will save money. In practice, however, they shift spending from prevention of extended outages to recovery from them.

Without advances in technology and equipment, grid operators face more frequent outages, longer restoration times and rising maintenance costs. Without investment in systems that can withstand storms or hackers, taxpayers and ratepayers will ultimately bear the costs of repairing the damage.

Some of the projects now on hold were intended to allow hospitals, schools and emergency centers to reduce blackout risks and speed power restoration. These are essential reliability and public safety functions, not partisan initiatives.

Canceling programs to improve the grid leaves utilities and their customers dependent on emergency stopgaps — diesel generators, rolling blackouts and reactive maintenance — instead of forward-looking solutions.

Roshanak (Roshi) Nateghi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Future of nation’s energy grid hurt by Trump’s funding cuts – https://theconversation.com/future-of-nations-energy-grid-hurt-by-trumps-funding-cuts-267504

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Timothy E Shanahan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literacy, University of Illinois Chicago

After decades of stagnating reading performance, American literacy levels have begun to drop, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a program of the Department of Education.

The average reading scores of 12th graders in 2024 were 3 points lower than they were in 2019. More kids are failing to even reach basic levels of reading that would allow them to successfully do their schoolwork, according to the assessment.

There is much blaming and finger-pointing as to why the U.S. isn’t doing better. Some experts say that parents are allowing kids to spend too much time on screens, while others argue that elementary teachers aren’t teaching enough phonics, or that schools closing during the COVID-19 pandemic has had lingering effects.

As a scholar of reading, I think the best explanation is that most American schools are teaching reading using an approach that new research shows severely limits students’ opportunities to learn.

A Goldilocks approach to books

In the 1940s, Emmett Betts, a scholar of education and theory, proposed the idea that if the books used to teach reading were either too easy or too hard, then students’ learning would be stifled.

The thinking went that kids should be taught to read with books that were just the right fit for them.

The theory was backed by research and included specific criteria for determining the best books for each child.

The idea is that kids should work with books they could already read with 95% word accuracy and 75% to 89% comprehension.

Most American schools continue to use this approach to teaching reading, nearly a century later.

A popular method

To implement this approach, schools usually test children multiple times each year to determine which books they should be allowed to read in school. Teachers and librarians will label and organize books into color-coded bins, based on their level of difficulty. This practice helps ensure that no child strays into a book judged too difficult for them to easily follow. Teachers then divide their class into reading groups based on the book levels the students are assigned.

Most elementary teachers and middle school teachers say they try to teach at their students’ reading levels, as do more than 40% of high school English teachers.

This approach might sound good, but it means that students work with books they can already read pretty well. And they might not have very much to learn from those books.

New research challenges these widely used instructional practices. My July 2025 book, “Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives,” explains that students learn more when taught with more difficult texts. In other words, this popular approach to teaching has been holding kids back rather than helping them succeed.

Many students will read at levels that match the grades they are in. But kids who cannot already read those grade-level texts with high comprehension are demoted to below-grade-level books in the hopes that this will help them make more progress.

Often, parents do not know that their children are reading at a level lower than the grade they are in.

Perhaps that is why, while more than one-third of American elementary students read below grade level, 90% of parents think their kids are at or above grade level.

What’s in a reading level?

The approach to “just right” reading has long roots in American history.

In the 1840s, U.S. schools were divided into grade levels based on children’s ages. In response, textbook publishing companies organized their reading textbooks the same way. There was a first grade book, a second grade book and so on.

These reading levels admittedly were somewhat arbitrary. The grade-level reading diet proposed by one company may have differed from its competitors’ offerings.

That changed in 2010 with the Common Core state standards, a multistate educational initiative that set K-12 learning goals in reading and math in more than 40 states.

At the time, too many students were leaving high school without the ability to read the kinds of books and papers used in college, the workplace or the military.

Accordingly, Common Core set ranges of text levels for each grade to ensure that by high school graduation, students would be able to easily handle reading they will encounter in college and other places after graduation. Many states have replaced or revised those standards over the past 15 years, but most continue to keep those text levels as a key learning goal.

That means that most states have set reading levels that their students should be able to accomplish by each grade. Students who do this should graduate from high school with sufficient literacy to participate fully in American society.

But this instructional level theory can stand in the way of getting kids to those goals. If students cannot already read those grade level texts reasonably well, the teacher is to provide easier books than adjusting the instruction to help them catch up.

But that raises a question: If children spend their time while they are in the fourth grade reading second grade books, will they ever catch up?

What the research says

For more than 40 years, there was little research into the effectiveness of teaching reading with books that were easy for kids to follow. Still, the numbers of schools buying into the idea burgeoned.

Research into effectiveness – or, actually, ineffectiveness – of this method has finally begun to accumulate. These studies show that teaching students at their reading levels, rather than their grade levels, either offers no benefit or can slow how much children learn.

Since 2000, the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to increase children’s literacy rates. State expenditures toward this goal have been considerable, as well.

Despite these efforts, there have been no improvements in U.S. reading achievement for middle school or high school students since 1970.

I believe it is important to consider the emerging research that shows there will not be considerable reading gains until kids are taught to read with sufficiently challenging and meaty texts.

Timothy E Shanahan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Children learn to read with books that are just right for them – but that might not be the best approach – https://theconversation.com/children-learn-to-read-with-books-that-are-just-right-for-them-but-that-might-not-be-the-best-approach-267510

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Sheri Lambert, Professor of Marketing, Temple University

On Philadelphia’s famed Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where stone, symmetry and civic ambition meet, something subtle yet seismic has happened.

The city’s grandest temple to art has shed a preposition.

After nearly a century as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, or PMA, the institution now calls itself simply the Philadelphia Art Museum – or PhAM, as the new logo and public rollout invite us to say.

The change may seem cosmetic, but as a marketing scholar at Temple University whose research focuses on branding and digital marketing strategy, I know that in the tight geometry of naming and branding, every word matters.

The museum’s new identity signals not just a typographic update but a transformation in tone, purpose and reach. It’s as if the museum has taken a long, deep breath … and decided to loosen its collar.

Insta-friendly design

For decades, the museum’s granite facade has represented permanence. Its pediments crowned with griffins – mythological creatures that are part lion and part eagle – have looked out across the parkway like silent sentinels of culture. The rebrand dares to make those sentinels dance.

In its new form, PhAM is deliberately more flexible, less marble, more motion. The logo revives the griffin but places it with a bold, circular emblem that is unmistakably digital. The new logo is chunkier, more assertive and designed to hold its own on a phone screen.

Like the 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s digital overhaul in New York, the Philadelphia Art Museum is leaning into an era where visitors first encounter culture through screens, not doors. As the Met’s former chief digital officer Sree Sreenivasan stated, “Our competition is Netflix and Candy Crush,” not other museums.

The PhAM’s visual language is redesigned for environments filled with scrolling, swiping and sharing. Through this marketer’s lens, the goal is clear: to ensure that the museum lives not only on the parkway but in the algorithm.

A little younger, more cheeky

There is something refreshing about a legacy institution willing to meet its existing or future audience where they already are. The museum’s leadership frames the change as a broader renewal – a commitment to accessibility, community and openness.

The rebrand showcases “Philadelphia” and it takes center stage in the new name and logo, a subtle but potent reminder that the museum’s roots are here. In the previous design, the word “Art” was much larger and more bolded than “Philadelphia.”

And then there’s the nickname: PhAM. It’s playful – think, “Hey, fam!” or a Batman comic-style Pow! Bam! PhAM! – compact, easy to say and just cheeky enough to intrigue a new generation. It’s Instagrammable and hashtaggable. It’s got trending power. I asked a lecture hall full of marketing students in their 20s what they thought of it, and they generally loved it. They thought it was “fun,” “hip” and had enough “play” in the name to make them want to visit.

It’s also a nod to the way folks from Philly actually talk about the place. No one in Philadelphia ever says, “Let’s go to the Museum of Art.” They call it “the Art Museum.” The brand finally caught up with the vernacular.

A balancing act

Rebrands in the cultural sector are rarely simple makeovers. They are identity reckonings.

The Tate Modern in London mastered this dance in 2016 when it modernized its graphics and digital outreach while keeping the weight of its bones intact.

Others have stumbled.

When the Whitney Museum in New York debuted a minimalist “W” in 2013, reactions were mixed. To me, it felt more like a tech startup than a place of art.

PhAM now faces that same paradox. How does the cultural institution appear modern without erasing its majesty? Museums, after all, trade in authority as much as accessibility.

The new name carries subtle risks. Some longtime patrons may bristle at the casual tone. And the phrase “Museum of Art” carries an academic formality that “Art Museum” softens.

And the more flexible a brand’s logo or voice becomes, the more it risks dissolving into the noise of digital sameness. While brands must adapt their visuals and tone to fit different social media platforms and audiences, there is a fine line between flexibility and dilution. The more a brand’s logo, voice or visual identity bends to accommodate every digital trend or platform aesthetic, the greater the risk that it loses its edge.

For example, when too many brands adopt a minimalistic sans-serif logo – as we’ve seen with fashion brands such as Burberry and Saint Laurent – the result is a uniform aesthetic that makes it difficult for any single identity to stand out.

Flexibility should serve differentiation, not erode it.

In the end, I appreciate how PhAM’s revival of the griffin, steeped in the building’s history, keeps the brand tethered to its architectural DNA.

For now, the rebrand communicates both humility and confidence. It acknowledges that even icons must learn to speak new languages. The gesture isn’t just aesthetic; it’s generational. By softening its posture and modernizing its voice, the Philadelphia Art Museum appears intent on courting a new cohort of museumgoers used to stories unfolding on screens. This is a rebrand not merely for the faithful but for those who might never have thought of the museum as “for them” in the first place.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Sheri Lambert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the Philadelphia Art Museum is reinventing itself for the Instagram age – https://theconversation.com/how-the-philadelphia-art-museum-is-reinventing-itself-for-the-instagram-age-267945

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Brad Reisfeld, Professor Emeritus of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Public Health, Colorado State University

When you open the refrigerator and find a wedge of cheese flecked with green mold, or a package of chicken that smells faintly sour, it can be tempting to gamble with your stomach rather than waste food.

But the line between harmless fermentation and dangerous spoilage is sharp. Consuming spoiled foods exposes the body to a range of microbial toxins and biochemical by-products, many of which can interfere with essential biological processes. The health effects can vary from mild gastrointestinal discomfort to severe conditions such as liver cancer.

I am a toxicologist and researcher specializing in how foreign chemicals such as those released during food spoilage affect the body. Many spoiled foods contain specific microorganisms that produce toxins. Because individual sensitivity to these chemicals varies, and the amount present in spoiled foods can also vary widely, there are no absolute guidelines on what is safe to eat. However, it’s always a good idea to know your enemies so you can take steps to avoid them.

Nuts and grains

In plant-based foods such as grains and nuts, fungi are the main culprits behind spoilage, forming fuzzy patches of mold in shades of green, yellow, black or white that usually give off a musty smell. Colorful though they may be, many of these molds produce toxic chemicals called mycotoxins.

Two common fungi found on grains and nuts such as corn, sorghum, rice and peanuts are Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus. They can produce mycotoxins known as aflatoxins, which form molecules called epoxides that can trigger mutations when they bind to DNA. Repeated exposure to aflatoxins can damage the liver and has been linked to liver cancer, especially for people who already have other risk factors for it, such as hepatitis B infection.

Fusarium is another group of fungal pathogens that can grow as mold on grains such as wheat, barley and corn, especially at high humidity. Infected grains may appear discolored or have a pinkish or reddish hue, and they might emit a musty odor. Fusarium fungi produce mycotoxins called trichothecenes, which can damage cells and irritate the digestive tract. They also make another toxin, fumonisin B1, which disrupts how cells build and maintain their outer membranes. Over time, these effects can harm the liver and kidneys.

If grains or nuts look moldy, discolored or shriveled, or if they have an unusual smell, it’s best to err on the side of caution and throw them out. Aflotoxins, especially, are known to be potent cancer-causing agents, so they have no safe level of exposure.

Fruits

Fruits can also harbor mycotoxins. When they become bruised or overripe, or are stored in damp conditions, mold can easily take hold and begin producing these harmful substances.

One biggie is a blue mold called Penicillium expansum, which is best known for infecting apples but also attacks pears, cherries, peaches and other fruit. This fungus produces patulin, a toxin that interferes with key enzymes in cells to hobble normal cell functions and generate unstable molecules called reactive oxygen species that can harm DNA, proteins and fats. In large amounts, patulin can injure major organs such as the kidneys, liver, digestive tract and immune system.

P. expansum’s blue and green cousins, Penicillium italicum and Penicillium digitatum, are frequent flyers on oranges, lemons and other citrus fruits. It’s not clear whether they produce dangerous toxins, but they taste awful.

It is tempting to just cut off the moldy parts of a fruit and eat the rest. However, molds can send out microscopic, rootlike structures called hyphae that penetrate deeply into food, potentially releasing toxins even in seemingly unaffected bits. Especially for soft fruits, where hyphae can grow more easily, it’s safest to toss moldy specimens. Do it at your own risk, but for hard fruits I do sometimes just cut off the moldy bits.

Cheese

Cheese showcases the benefits of controlled microbial growth. In fact, mold is a crucial component in many of the cheeses you know and love. Blue cheeses such as Roquefort and Stilton get their distinctive, tangy flavor from chemicals produced by a fungus called Penicillium roqueforti. And the soft, white rind on cheeses such as Brie or Camembert contributes to their flavor and texture.

On the other hand, unwanted molds look fuzzy or powdery and may take on unusual colors. Greenish-black or reddish molds, sometimes caused by Aspergillus species, can be toxic and should be discarded. Also, species such as Penicillium commune produce cyclopiazonic acid, a mycotoxin that disrupts calcium flow across cell membranes, potentially impairing muscle and nerve function. At high enough levels, it may cause tremors or other nervous system symptoms. Fortunately, such cases are rare, and spoiled dairy products usually give themselves away by their sharp, sour, rank odor.

As a general rule, discard soft cheeses such as ricotta, cream cheese and cottage cheese at the first sign of mold. Because these cheeses contain more moisture, the mold’s filaments can spread easily.

Hard cheeses, including cheddar, Parmesan and Swiss, are less porous. So cutting away at least one inch around the moldy spot is more of a safe bet – just take care not to touch the mold with your knife.

Meat

While molds are the primary concern for plant and dairy spoilage, bacteria are the main agents of meat decomposition. Telltale signs of meat spoilage include a slimy texture, discoloration that’s often greenish or brownish and a sour or putrid odor.

Some harmful bacteria do not produce noticeable changes in smell, appearance or texture, making it difficult to assess the safety of meat based on sensory cues alone. That stink, though, is caused by chemicals such as cadaverine and putrescine that are formed as meat decomposes, and they can cause nausea, vomiting and abdominal cramps, as well as headaches, flushing or drops in blood pressure.

Spoiled meats are rife with bacterial dangers. Escherichia coli, a common contaminant of beef, produces shiga toxin, which chokes off some cells’ ability to make proteins and can cause a dangerous kidney disease called hemolytic uremic syndrome. Poultry often carries the bacterium Campylobacter jejuni, which produces a toxin that invades gastrointestinal cells, often leading to diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever. It can also provoke the body’s immune system to attack its own nerves, potentially sparking a rare condition called Guillain–Barré syndrome, which can lead to temporary paralysis.

Salmonella, found in eggs and undercooked chicken, is one of the most common types of food poisoning, causing diarrhea, nausea and abdominal cramps. It releases toxins into the lining of the small and large intestines that drive extensive inflammation. Clostridium perfringens also attacks the gut, but its toxins work by damaging cell membranes. And Clostridium botulinum, which can lurk in improperly stored or canned meats, produces botulinum toxin, one of the most potent biological poisons – lethal even in tiny amounts.

It is impossible for meat to be totally free of bacteria, but the longer it sits in your refrigerator – or worse, on your counter or in your grocery bag – the more those bacteria multiply. And you can’t cook the yuck away. Most bacteria die at meat-safe temperatures – between 145 and 165 degrees Fahrenheit (63-74 C) – but many bacterial toxins are heat stable and survive cooking.

Brad Reisfeld does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why you can salvage moldy cheese but never spoiled meat − a toxicologist advises on what to watch out for – https://theconversation.com/why-you-can-salvage-moldy-cheese-but-never-spoiled-meat-a-toxicologist-advises-on-what-to-watch-out-for-263908

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By John Affleck, Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society, Penn State

When I first heard about the arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones in connection to federal investigations involving illegal gambling, I couldn’t help but think of a recent moment in my sports writing class.

I was showing my students a clip from an NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs. Near the end of play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw a perfect pass to receiver Brian Jones Jr. to secure a critical first down. Out of the blue, a student groaned and said that he’d lost US$50 on that throw.

I thought of that moment because it revealed how ubiquitous sports betting has become, how much the types of bets have changed over time, and – given these trends – how it’s naive to think players won’t continue to be tempted to game the system.

The prop bet hits it big

I’ve been following the evolution of sports gambling for about a decade in my position as chair of Penn State’s sports journalism program.

Back when legal American sports betting was mostly confined to Las Vegas, the standard bets tended to be tied to picking a winner or which team would cover a point spread.

But ahead of the 1986 Super Bowl between the Chicago Bears and the overmatched New England Patriots, casinos offered bets on whether Bears defensive lineman – and occasional running back – William “Refrigerator” Perry would score a touchdown. The excitement around that sideshow kept fan interest going during a 46-10 blowout.

Perry did end up scoring, and the prop bet took off from there.

Prop bets are wagers that depend on an outcome within a game but not its final result. They can often involve an athlete’s individual performance in some statistical category – for instance, how many yards a running back will rush for, how many rebounds a basketball center will secure, or how many strikeouts a pitcher will have. They’ve become routine offerings on sports betting menus.

For example: As I write this, I am looking at a FanDuel account I opened years ago, seeing that, for the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers game currently in progress, I can place a wager on which player will score a touchdown, how many yards each quarterback will throw for and much, much more. As the game progresses, the odds constantly shift – allowing for what are called “live bets.”

Returning to my student who lost the bet on Lawrence’s pass completion: It’s possible he’d placed a bet on Lawrence to throw fewer than a set number of yards. Or he could have been part of a fantasy league, which is also dependent on individual player performances.

Either way, a problem with prop bets, from an anti-corruption perspective, is that an individual can often control the outcome. You don’t need a group of players to be in on it – which is what happened during the infamous Black Sox Scandal, when eight players on the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series.

In the indictment against him, Rozier is accused of telling a co-defendant to pass along information to particular bettors that he planned to leave a March 2023 game early – a move everyone involved knew meant he would not reach his statistical benchmarks for the game. They could then place bets that he wouldn’t hit those marks.

In baseball, meanwhile, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was placed on leave during the 2025 season and is under investigation for possibly illegally wagering on the outcome of two pitches he threw. MLB authorities are essentially trying to determine if he deliberately threw balls as opposed to strikes in two instances. (Yes, prop bets have become so granular that you can even bet on whether a pitcher will throw a ball or a strike on an individual pitch.)

An exploding market with no end in sight

The popularity of prop bets feeds into a worldwide sports gambling industry that has experienced explosive growth and shows no sign of slowing.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 ruled that states could decide on whether to allow sports betting, 39 states plus the District of Columbia have done so.

The leagues and media are more than just bystanders. FanDuel and DraftKings are official sports betting partners of the NBA and the NFL.

In the days after the Supreme Court ruling, I wondered whether journalists would embrace sports betting. These days, ESPN not only has a betting show, but it also has a betting app.

According to the American Gaming Association, sportsbooks collected a record $13.71 billion in revenue in 2024 from about $150 billion in wagers. A study released in February 2025 by Siena and St. Bonaventure universities found that nearly half of American men have an online sports betting account.

But those figures don’t begin to touch the worldwide sports betting market, especially the illegal one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that up to $1.7 trillion is wagered annually in illegal betting markets.

The U.N. report warned that it had found a “staggering scale, manifestation, and complexity of corruption and organized crime in sport at the global, regional, and national levels.”

Who’s the boss?

In early October 2025, I attended a conference of Play the Game, a Denmark-based organization that promotes “democratic values in world sports.” Its occasional gatherings attract experts from around the world who are interested in keeping sports fair and safe for everyone.

One of the most sobering topics was illegal, online sportsbooks that feature wagering on all levels of sport, from the lowest levels of European soccer on up.

It sounded somewhat familiar. This summer at the Little League World Series, which my students covered for The Associated Press, managers complained about offshore sportsbooks offering lines on the tournament, which is played by 12-year-old amateurs.

And with so much illegal wagering in the world, the issue of match fixing was bound to come up.

One session screened a recent German documentary on match fixing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. candidate at Sheffield Hallam University and senior researcher for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, told me how she had interviewed a professional female soccer player for a team in Cyprus. The player described how she and her teammates were routinely approached with lucrative offers to throw matches.

Put it all together – the vast sums of money at play and the relative ease of fixing a prop bet, let alone a match – and you cannot be surprised at the NBA scandal.

I used to think that gambling was just a segment of the larger sports industry. Now, I wonder whether I had it exactly backward.

Has sports just become a segment of the larger gambling industry?

John Affleck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the explosion of prop betting threatens the integrity of pro sports – https://theconversation.com/how-the-explosion-of-prop-betting-threatens-the-integrity-of-pro-sports-268340

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By John Affleck, Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society, Penn State

When I first heard about the arrests of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones in connection to federal investigations involving illegal gambling, I couldn’t help but think of a recent moment in my sports writing class.

I was showing my students a clip from an NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs. Near the end of play, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw a perfect pass to receiver Brian Jones Jr. to secure a critical first down. Out of the blue, a student groaned and said that he’d lost US$50 on that throw.

I thought of that moment because it revealed how ubiquitous sports betting has become, how much the types of bets have changed over time, and – given these trends – how it’s naive to think players won’t continue to be tempted to game the system.

The prop bet hits it big

I’ve been following the evolution of sports gambling for about a decade in my position as chair of Penn State’s sports journalism program.

Back when legal American sports betting was mostly confined to Las Vegas, the standard bets tended to be tied to picking a winner or which team would cover a point spread.

But ahead of the 1986 Super Bowl between the Chicago Bears and the overmatched New England Patriots, casinos offered bets on whether Bears defensive lineman – and occasional running back – William “Refrigerator” Perry would score a touchdown. The excitement around that sideshow kept fan interest going during a 46-10 blowout.

Perry did end up scoring, and the prop bet took off from there.

Prop bets are wagers that depend on an outcome within a game but not its final result. They can often involve an athlete’s individual performance in some statistical category – for instance, how many yards a running back will rush for, how many rebounds a basketball center will secure, or how many strikeouts a pitcher will have. They’ve become routine offerings on sports betting menus.

For example: As I write this, I am looking at a FanDuel account I opened years ago, seeing that, for the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers game currently in progress, I can place a wager on which player will score a touchdown, how many yards each quarterback will throw for and much, much more. As the game progresses, the odds constantly shift – allowing for what are called “live bets.”

Returning to my student who lost the bet on Lawrence’s pass completion: It’s possible he’d placed a bet on Lawrence to throw fewer than a set number of yards. Or he could have been part of a fantasy league, which is also dependent on individual player performances.

Either way, a problem with prop bets, from an anti-corruption perspective, is that an individual can often control the outcome. You don’t need a group of players to be in on it – which is what happened during the infamous Black Sox Scandal, when eight players on the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series.

In the indictment against him, Rozier is accused of telling a co-defendant to pass along information to particular bettors that he planned to leave a March 2023 game early – a move everyone involved knew meant he would not reach his statistical benchmarks for the game. They could then place bets that he wouldn’t hit those marks.

In baseball, meanwhile, Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians was placed on leave during the 2025 season and is under investigation for possibly illegally wagering on the outcome of two pitches he threw. MLB authorities are essentially trying to determine if he deliberately threw balls as opposed to strikes in two instances. (Yes, prop bets have become so granular that you can even bet on whether a pitcher will throw a ball or a strike on an individual pitch.)

An exploding market with no end in sight

The popularity of prop bets feeds into a worldwide sports gambling industry that has experienced explosive growth and shows no sign of slowing.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 ruled that states could decide on whether to allow sports betting, 39 states plus the District of Columbia have done so.

The leagues and media are more than just bystanders. FanDuel and DraftKings are official sports betting partners of the NBA and the NFL.

In the days after the Supreme Court ruling, I wondered whether journalists would embrace sports betting. These days, ESPN not only has a betting show, but it also has a betting app.

According to the American Gaming Association, sportsbooks collected a record $13.71 billion in revenue in 2024 from about $150 billion in wagers. A study released in February 2025 by Siena and St. Bonaventure universities found that nearly half of American men have an online sports betting account.

But those figures don’t begin to touch the worldwide sports betting market, especially the illegal one. The United Nations, in a 2021 report, reported that up to $1.7 trillion is wagered annually in illegal betting markets.

The U.N. report warned that it had found a “staggering scale, manifestation, and complexity of corruption and organized crime in sport at the global, regional, and national levels.”

Who’s the boss?

In early October 2025, I attended a conference of Play the Game, a Denmark-based organization that promotes “democratic values in world sports.” Its occasional gatherings attract experts from around the world who are interested in keeping sports fair and safe for everyone.

One of the most sobering topics was illegal, online sportsbooks that feature wagering on all levels of sport, from the lowest levels of European soccer on up.

It sounded somewhat familiar. This summer at the Little League World Series, which my students covered for The Associated Press, managers complained about offshore sportsbooks offering lines on the tournament, which is played by 12-year-old amateurs.

And with so much illegal wagering in the world, the issue of match fixing was bound to come up.

One session screened a recent German documentary on match fixing. Meanwhile, Anca-Maria Gherghel, a Ph.D. candidate at Sheffield Hallam University and senior researcher for EPIC Global Solutions, both in northern England, told me how she had interviewed a professional female soccer player for a team in Cyprus. The player described how she and her teammates were routinely approached with lucrative offers to throw matches.

Put it all together – the vast sums of money at play and the relative ease of fixing a prop bet, let alone a match – and you cannot be surprised at the NBA scandal.

I used to think that gambling was just a segment of the larger sports industry. Now, I wonder whether I had it exactly backward.

Has sports just become a segment of the larger gambling industry?

John Affleck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the explosion of prop betting risks threatening the integrity of pro sports – https://theconversation.com/how-the-explosion-of-prop-betting-risks-threatening-the-integrity-of-pro-sports-268340

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Guowei (Wayne) Tu, Ph.D. Student in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan

People have been using flat, ribbonlike materials, such as reed strips, to make woven baskets for thousands of years. This weaving method has reemerged as a technique for engineers to create textile and fabric structures with complex geometry. While beautiful and intricate, these baskets can also be surprisingly strong.

We are a team of structures and materials scientists at the University of Michigan. We wanted to figure out how basketlike structures that use traditional weaving techniques can be so sturdy, load-bearing and resilient.

To explore the resilience of baskets, we designed a series of small woven units that can be assembled into larger structures. These woven designs provide almost the same stiffness as nonwoven structures, such as plastic bins. They also do not fracture and fail when bent and twisted the way nonwoven, continuous systems (made out of a continuous sheet material) do.

Our basketlike woven structures have many potential applications, including tiny robots that are very damage resilient – these robots can be run over by a car and still do not fail. We could also make woven clothes to help protect people from severe impacts such as car crashes. We made these woven structures using Mylar (a type of polymer material), wood and steel.

Testing woven baskets

Early humans made baskets by weaving slender strips of bark or reeds, and some Indigenous societies use these techniques today. Basket weaving was an efficient way to turn one-dimensional strips into three-dimensional containers.

This geometric benefit is a direct motivation for basket weaving, but in our study published in August 2025 in Physical Review Research, we wanted to find out whether basket weaving can provide more than aesthetic value in modern science and engineering.

In our experiment, we compared woven and nonwoven containers that had the same overall shape and were fabricated using the same amount and type of materials.

The “ribbons” we used were 10 millimeters wide and two-tenths of a millimeter thick. They were always woven in the same over/under/over/under pattern. We wove baskets from the flat ribbons and then created models using 3D scans of these woven containers that helped us examine the underlying similarities and differences between the woven and continuous structures.

We found that these containers had similar stiffness to containers not made from woven materials, and they also went back to their initial shape after we bent or twisted them.

When you place a heavy object on a woven structure, the ribbons are mainly being stretched instead of bent. This stretching makes them stiff because ribbons are much stiffer when they are stretched compared to bent. On top of that, the ribbons are not rigidly connected in woven structures, which gives them their extraordinary resilience.

By harnessing basket-weaving techniques, engineers can potentially create better materials for cars, consumer devices such as smartwatches, and soft robots, which are robots made from soft materials instead of rigid ones. Essentially, these techniques could improve any device when the material needs to be stiff and resilient.

What’s next

Our research team is still exploring a few big, unanswered questions about these woven baskets.

First, we want to understand how the geometry of the woven baskets determines their stiffness and resilience, and create an analytical or numerical model to describe this relationship. We’d then like to use that model to design woven structures that fit a target stiffness and resilience. Most woven baskets are handmade because their geometry is complex and difficult for a machine to manufacture.

Second, we’d like to figure out how to create a machine that can fabricate woven baskets autonomously. Automated machines can produce two-dimensional woven fabrics, but we’d like to learn how to modernize and digitalize the ancient craft of three-dimensional basket weaving.

Third, we want to understand how to integrate electronic materials into three-dimensional basket weaving to create next-generation robotic textiles. These robotic textiles could sense, actuate, move around, bear a load, stay resilient to accidental overload and safely interact with humans at the same time.

Basket-weaving research and applications

Ours isn’t the only study exploring the complex geometry of basket weaving and the potential of applying basket-weaving techniques to architectural design.

For example, researchers teamed up with an artist to tweak a popular basket-weaving approach, finding ways to weave the ribbons and produce any curvature they desired. Later, the same research team used this methodology to fabricate woven domes. They found that they could tune the stiffness and stability of woven domes by varying the curvature of the ribbons.

In another relevant study, researchers built algorithms that optimized the size, shape and curvature of ribbons, then used those ribbons to weave together a geometrically sophisticated structure.

Our new work and these other teams’ work is putting a modern spin on technology that has likely been around since the dawn of humanity.

Evgueni Filipov has received research funding from AFOSR.

Guowei (Wayne) Tu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Woven baskets aren’t just aesthetically pleasing – materials science research finds they’re sturdier and more resilient than stiff containers – https://theconversation.com/woven-baskets-arent-just-aesthetically-pleasing-materials-science-research-finds-theyre-sturdier-and-more-resilient-than-stiff-containers-265567

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rahim Kurwa, Associate professor of Sociology, University of Illinois Chicago

The U.S. housing market has been ensnared in a growing affordability crisis for decades.

The problem has gotten dramatically worse in recent years. Since 2019, home prices are up 60% nationwide. A record-high 22 million renters are “cost-burdened” – spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

Meanwhile, stagnant wages, limited housing supply and lagging federal assistance have helped leave more than 770,000 Americans homeless.

Despite these varied reasons, Vice President JD Vance has blamed the housing affordability crisis on undocumented immigrants. In August 2025, he attributed rising housing costs to immigration: “You cannot flood the United States of America with … people who have no legal right to be here, have them compete against young American families for homes, and not expect the price to skyrocket.”

Deportations, he argued, would lower housing prices. “Why has housing leveled off over the past six months? I really believe the main driver is … negative net migration.”

Despite Vance’s claims, research shows that immigration is not a substantial cause of unaffordable housing. In fact, studies have found that deportations exacerbate housing shortages through reductions in the construction workforce, which lead to lower production of housing units and higher prices.

From this perspective, its hard to see the administration’s deportation policy as a real effort to solve the housing crisis. Rather, it is using the housing crisis as a way to justify mass deportations to the public.

The current administration’s anti-immigrant housing policy reflects a long history of xenophobia in housing. As a sociologist of housing, I’ve traced the history of racial segregation in housing in Los Angeles County. I have found that the same far-right groups that sought to defeat public housing construction and maintain racially restrictive agreements in post-World War II Los Angeles also advocated to ban immigrants from U.S. housing programs.

Earlier anti-immigrant housing plans

Among the leaders of these efforts was the far-right politician and activist Gerald L.K. Smith. Described in 1976 by historian John Morton Blum as “the most infamous American fascist,” Smith helped bridge the American right’s 1940s conspiratorial and isolationist America First era and its 1960s anti-civil rights era.

Smith traveled the country advocating a Christian nationalist vision for American society, offering a religious justification for anti-communism and opposition to civil rights. He also ran for president unsuccessfully in 1944, 1948 and 1956.

After settling in Los Angeles in 1953, Smith led Red Scare campaigns – driven by hostility to communism – across the country.

In my research, I found that Smith was an early proponent of anti-immigrant housing policy. His 10 principles included a call to “Stop immigration in order that American jobs and American houses may be safeguarded for American citizens.” Elsewhere he called to “Release housing units occupied by aliens in order that they may be occupied by veterans and other American citizens.”

Smith wasn’t alone. His efforts were part of a broader environment in which public officials and local media worked to stop construction of public housing in Los Angeles in the 1950s, accusing its proponents of communism.

Recent anti-immigrant policy in housing

State and federal policymakers have also incorporated anti-immigrant stances into American housing policy over the past half-century.

The 1980 Housing and Community Development Act was the first federal legislation to specifically bar undocumented immigrants from public housing programs. Welfare reform in 1996 further restricted public housing assistance to only legal permanent residents and those with asylum or refugee status.

Echoing the alien land laws of the late 1800s that prohibited foreign property ownership, policymakers in the 2000s in states such as Pennsylvania and Texas passed laws forcing landlords to check immigration status as a condition of rental – though this was struck down by the courts.

Today, immigrant tenants experience fewer housing rights than citizens. These inequalities fall particularly hard on unauthorized immigrants who experience high rates of housing cost burden, crowding and poor housing conditions.

The Trump administration aims to expand restrictions on immigrants in public housing even further. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is in the process of adopting rules that will evict entire families if even one member is ineligible for assistance based on immigration status. Current law allows those families to live in public housing, while prorating their benefits to account for an ineligible member.

From Smith to Vance, anti-immigrant housing policies have been cast as a way for citizens to get more housing. But they fail to prevent or solve the housing shortage driving the crisis.

For example, the Trump administration’s effort to evict mixed status families from public housing will affect roughly 25,000 households. Setting aside the fact that those families may then be made homeless, that number is only one-tenth the amount of housing that the U.S. has lost due to the defunding and demolishing of public housing since 1990.

Indeed, many of the Trump administration’s immigration and economic policies are likely to exacerbate the housing crisis. The Trump administration has made deportation a priority and has significantly increased deportation rates compared to recent years, while instituting historically high tariffs on imports.

Deportations reduce the housing construction workforce, lowering the number of units built and increasing costs. And tariffs raise prices on building materials such as lumber, steel and aluminum. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that recent tariffs have raised building costs by US$10,900 per home.

In early 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency canceled or delayed a series of HUD grants for housing assistance programs. And the Trump administration has announced plans for more cuts to the nation’s already insufficient housing assistance budget.

Vance, like Smith before him, presents the issue like a pie, where citizens can get a larger slice only by deporting immigrants. But the reality is that the pie can be bigger: The government can fully fund the housing needs of all Americans for less than it has spent on its other priorities. The recently passed “big, beautiful bill,” for example, allocates more funding to border and interior enforcement per year than key rental assistance programs, public housing and Housing Choice Vouchers allocate for housing.

In Smith’s time, everyday Americans resisted this gambit, speaking out to protest his views. Today, as Smith’s anti-immigration housing ideas have ascended to the national stage, the housing justice community is speaking out against anti-immigrant housing policy and offering an alternative vision of how the U.S. can provide housing for all.

Rahim Kurwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant housing policy reflects a long history of xenophobia in public housing – https://theconversation.com/the-trump-administrations-anti-immigrant-housing-policy-reflects-a-long-history-of-xenophobia-in-public-housing-263860

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Stanley S. Litow, Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

No industry has perhaps felt the negative effect of a radical shift in federal policy under the second Trump administration more than higher education.

Many American colleges and universities, especially public institutions, have experienced swift and extensive federal cuts to grants, research and other programs in 2025.

Meanwhile, new restrictive immigration policies have prevented many international students from enrolling in public and private universities. Universities and colleges are also facing other various other challenges – like the threat to academic freedom.

These shifts coincide with the broader, increasingly amplified argument that getting a college degree does not matter, after all. A September 2025 Gallup poll shows that while 35% of people rated college as “very important,” another 40% said it is “fairly important,” and 24% said it is “not too important.”

By comparison, 75% of surveyed people in 2010 said that college was “very important,” while 21% said it was “fairly important” and 4% said it is “not too important.”

Still, as a scholar of education, economic development and social issues, I know that there is ample and growing evidence that a college degree is still very much worth it. Graduating from college is directly connected to higher entry-level wages and long-term career success.

A growing gap

Some people argue that a college degree does not matter, since there might not be enough jobs for college graduates and other workers, given the growth of artificial intelligence, for example. Some clear evidence shows otherwise.

An estimated 18.4 million workers with a college degree in the U.S. will retire from now through 2032, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. This is far greater than the 13.8 million workers who will enter the workforce with college degrees during this same time frame.

Meanwhile, an additional 700,00 new jobs that require college degrees – spanning from environmental positions to advanced manufacturing – will be created from now through 2032.

The gap between those expected to leave and enter the workforce with college degrees creates a serious problem. One major question is whether there will be enough people to fill the available jobs that require a college degree.

In 2023, foreign-born people made up 16% of registered nurses in the U.S., though that percentage is higher in certain states, like California. But restrictions on immigration could limit the number of potential nurses able to fill open positions.

Nursing and teaching are two fields expected to grow over the next few decades, and they will require more workers due to retirements.

Other fields, like accounting, engineering, law and many others, are also expected to have more college-educated workers retire than there are new workers to fill their positions.

Worth the cost

The average annual salary of a college graduate from the class of 2023 was US$64,291 in 2024, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The overall average salary for this graduation class one year after they left school marked an increase from the average $60,028 that the class of 2022 earned in 2023, equivalent to $63,850 today.

While there is not available data that offers a direct comparison, full-time, year-round workers ages 25 to 34 with a high school diploma earned $41,800 in median annual earnings in 2022, or $46,100 today.

Overall lifetime earnings for those with college degrees is about about $1.2 million more than people with a high school make, according to the recent Georgetown findings.

People who earn more generally have more money to support their families and contribute to their immediate communities. Their higher taxes also contribute to the U.S. economy, supporting needed services like education, public safety and health care.

People with college degrees are also more likely than those who are not college graduates to vote, volunteer and make charitable donations to help others in need.

College matters for individuals, but it clearly also helps improve the economy.

With 64 public colleges across the state, the State University of New York system is the largest post-secondary network of higher education schools in the country. For every $1 the state of New York invests in SUNY, the SUNY system returns $8.70 to the state in terms of economic growth, according to 2024 findings by the Rockefeller Institute, an independent public policy research organization affiliated with SUNY. And that is only one state.

A new way forward

It isn’t likely that the expected number of college-educated people who will soon retire will suddenly decrease, or that the anticipated number of people entering the workforce will unexpectedly increase.

There are practical reasons why some people do not want to go to college, or cannot attend. Indeed, the percentage of young people enrolled as college undergraduates fell almost 15% from 2010 through 2022.

For one, tuition and fees at private colleges have increased about 32% since 2006, after adjusting for inflation. And in-state tuition and fees at public universities have also grown about 29% since 2006.

The total of federal student loan debt for college has also tripled since 2007. It stood at about $1.84 trillion in 2024.

I believe that in order to ensure enough college-educated people can fill the anticipated work openings in the future, universities and the government should embrace needed changes to increase both enrollment and completion rates.

Artificial intelligence will transform work worldwide, for example, and that shift should be incorporated into higher education curriculum and degrees. Soft skills – like problem-solving, collaboration, presentation and writing skills – will become more important and should be prioritized in the learning process.

I believe that universities should also prioritize experiential education, including paid internships that offer students academic credit. This can help students gain experience that is both accredited and is connected to direct career pathways.

Universities and high schools could also expand how much they offer microcredentials – or short, focused learning programs that offer practical skills in a specific area – so students can connect their education with clear career pathways.

These reforms aren’t easy. They require a commitment to change, and all of this work will require deep partnerships with the government. While that might be a heavy lift currently at the federal level, it is both possible and achievable to make advances on these and other changes at the state level.

American universities and colleges have always been key to preparing the workforce for economic opportunity. At the end of World War II, for example, Columbia University and IBM worked together to help create the academic discipline now called computer science.

This action did more than help one university or one employer. It fueled change across higher education and across private companies and the government, leading to massive economic growth.

Universities have made countless other contributions to strengthen and expand the economy. Considering solutions to some of the challenges that stop students from going to college could help ensure that more students see the value in a college education – and a tangible way for them to connect it to a future career.

Stanley S. Litow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Despite naysayers and rising costs, data shows that college still pays off for students – and society overall – https://theconversation.com/despite-naysayers-and-rising-costs-data-shows-that-college-still-pays-off-for-students-and-society-overall-267612