The “God Debate” is big at colleges and in the media, especially with the publication of such bestsellers as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great. Below are some of the more thought-provoking video interviews and scholarly debates on the Internet concerned with atheism. Enjoy!

1. William Crawley interviews Richard Dawkins [[poor quality recording but great interview]]

- Interview Part 1
- Interview Part 2
- Interview Part 3

2. William Crawley interviews Peter Singer

- Interview Part 1
- Interview Part 2
- Interview Part 3

3. Interviews about the existence of God, including with Alvin Plantinga and Steven Weinberg

- Interview Part 1
- Interview Part 2
- Interview Part 3

4. Richard Dawkins interviews Alister McGrath (for Root of All Evil)

- Interview link

5. Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens debate

- Debate link

6. Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett

- Interview Part 1
- Interview Part 2
- Interview Part 3
- Interview Part 4
- Interview Part 5
- Interview Part 6
- Interview Part 7
- Interview Part 8

7. Interview with John Polkinghorne

- Interview Part 1
- Interview Part 2
- Interview Part 3

8. Reza Aslan and Sam Harris conversation

- Conversation Part 1
- Conversation Part 2
- Conversation Part 3
- Conversation Part 4
- Conversation Part 5

9. Michael Shermer and John Lennox debate

- Debate Part 1
- Debate Part 2
- Debate Part 3
- Debate Part 4
- Debate Part 5
- Debate Part 6
- Debate Part 7
- Debate Part 8
- Debate Part 9
- Debate Part 10

10. William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman debate

- Debate Part 1
- Debate Part 2
- Debate Part 3
- Debate Part 4
- Debate Part 5
- Debate Part 6
- Debate Part 7
- Debate Part 8
- Debate Part 9
- Debate Part 10
- Debate Part 11
- Debate Part 12

Pell Grants are government funds issued to students in financial need to help cover their cost of a college education. The government has lately been pumping lots of money into Pell Grants. So lots more students are now able to afford a college education, right?

Not so fast. Because the government is pumping money into Pell Grants, colleges and universities now have more access to government funds. With more money available to them, they can charge more. And so tuitions and other costs of education are going up, making college less affordable (certainly to those who can’t demonstrate financial need and thus can’t get Pell Grants).

According to Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education,

colleges and universities need to get tuition under control. He likened the trends in costs and federal aid to a treadmill, where prices rise, federal money gets pumped in, and costs increase again.

“Unless governors and legislatures stiffen their spines and not allow schools to pass so much of the cost on to families, we are never going to make a dent in access and affordability,” said Mr. Callan, whose research group tracks higher-education issues.

There’s a cool website called “Top 500″ that keeps track of the 500 top supercomputers in the world. For some years now the U.S. has captured the top spot. That’s about to change (see here). Although Oak Ridge’s “Jaguar” computer still comes out on top in the speed with which it computes standard algebraic problems (called “Linpack”), peak performance now belongs to China’s “Nebulae” machine.

The Wall Street Journal, reporting on this change of fortunes, states:

[The new Chineses machine] should serve as a wake-up call that China is threatening to take the lead in scientific computing—akin to a machine from Japan that took the No. 1 position early in the past decade and triggered increased U.S. investment in the field.

“It’s definitely a game-changer in the high performance market,” said Mark Seager, chief technology officer for computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “This is a phase transition, representative of the shift of economic competitiveness from the West to the East.”

Why is all this important here at SuperScholar? Lead in technology tends to reflect lead in scientific research and education. The U.S. has consistently had the top research universities over the last 60 years. That may begin slipping as the U.S. lets its lead in technology slip.

A musician born almost 100 years ago recently emailed:

When I was accepted at Harvard in 1935, with a nice telegram from James Bryant Conant on the night of my HS graduation, I had an IQ between 147-152. No longer. Did not receive my expected scholarship at the last moment, and accepted one at Eastman School of Music. Harvard tuition in 1935: $400.00 per year; Eastman School of Music: $300.00.

Fast forward to the mid 1970s, and Harvard’s tuition was around $4,000 per year.

Fast forward to now, and it’s close to $35,000, with total costs for the year (room, board, and supplies) approaching $50,000.

How did tuitions go up so much? Lots of factors, among them (1) competition among schools to outdo each other, which requires fancier facilities and perks that drive up costs; (2) supply and demand — education has become a commodity with a significant payoff for future earning — schools can afford to charge more; (3) high-priced prestige items sometimes sell better when they’re priced higher (“look at me, I can afford it and you can’t”); (4) availability of government loans, which allow students to pay tuitions that otherwise they couldn’t afford.

Harvard tuition has gone up almost 100-fold since 1935. This is way more than inflation. It makes you wonder how long this can continue…

Homeschooling a handicap? Yes, if it prejudices a university selection committee against your acceptance. The homeschooled student may have had a better education, but in today’s cultural climate, that may not be the selling point that one would expect.

Homeschooling’s performance

Generally, homeschooling is associated with higher academic achievement. There’s no magic in that. A family that will forego earnings, sacrifice adult time, and work with a homeschooling community to ensure that their children get the best education is less likely to be disappointed than one that simply drops the child off at kindergarten on registration day and hopes for the best, not the worst.

Homeschooling’s reputation is another matter

The reputation among some academics is that homeschooling is a threat because dangerous, fundamentalist parents are indoctrinating their socially deprived offspring into theocracy. At the same time, they say, homeschooling weakens the public school system by depriving it of capable pupils and their resourceful parents …

This reaction is pure prejudice, if not paranoia. Many are unaware that homeschooling was originally started by educated, left-leaning parents, but increasingly taken up by others who could not find adequate schools for their children, especially in districts bedeviled by financially or ideologically driven interest groups, political gridlock that prevents reform, or state budget cuts.

There is anecdotal evidence of rejection of homeschooling professors as well as homeschooled students. One academic recounts (on condition of anonymity),

A bias [in the academy], and one only beginning to be recognized, is the homeschooling bias. That is, professors who home school are treated as suspicious by faculty hiring.

I was rejected for a tenure-track position … . Nevertheless, as a visiting prof, I was permitted in the faculty deliberations on the next five (!) candidates they interviewed, and was astonished that one candidate was rejected out-of-hand for having 5 kids and homeschooling.

If you are homeschooled, is all lost? No.

Here are some ways to get around the problem:

Don’t gratuitously advertise the fact you were homeschooled, and certainly don’t say that homeschooling is better or that your local public school is rotten (even if a big media exposé features it). In a neutral way, stress the practical reasons for your family’s choice. This strategy will not prevent prejudice, but may avoid providing a trigger for it.

Proactively, write international aptitude tests, where possible and relevant, as well as any recognized tests suggested by your administration. Be sure to sign up for some non-political, non-religious clubs, to undermine the prejudice that you are undersocialized or driven by ideological causes. Team sports are a good choice, where practicable. Above all, stress your career goals, and how you think you and the institution would be a good fit. And if a given institution still does not want you, there will certainly be one that does.

Do you need a degree? The question isn’t whether somebody else needs a degree, but whether you do. It’s your time, your life. Let’s evaluate the opportunities in a practical way. Here are ten issues to consider carefully:

Continued…

Today, students commonly save money by living off campus, even during the first year (27%). The US Department of Education advises that about 30% of approximately 18,000,000 students live off campus in rental housing. Essentially, you can save money and often snag better living conditions by leveraging your brainpower.

Continued…