Happy Friday! This week, we ponder the question: What happens when your college closes? But first…
📡ON OUR RADAR
Brace for branding chaos: Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain in 2024, as will Minnie Mouse and Tigger. Disney successfully lobbied for the Copyright Term Extension Act, passed in 1998, but now Mickey will be free to use.
Beleaguered brand Tesla is recalling nearly all 2 million of its cars in the US following a mandate from federal safety regulators citing nearly 1,000 crashes in which Tesla’s Autopilot feature was engaged.
Island nations are taking a stand against the draft agreement revealed at this week’s U.N. Climate Change Conference. The released draft was noticeably missing a call to phase out fossil fuels, the leading cause of rising sea levels and global temperatures.
💡ON OUR MINDS: The Old College Try
Image: TikTok: @peace.love.gentry, @juliaspeaks, @alyse_marie17
This week, Bloomberg broke down the failing economics of small-scale higher education. The chief takeaway: more and more small schools are experiencing lower enrollment numbers amidst, you guessed it, higher costs.
Due to economic hardship, nearly a hundred U.S. private colleges have closed, merged with another school, or announced plans to close since 2016, according to CNBC.
The impacts of small college failures are big: Chiefly, it’s bad for degree-seeking students and local economies of college towns losing what is effectively their anchor tenant.
It’s also bad news for the small liberal arts college, a model of higher education that might become an endangered species despite its intellectual rigor as students simply choose to enroll elsewhere.
If you’re wondering how the students are reacting, they’re doing it the only way Gen-Z can: TikTokking their way through the pain.
🥊QUICK HITS:
In case you missed these reads.
The latest Gen-Z craze: It’s tougher by the hour to get ahold of a $13.99 Snoopy toy, wearing a little blue puffer and a striped hat, available exclusively at CVS.
The results are in for Google's year-in-review, and no surprise: Barbenheimer was on everyone’s mind—and in everyone’s search bar—this year.
El Salvador is rolling out its Freedom Visa program, inviting Bitcoin millionaires to help contribute to the nation’s growth.
Thanks for reading,
HL
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