Author: administración
I recorded a conversation with Troy Eckard this week, and halfway through he stopped and turned the question around on me. He said when he stands in front of a room of 100 physicians, maybe 5 will talk to him. The other 95 find somewhere else to be. Four decades in oil and gas, and it still baffles him. He wanted to know why. I told him what I actually think, which is that it’s an information problem. There isn’t much reliable information out there about this space. Most of what you can find comes from people who have something…
High-yield savings account rates held steady to start Septmeber. With the Fed looking at rate increases this week, banks are using this opportunity to capture savers.As of September 14, 2026, some online banks are still offering interest rates up to 4.15% APY. This is still much better than the average of 0.38% APY, according to the FDIC.Banks and credit unions are constantly adjusting their annual percentage yields (APYs) as markets react to Federal Reserve policy and inflation data, so staying up to date can make a real difference. Here’s where the best savings rates stand today — and what you…
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued joint findings last week that the University of California, Berkeley School of Law discriminates against white and Asian applicants in admissions. The agencies say the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Investigators point to application questions that asked for racial identity, essay prompts that could be used to identify race, and a practice of grouping admitted students by “primary identity” when assigning them to classes. Berkeley School of Law…
Borrowing for a college education often means making a financial decision today based partly on something you can’t yet know: how difficult loan repayment will be. That’s why a growing number of colleges and universities offer a financial safety net designed to reduce some of that uncertainty. It’s called a Loan Repayment Assistance Program, or LRAP. If you graduate and make below a certain threshold (often around $55,000 per year) the program can reimburse some or all of your eligible student loan payments. Students don’t pay for the coverage. Colleges purchase LRAPs and offer them to some or all incoming…
The Gulf of Mexico is studded with roughly 1,300 fixed platforms, most of them past their productive prime, and each one is legally required to come down once the wells beneath it stop paying. Removing a single deepwater platform can cost tens of millions of dollars and takes explosives, heavy-lift vessels and years of permitting. A new research effort out of the Gulf Coast is asking a different question: what if some of that steel is worth more standing than scrapped? In April 2026, the Gulf Offshore Research Institute (GORI), a Mandeville, Louisiana-based nonprofit, announced it had been named one…
Hey Everyone! I just realized it’s been 30 years since I moved to Portland. Wow, that feels like a lifetime ago.In 1996, I graduated from UCSB and moved up to Portland to start a job at Intel. It was a golden era for us (me and Intel). The internet was ramping up, and it was a great time to be a young engineer. All my college friends were able to secure jobs relatively easily. Ahh, what I would give to be 22 again! Life was so much fun when I was young.It’s a very different story in the age of…
Have you ever wondered if you can actually make money playing games on your phone? I recently decided to test this out with American Consumer Opinion. I played a game on my phone for about one week, answered a few surveys, and then tried to cash out my earnings. My result? I earned $14.44 in… Have you ever wondered if you can actually make money playing games on your phone? I recently decided to test this out with American Consumer Opinion. I played a game on my phone for about one week, answered a few surveys, and then tried to…
Wellesley College announced that families earning under $200,000 a year will pay no tuition beginning in fall 2027, under a policy it is calling the Wellesley Tuition Promise. The threshold replaces the $150,000 cutoff the college adopted for this fall, a jump of $50,000 in eligibility less than nine months later. Wellesley now sits alongside the small group of endowment-heavy institutions that have pushed free tuition into six-figure household income territory. Tuition alone for the 2026-27 academic year runs $72,570, with housing at $12,020, meals at $11,186 and a $360 activity fee on top. Dean of Admission and Financial Aid…
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the 2027-28 school year opens October 1, 2026, and closes June 30, 2028. If you’ll be in school between July 1, 2027 and June 30, 2028, that’s your form. If you’re asking about this school year (2026-27), that form opened last September and is due June 30, 2027.Neither federal date is the one that matters. States and colleges set their own deadlines, many of them in the first quarter of 2027, and a lot of state grant money is first-come, first-served. Filing early is how you get Pell Grants, state grants,…
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) introduced companion bills on last month that would block federal student aid from programs whose graduates cannot qualify for the jobs those programs advertise. S. 5021 went to the Senate HELP Committee with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) cosponsoring, and H.R. 9748 went to House Education and Workforce with Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) signed on. Both texts are identical, and both are titled the Protecting Students from Worthless Degrees Act. This bill seeks to solve the same problem that federal borrower defense to repayment loan forgiveness tries to…