Data show that a college education gives graduates enhanced job opportunities and income over the course of a lifetime — especially for those working in technical fields. But it is difficult to say whether a talented high school senior would necessarily earn more by graduating from an elite college than by graduating from a less selective one.

With the first-ever election of an African-American president, a debate began immediately about what this signaled in terms of American racial progress, and whether or not a “post-racial” society might be closer to realization. To test attitudes about the meaning of this event in real time, researchers at the University of Michigan surveyed the same random representative sample of the population directly before and after President Obama’s election.

What role did social media play in the Arab Spring? Cyberskeptics and cyberoptimists alike debate the degree to which the 2010-2011 revolutions in Arab countries were powered by social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

U.S. inner-city schools often receive the lion’s share of attention from education reformers and charter school founders, but rural schools educate up to a third of America’s public school students and face challenges just as daunting as their urban counterparts.