Public-service agencies like Teach for America are seeing a surge in applications from college graduates amid a worsening job market.

There's another impulse behind this generation's embrace of nontraditional postgraduate employment: a simple desire to change the world.

With the country's uncertain economy, financial education is expanding to younger kids, even grade-school students. This summer, school-age children will attend finance camp, where they'll learn how to rebalance portfolios and invest in real estate.

Not-so-recent college graduates are demanding more career assistance from their former schools as they face tougher employment markets, and universities have begun to respond by creating job-search programs.

School administrators nationwide are budgeting rising fuel costs for buses into the school year. But the price of running these vehicles has a direct impact beyond the bus, including cutbacks on ordering new textbooks.

Parents and students alike aren't only stressed about how they're going to pay for college. They want to know what the student should be doing now to make sure they can afford to pay the bills after college, writes Terri Cullen.

The 529 plan has provided tax benefits for years. Now a growing number of colleges are using it as a recruiting tool. Hundreds of schools are offering tuition discounts and even scholarships for families that put money aside.

The increasing competitiveness of college admissions -- fueled by a demographic surge in the number of teenagers -- has made junior year a crucible of academic pressure for many ambitious students aiming for elite colleges.

An education study refuted the argument that classroom gains by girls have come at the expense of boys.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, universities are trying to keep an eye out for student writings that foretell campus violence. But their vigilance raises the prospect of infringing on students' rights.

Harvard students have caught start-up fever since Facebook -- founded when creator Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard in 2004 -- exploded in popularity. Current students and alumni are using the site as a business model.

Has the U.S. created an "education bubble" fueled by easy money and overborrowing by families desperate to pay rising tuition costs? (Discuss.)