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FEMINIST ICON SAYS COLLEGE HAS BEEN OVERSOLD - Gloria Steinern, the icon of the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 70s, the founder of Ms. magazine and the Women's Media Center, wowed an audience at the National Press (Hub in Washington, D.C., in November with her energy, ideas and yes, stunning good looks (she is 79 - bom in 1934 - going on 39!). She also remains provocative. In answer to my question about if she regarded it as a "win, a good thing" that 60 percent-and-growing of college students are female (and an even higher percentage for Hispanic and black females), she repliai immediately: "It is not so much a problem about men but a fiict that college itself has been so oversold! Women should be able to have a wide range of jobs and equal salaries as men in the workplace without having to go to college (and go into huge debt)." It's a good point. New studies show that now increasingly, men are dropping out of college to work as apprentices, study part time at night, and get professional certificates, while women remain in college, incur huge debt in majors that increasingly won't enable them to pay back their debts if they even are able to land a job.

HISPANIC IMMIGRANT FAMILIES REMAIN RELATIVELY STRONG - In December the president switched from health care to a new/old focus on income equality in the United States (MSNBC) commentator Chuck Todd calls it his "deja pivot"). He emphasizes an increase in the minimum wage and more unemployment insurance. But a report by the department of sociology at Ohio State University last September puts the onus for poverty and income gaps on another factor altogether - "balkanized" American families. "For all U.S. bom children, living arrangement was a strong indicator of poverty," the report found. "Children are much less likely to live in poverty and instead more likely to benefit in education from family stability, increased parent time and higher economic resources," the study concludes. Among minorities, some 54 percent of Hispanic children were living in families with a married father and mother either both working (33 percent) or where only the father worked (21 percent). Only 29 percent of black children lived in such dual-income (24 percent) or single-income (5 percent) families. Similarly 9 percent of Hispanic children were living with their grandparents while 15 percent of black children did. "An overwhelming majority of immigrants' children, regardless of educational level, embrace marriage and eschew divorce, cohabitation and remarriage after divorce," the report concludes. "More children of immigrants live in traditional male-bread-winning, femalehomemaker types of families." This speaks well for the continuing growth in educational attainment for Hispanic kids.

HIGHER ED REALTHORKATION Will, DEPEND ON TWO UTTIE-KNOWNS - IWo highly regarded, community college and Hispanicoriented top officials in the US. Department of Education will be replaced by two relatively unknown educators who have fairly minimal experience in higher education. In 2014, the positions of undersecretary held by Martha Kanter - the first woman and former community college president to hold that post - and Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Eduardo Ochoa (who actually left in 2012 but hasn't been replaced) will be filled by nominees Ted Mitchell and Erika Miller respectively. Mitchell was at one time the president of Obama's alma mater Occidental College, but is now the CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund which focuses on K12 education. Miller is vice president of The Education Thist which also mainly focuses on K-12. Neither of the positions are policymaking, however, but rather implementation. And the reauthorization of the higher education act is going to focus on a key aspect of K-12 reform: teacher education. Obama's two nominees have superb backgrounds for that issue.

THE ONE UNIVERSAL WORD IN EVERY LANGUAGE - There is perhaps no greater challenge to globalization vs. national culture than language. There are many words that are simply untranslatable from one culture to another - even between Western cultures. Words like Ojala! in Spanish and Schadenfreude in German come to mind. But what about words for modem tech devises, such as a mobile phone for instance? In German mobile phones could be called a "Digitalhandgehoffendemobiltelefonapparat." Many Germans these days however shorten that to a "Handi." Recently a team of Dutch linguists worked to find a universal word used in all languages. "Mama" and "papa" were candidates. But the most common word in the world they found? It's "Huh?"

Margaret (Peggy Sands) Orchowski was a reporter for AP South America and for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. She earned a doctorate in international educational administration from the University of Califomia-Santa Barbara. She lives in Washington, D. C., where she was an editor at Congressional Quarterly and now is a freelance journalist and columnist covering Congress and higher education.