A 2007 Boston Globe report on college admissions data that has been making the rounds on Twitter lately reveals that “about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards,” most of whom “are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators and politicians topping the list.”

It may not always be obvious, but the union movement and progressive student activists share the same core values when it comes to fighting for social and economic justice for all people. Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka addressed more than 1,200 young activists at the 8th annual Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, D.C.:

Student loan borrowers shared a collective sigh of relief Friday afternoon when the House and Senate worked out a deal to halt student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1.

A little more than a day before the nation’s highway and transit projects would lose funding—threatening nearly 2 million jobs—and student loan interest rates were set to double, Congress acted.

The House (373-52) and Senate (74-19) this afternoon passed the two-year, $120 million Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012 that will protect more than 2 million jobs and expand a loan guarantee program that could create an additional 1 million jobs (mostly in the construction sector). The bill also keeps interest rates for college students on subsidized Stafford Loans at 3.4 percent. They were set to double on July 1 to 6.8 percent.

Most recent young college graduates are carrying a heavy debt load for their education, and they face a harder time paying it off because their wages have plummeted as well—part of a decade-long decline, according to a new Economic Snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

As college tuition steadily increases by an average of about 8 percent each year, more and more students and their families rely on student loans to help pay the escalating costs of obtaining a college degree. One in three college students takes out federal subsidized Stafford Loans when scholarships, grants and part-time jobs just aren’t enough to fund higher education.

Interest rates on subsidized Stafford Loans are set to double on July 1, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, unless Congress acts. Today, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic push to keep the rates at their current level—but the young people whose families and futures will be directly impacted by a rate hike are making sure their voices are heard on this critical issue.

"For Most Graduates, a Grueling Job Hunt Awaits," The Wall Street Journal writes today. Over the weekend, the New York Times sounded the alarm about employers' growing use of unpaid internships in fields that typically have never exploited free labor.

So, how bad is it for young workers?

Today in his weekly address to the nation, President Obama reiterated his call to Congress to act quickly to prevent interest rates on student loans for some 7.5 million students from doubling on July 1.

Instead, over the past few years, Republicans in Congress have voted against new ways to make college more affordable for middle-class families, and voted for huge new tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires—tax cuts that would have to be paid for by cutting things like education and job-training programs that give students new opportunities to work and succeed.

On more than 120 college and university campuses around the nation, Occupy College activists will hold teach-ins tomorrow and Thursday focusing on vital education issues such as solutions to soaring student debt, reducing the cost of education, improving the quality of education and more. The teach-ins are in preparation for the March 1 National Day of Action for Education.