President Barack Obama’s dream of making the United States the number one developed country in the world by 2025 might take some time to be realized, based on an article in The New York Times.

A country’s rank depends on multiple variables, including the number of people with college degrees. According to the Times‘ article, the rate in which the United States is gaining college graduates gives little chance for Mr. Obama’s goal to be realized, at least not by 2025. The United States current rank is 12th in the world, with a rate of 41.6% of people ages 25 to 34 with Associate Degrees or higher. According to the article:

“From 2000 to 2009, the report noted, the percentage of adults with associate degrees or higher increased by just 3 percent. If that pace holds steady, by 2025 the United States will fall nine percentage points below the president’s goal, with 46 percent of adults holding college degrees.”

North Korea  is number one on the list with a rate of 57.9%.

The report does offer solutions in the form of a 10-step plan you can read below:

Robyn Gee, Turnstyle News

With election season on a roll, it’s time to look at strategy -- and President Obama’s Facebook page has over 22 million “likes.” The Atlantic reports that Facebook hired five GOP strategists to join their outreach team in an effort to amplify their Republican presence, and not seem so disconnected to the Democratic party.

As of now, Republican candidates aren’t quite keeping up. Mitt Romney’s page has one million likes, and Michelle Bachman’s page doesn’t have a picture.

Obama attracted a lot of young voters for the 2008 election with his social media savvy. Studies have shown that college students who are politically vocal on Facebook are likely to be involved in other forms of political activity, and in general, the Pew Research Center writes that Facebook users are generally more politically engaged than most people. But Facebook is not just young people any more.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center called, “Social Networking and Our Lives,” over half of Facebook’s users are over the age of 35. We have seen Facebook take an active role in journalism with the creation of Facebook for Journalists; now Facebook is owning its role in politics by reaching out to these GOP strategists to help their party “get in the game.”

In 2008, President Barack Obama promised that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in the summer of 2011, and troops would be coming home from the Middle East. Summer's almost here. What will these new veterans do next? And are we ready to support them financially with open arms?

This is the third year that the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill will be available to veterans as an educational grant. The bill pays for a veteran’s tuition and fees, provides a housing allowance, and a stipend for books and supplies. Since the bill was made available in 2009, the amount of veterans taking advantage of it has increased by thousands.

According to the National Center for Veteran Analysis and Statistics (NCVAS), 34,393 veterans took advantage of the Post 9.11 G.I. Bill in 2009, and that number jumped to 221,900 veterans in 2010. Imagine how many new student veterans will claim this benefit for the next academic year.

What Veterans Are Facing

For veterans that have their sights set on a diploma, the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill is a godsend. However, taking advantage of this grant can be hell. Coming out of a rigid, no slack environment, where most decisions are made by someone of a higher rank - it’s now up to the veteran to:

a) choose a school

b) fill out applications

c) write the essays

d) take the SAT’s

e) retrieve your high school transcripts

f) take advantage of your veteran benefits... and the list goes on.

At San Francisco State University, the student veterans organization on campus has seen a 30 percent increase in numbers since 2009, according to Rogelio Manaois, the director of the Veteran Services Program at SFSU, and he expects more next year. J.P. Tremblay, Deputy Secretary at the California Department of Veterans Affairs said that on average, they see 30,000 vets come home each year, but he expects more this year.

At the UC Berkeley Veteran Center, Ron William’s door was open, and the flow of student veterans was steady. “If we could multiply Ron Williams by 300 it would be the best thing for us,” said Jose de Lara, 31, who served six years in the U.S. Navy, and is now pursuing philosophy. He said that having a mentor was the most important resource for someone making the transition from the service to school. Other veterans echoed him saying the veteran center where they could find a familiar community was essential to their success.

Unfortunately for De Lara and the other 300 + veterans at UC Berkeley, Williams serves student veterans as part of an unfunded mandate by the state of California, which requires every UC, CSU, and community college in the state of California to provide someone dedicated to retaining and recruiting student veterans. Williams serves this position on top of all his other responsibilities in the Transfer and Re-entry office at UC Berkeley. “It means that no college or university is getting any additional funds from the state to deliver these programs,” he said. Maintaining the program has been a challenge.

This week in California, teachers are claiming a “State of Emergency.” Their goal is to get Governor Jerry Brown to bump up taxes to keep the education budget steady. According to SFGate, hundreds of teachers marched in Sacramento yesterday to protest. Other events planned for this week include “grade-ins” at local malls intended to demonstrate the amount of time teachers spend working outside of the school day.

How to spend money on education is a national hot topic as well. President Barack Obama has pledged to boost the graduation rate and "out-educate" global competitors by meeting and exceeding international standards. So what’s the strategy?

Dave Eggers, author and founder of writing program 826 National, points out in an op-ed for the New York Times that our response to an education crisis is drastically different than our response to a defense crisis. “When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, ‘It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!’” he writes.

Instead, we blame the planners, strategists, and the secretary of defense. However, the trend in education is to blame the teachers for poor test scores and cut more money from the education budget.

In Eggers’ opinion, recruitment and fair treatment of teachers is key. Other countries with higher teacher salaries have better results - and are able to recruit their top college graduates into the field of teaching. (Check out an awesome infographic about teacher pay around the world.) BUT - most of all, these other countries trust their teachers. “They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem,” he writes.

The following was originally broadcast on WABE-FM, Atlanta.

By Kathleen Quillian

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(download mp3)

I was in third grade during the terrorists attacks of September 11th. Since then, I've always been aware of Osama Bin Laden but never frightened by him.

I don't see Bin Laden as a boogie man -- I think of him more as a character, parodied by shows such as South Park and Family Guy.

Bin Laden was not somebody my friends and I feared.

Growing up, news conversations have always revolved around certain key words -- war on terror, weapons of mass destruction, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. My generation has grown up with terror of one kind or another -- terror of another attack or of losing a loved one in war.

Yet the reason why we went to war in Afghanistan is still a bit unclear to me. I still have questions that are not easy to answer. Why are we sending more troops in? Why can't we send our troops home? Especially now that we have finally found and killed this so-called monster?

I feel like I know what's happening overseas, but I have become numb to it all. It's been going on since I was in third grade, so I know that one man's death isn't going to end it.

Previously on WABE:

* Note To Self: Listen To Mom!

* Life After Dropping Out Of College

* Free Speech To What Extent

By Zachary Valdez

Early Monday morning the news of Osama Bin Laden's death arrived here in Paris, along with the reactions of a rejoicing America -- scenes of celebration in D.C. and New York. But the jubilation in the United States, for American university students like me, raises the difficult question of how to react to the news on foreign soil: what is the appropriate response? 

Like many Parisians, I learned of Bin Laden's death on the radio Monday morning. And like all Americans, the remainder of the day was filled with bizarre moments of disbelief.  After a final exam where our professor made no mention of this news, I met with other American students to mull over the events.   However, instead of a reaction to the death of Bin Laden, we were reacting to those  initial images captured in D.C. and New York.

One student even described her shock seeing video of baseball fans who burst into chanting "U-S-A!" at a game Sunday, presumably after hearing the president's address.   Another student mused about how he would have imagined his response to be much stronger when this day, the death of Bin Laden, finally came. Instead, he feels that any celebration is almost certainly in vain, since there will undoubtedly be a new head to Al Qaeda.  

In fact, if the American students in Paris are not celebrating, it is perhaps because we are a world away from the US, unsure of how to react with our anchors back home -- the people we spoke to, the media we consulted -- now temporarily absent.  

For young people who were in elementary school on 9-11, they've grown up hearing about Osama Bin Laden and came of age during the War on Terror. Was he their generation's boogie man? Youth Radio reached out to young adults in three cities to find out.

I'm Tajah Jones in Oakland, California.

When I first think of a villain I think of the joker, not Osama Bin Laden.

Over the last decade, which is more than half of my life, Bin Laden was the face of terrorism. But Bin Laden and the war seemed distant from my everyday life. What affected me was the racial prejudice against Muslims and people of color following the September 11th attacks.

I remember when Barack Obama was running for president. There was a poster of Obama with a long beard and a turban. Beneath the image it read, “Obama Bin Laden.” The image shocked me as extreme propaganda. 

This really struck me when I visited my Muslim cousin in D.C. -- 6 years after 9/11. We went through airport security and my cousin, wearing a hijab, was unnecessarily questioned. As if simply being Muslim made her dangerous – a terrorist. Until then, I never associated being an American Muslim with Bin Laden. They seemed like two different things. People confuse Bin Laden’s actions with ordinary Muslims when they shouldn’t.

I've made racial and cultural assumptions myself, but being on the other end of it makes me stop and think.

I know he’s supposed to be the scariest man of our time, or the face of evil, but Osama Bin Laden didn’t scare me. The people who don’t question what they hear-- they scare me.

President Obama has made it clear over and over again that education is extremely important to him, so it is not a surprise that he’s challenging public schools in his 2011 Commencement Challenge to demonstrate how their school best prepares their students for college and a career.

This friendly challenge consists of submitting essay questions and statistical information that shows, “how schools are promoting college and career readiness for all students while establishing a culture of student success and academic excellence.”

Schools need to submitt their applications by March 11 at 11:59 pm EST.

Amid a news cycle dominated by the Gulf Oil spill and the President's response efforts, the White House is promoting a different advocacy effort this week.

“Children don’t need people to be perfect, they need people to be present,” said Michael Strautmanis, Chief of Staff to White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. Youth Radio’s Pendarvis Harshaw spoke to Strautmanis about the administration’s new effort, launched yesterday, to connect fathers with their children and promote strong families.

Listen to Youth Radio’s interview with Michael Strautmanis about The President's Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative.

(download mp3)

An estimated 900 buses from 28 states are fueling up in advance of Sunday’s immigration reform march in Washington DC. March For America organizers expect to surpass their goal of 50,000 attendees, but with health care reform stealing headlines, Youth Radio’s Denise Tejada asked Shuya Ohno, Deputy Communications Director for the coalition of march organizers, if there’s any chance they’ll achieve their bigger goal – getting immigration reform on the 2010 legislative calendar.

Denise Tejada: One of the things that makes the March For America unique is that so many immigrants are outing themselves as illegal. Why are so many young people doing that when it puts their futures at risk?

Shuya Ohno: Their futures have already been at risk. Many of them have known only this country; they don’t even remember having been born in another country. I meet young people all the time who were brought here as infants, one year old, two years old. So they grew up here and feel completely American, this is the only country know, the only culture they know. And yet because they don’t have that number, that social security number – just a few digits – they’ve had to live their whole lives in fear… Their coming out has been an incredibly powerful and empowering experience, even though you’re right that they are putting themselves at risk of being deported to a country that they’ve never known.

More after the jump