Here are the 25 most expensive colleges for 2008-2009, based on total cost (tuition + room and board). Whooie, this is some pricey book-learnin'.

Highest Total Cost 2008-2009

College Total Cost
1. Sarah Lawrence College $53,166
2. George Washington University $50,312
3. New York University $50,182
4. Georgetown University $49,689
5. Connecticut College $49,385
6. Bates College $49,350
7. Johns Hopkins University $49,278
8. Skidmore College $49,266
9. Scripps College $49,236
10. Middlebury College $49,210
11. Carnegie Mellon University $49,200
12. Boston College $49,020
13. Wesleyan University $49,000
14. Colgate University $48,900
15. Claremont McKenna College $48,755
16. Vassar College $48,675
17. Haverford College $48,625
18. University of Chicago $48,588
19. Union College (NY) $48,552
20. Colby College $48,520
21. Mount Holyoke College $48,500
22. Tufts University $48,470
23. Bard College at Simon's Rock $48,460
24. Franklin & Marshall College $48,450
25. Bard College $48,438

Ben Popken

The bright cafeteria of St. Mauront Catholic School is conspicuously quiet: It is Ramadan, and 80 percent of the students are Muslim. When the lunch bell rings, girls and boys stream out past the crucifixes and the large wooden cross in the corridor, heading for Muslim midday prayer.

“There is respect for our religion here,” said Nadia Oualane, 14, a student of Algerian descent who wears her hair hidden under a black head scarf. “In the public school,” she added, gesturing at nearby buildings, “I would not be allowed to wear a veil.”

In France, which has only four Muslim schools, some of the country’s 8,847 Roman Catholic schools have become refuges for Muslims seeking what an overburdened, secularist public sector often lacks: spirituality, an environment in which good manners count alongside mathematics, and higher academic standards.

No national statistics are kept, but Muslim and Catholic educators estimate that Muslim students now make up more than 10 percent of the two million students in Catholic schools. In ethnically mixed neighborhoods in Marseille and the industrial north, the proportion can be more than half.

The quiet migration of Muslims to private Catholic schools highlights how hard it has become for state schools, long France’s tool for integration, to keep their promise of equal opportunity.

Traditionally, the republican school, born of the French Revolution, was the breeding ground for citizens. The shift from these schools is another indication of the challenge facing the strict form of secularism known as “laïcité.”

Following centuries of religious wars and a long period of conflict between the nascent Republic and an assertive clergy, a 1905 law granted religious freedom in predominantly Roman Catholic France and withdrew financial support and formal recognition from all faiths. Religious education and symbols were banned from public schools.

France is now home to around five million Muslims, Western Europe’s largest such community, and new fault lines have emerged. In 2004, a ban on the head scarf in state schools prompted outcry and debate about loosening the interpretation of the 1905 law.

“Laïcité has become the state’s religion, and the republican school is its temple,” said Imam Soheib Bencheikh, a former grand mufti in Marseille and founder of its Higher Institute of Islamic Studies. Imam Bencheikh’s oldest daughter attends Catholic school.

“It’s ironic,” he said, “but today the Catholic Church is more tolerant of — and knowledgeable about — Islam than the French state.”

For some, economics argue for Catholic schools, which tend to be smaller than public ones and much less expensive than private schools in other countries. In return for the schools’ teaching the national curriculum and being open to students of all faiths, the government pays teachers’ salaries and a per-student subsidy. Annual costs for parents average 1,400 euros (less than $2,050) for junior high school and 1,800 euros (about $2,630) for high school, according to the Roman Catholic educational authority.

In France’s highly centralized education system, the national curriculum proscribes religious instruction beyond general examination of religious tenets and faiths as it occurs in history lessons. Religious instruction, like Catholic catechism, is voluntary.

And Catholic schools take steps to accommodate different faiths. One school in Dijon allows Muslim students to use the chapel for Ramadan prayers.

Catholic schools are also free to allow girls to wear head scarves. Many honor the state ban, but several, like St. Mauront, tolerate a discreet covering.

The school, tucked under an overpass in the city’s northern housing projects, embodies tectonic shifts in French society over the past century.

Founded in 1905 in a former soap factory, the school initially served mainly Catholic students whose parents were French, said the headmaster, Jean Chamoux. Before World War II, Italian and some Portuguese immigrants arrived; since the 1960s, Africans from former French colonies. Today there is barely a white face among the 117 students.

Mr. Chamoux, a slow-moving, jovial man, has been here 20 years and seems to know each student by name. Under a crucifix in his cramped office, he extolled the virtues of Catholic schools. “We practice religious freedom; the public schools don’t,” he said. “We teach the national curriculum. Religious activities are entirely optional.”

“If I banned the head scarf, half the girls wouldn’t go to school at all,” he added. “I prefer to have them here, talk to them and tell them that they have a choice. Many actually take it off after a while. My goal is that by the time they graduate they have made a conscious choice, one way or the other.”

Defenders of secularism retort that such leniency could encourage other special requests, and anti-Western values like the oppression of women.

“The head scarf is a sexist sign, and discrimination between the sexes has no place in the republican school,” France’s minister of national education, Xavier Darcos, said in a telephone interview. “That is the fundamental reason why we are against it.”

Mr. Chamoux said he suspects that some pupils (“a small minority,” he said) wear the scarf because of pressure from family. He acknowledged that parents routinely demand exemptions from swimming lessons for daughters who, when denied, present a medical certificate and miss class anyway. Recently, he said, he put his foot down when students asked to remove the crucifix in a classroom they wanted for communal prayers during Ramadan, which in France ends on Tuesday.

The biology teacher at St. Mauront has been challenged on Darwin’s theory of evolution, and history class can get heated during discussions of the Crusades or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, some Muslim students shocked the staff by showing glee, Mr. Chamoux recalled.

The school deals swiftly with offensive comments, he said, but also tries to respect Islam. It takes Muslim holidays into account for parent-teacher meetings. For two years now, it has offered optional Arabic-language instruction — in part to steer students away from Koran classes in neighborhood mosques believed to preach radical Islam.

When Zohra Hanane, the parent of a Muslim student, was asked why she chose Catholic school for her daughter, Sabrina, her answer was swift. “We share the same God,” she said.

But faith is not the only argument. Even though Ms. Hanane, who is a single mother and currently unemployed, struggles to meet the annual fee at St. Mauront of 249 euros ($364) — unusually low, because the school receives additional state subsidies and has spartan facilities — she said it was worth it because she did not want her children with “the wrong crowd” in the projects.

“It’s expensive and sometimes it’s hard, but I want my children to have a better life,” Ms. Hanane said. “Today this seems to be their best shot.”

Across town, in the gleaming compound housing the Sainte-Trinité high school in the wealthy neighborhood of Mazargues, the rules and conditions are different, but the arguments are similar. Muslim girls there do not wear head scarves.

But Imene Sahraoui, 17, a practicing Muslim and the daughter of an Algerian businessman and former diplomat, attends the school, above all to get top grades and move on to business school, preferably abroad.

“Public schools just don’t prepare you in the same way,” she said.

Fifteen of the top 20 high schools in France are Catholic schools, according to a recent ranking in the magazine L’Express. Catholic schools remain popular among Muslims even in cities where Muslim schools have sprung up: Paris, Lyon and Lille.

Muslim schools have been hampered in part by the relative poverty of the Muslim community. And only one Muslim school, the Averroës high school on one floor of the Lille mosque, has qualified for state subsidies. To survive, the other three charge significantly higher fees.

Also, as M’hamed Ed-Dyouri, headmaster of a new Muslim school just outside Paris, said, “We have to prove ourselves first.” For now, he plans to enroll his son in Catholic school.

KATRIN BENNHOLD

Parents need only spend one minute a day to help their children improve their literacy skills, a U.S. literacy advocate says.

Sharon Darling of the National Center for Family Literacy says it only takes a minute to sing short songs like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." Then leave off the last word each time until there are no words left.

"This activity always produces giggles from children and parents alike," she says in a statement. "Children spent five times as much time outside of the classroom, so learning shouldn't be confined to the classroom."

Darling suggests other ways to build literacy skills by:

-- Choosing a letter of the day and looking for it in any printed materials -- labels at the grocery store, street signs, billboards, or advertisements on TV.

-- Using the letter of the day to begin words that make up silly sentence -- such as cats can cuddle.

-- While waiting for a bagel to toast, have a child look for the letter "b" on any items on the kitchen counter or table. Count as many as possible before the toaster pops. >>>>

A British high school student received credit for writing nothing but a two-word obscenity on an exam paper because the phrase expressed meaning and was spelled correctly.

The Times newspaper on Monday quoted examiner Peter Buckroyd as saying he gave the student — who wrote an expletive starting with f, followed by the word "off" — two points out of a possible 27 for the English paper.

"It would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for, like conveying some meaning and some spelling," Buckroyd was quoted as saying.

"It's better than someone that doesn't write anything at all."

Buckroyd said the student would have received a higher mark if the phrase had been punctuated.

Buckroyd is a senior examiner for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, one of several bodies that grade British high school exams.

He said the expletive was used in 2006 by a student in response to the question: "Describe the room you are sitting in."

The alliance confirmed the newspaper's story was accurate, but said Buckroyd's decision to award the student marks was not official policy.

"The example cited was unique in the experience of the senior examiner concerned and was used in a pre-training session to emphasize the importance of adhering to the mark scheme: i.e. if a candidate makes any sort of response to a question then it must be at least given consideration to be awarded a mark," the company said in a statement.

It said obscenities on exam papers "should either be disregarded, or action will be taken against the candidate, depending on the seriousness of the case." >>>>

The principal of a Massachusetts high school who said a group of students intentionally got pregnant stood by his comments Thursday, saying his information "was and is accurate."

In his first public statement since the controversy erupted earlier this month, Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan said he does not specifically remember using the word "pact" but does not dispute it.

He said a reporter from Time magazine asked him whether access to birth control through the school's health center would have prevented the spike in pregnancies — 17 last year, compared with the typical four.

"I told her no, because my sources had informed me that a significant number of the pregnancies, especially among the younger students, were the result of deliberate and intentional behavior," Sullivan said.

The principal said his only direct source of information about the intentional pregnancies was the former nurse practitioner at the health center. He said he also heard "verbal staff reports and student/staff chatter."

"I believe everything I told (Time) was and is accurate," he said.

In May, the two top officials at the school's health center resigned in a dispute over distribution of contraceptives. Dr. Brian Orr, medical director, and chief nurse practitioner Kim Daly supported confidentially giving contraceptives to students, but the hospital that funds the school clinic objected.

Daly did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.

Sullivan said he had been asked by school officials in the fishing community 30 miles north of Boston not to speak publicly. But he said he issued the three-page statement Thursday "to put to rest the notion that I am 'foggy in my memory' or that when pressed, 'my memory failed.'"

He was referring to comments by Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who has said that there is no evidence of such a pact and that Sullivan could not remember the source of his information. Sullivan said he has had no direct conversation with the mayor since the first Time story June 11.

Kirk declined Thursday to address Sullivan's statement, but she defended her own response to the controversy.

"Teenagers in Gloucester are being hunted down by the national and even international media," she said. "And if I had to do it again, I would still stand up and protect the privacy of the families and defend the city against the sensationalized and unsubstantiated reports."

The school superintendent, Christopher Farmer, did not immediately respond to an e-mail or a phone message left at his office.

Sullivan's statement was first reported in the online version of his hometown newspaper, the Gloucester Daily Times, and the principal's attorney confirmed its accuracy to The Associated Press.

Sullivan called on the "affected children" to be left alone "to deal with the consequences of their actions."

"Intense media attention needs to come to a stop, as it distorts the reality of the situation by focusing attention on the sources of information about the problem of 'children having children' instead of seeking solutions to the problem itself," he said.

KAREN TESTA

The writing section added to the SAT has done very little to improve the exam's overall ability to predict how students will do in college, according to research released Tuesday by the test's owner.

Critics of the SAT seized on the College Board's findings, which came three years after the revamped, nearly four-hour exam made its debut.

"After all their ballyhoo about how the new test was going to be a better tool for college admissions, it's not," said Robert Schaeffer, director of the group FairTest. "It's longer and more expensive. That's all you can say about it."

The College Board defended the SAT, saying that no predictor of college success is perfect, but that the exam is a remarkably good one. It emphasized the finding that the writing test actually does a slightly better job of predicting freshman-year college grade point average than do the math or critical reading sections, both of which are multiple choice.

"Both tests are very valid, the old one and the new one," said Laurence Bunin, the senior vice president who oversees the SAT program. "What's important here is that the new SAT places an emphasis on writing" and offers a valid test of another skill that is "critical to college success."

The SAT now runs three hours, 45 minutes — or 45 minutes longer than the old version — and will cost $45 in 2008-09, up from $29.50, though aid is available. The ACT, the other leading college admissions exam, has an optional writing section.

The College Board added the writing test, including a 25-minute essay, to help colleges make more finely tuned decisions about students' skills. College admissions officers can even download a student's essay and read it. The multiple-choice sections were also changed somewhat in 2005.

The College Board, a not-for-profit group, claimed the test would elevate the place of writing in high school classrooms. It backed up that argument last year with a survey reporting 88 percent of teachers said writing had become a bigger priority in their schools.

From the start, however, some teachers criticized the exam, arguing it encouraged formulaic writing and was susceptible to coaching.

The findings released Tuesday are the most comprehensive study yet of the new exam, covering about 150,000 students.

The analysis measured the connection between SAT performance for the high school of class of 2006 and college grades.

The correlation scale ranges from minus 1 to 1. A correlation of zero would indicate no connection between scores and grades, and 1 would show a perfect correlation — basically, that high scorers on the SAT are guaranteed to earn high college grades.

The study found high school GPA had a .54 correlation with college grades, which is considered fairly strong. Individually, all three SAT sections had lower correlations, but taken together they were .53

Combining high school GPA with the three SATs scores was stronger still — .62. But that was just .01 higher than if the writing exam weren't included.

There were numerous studies of the old SAT's predictive value. A 2001 analysis that combined about 3,000 validity studies found the correlation ranged from .44 to .62.

The latest research also found that the new SAT, like the old one, continues to predict college grades with varying levels of accuracy for different groups. For instance, SAT scores "overpredict" the college grades of women, and are less accurate for minorities than for whites.

Critics contend those variations reveal fundamental problems with the SAT that should limit how it is used.

"My view is that, systemically, these tests aren't working as well as they should," said William E. Sedlacek, a testing expert and a retired professor at the University of Maryland.

But the College Board noted SAT scores are still a better predictor for minorities than high school grades are. "What that suggests is that it's very important for these minority students to have a fair benchmark, a fair, merit-based way to be evaluated in the college admission process," Bunin said.

Many colleges have said they would wait for research like this study before making long-term decisions about how to use students' SAT writing scores. Currently, some give the new section equal weight with the math and critical reading. Others look at writing scores selectively, while some ignore them completely.

Dozens have dropped the SAT altogether as an admissions requirement.

Stephen Farmer, director of admissions at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said the findings echo UNC's own preliminary research.

"What we haven't seen on our campus is that writing tells us much that critical reading does not," he said. "For that reason we probably use writing less than we might have."

Typically, "we've used it mainly when there's been a discrepancy between critical reading and a writing score, when a writing score has helped a student with low critical reading," he said.

Standardized tests are "useful if limited tools," Farmer said. "The problems crop up when people forget either about the usefulness of them, or about their limitations."

JUSTIN POPE

A Cleveland-area principal says he's embarrassed his students got proof of their "educaiton" on their high school diplomas.

Westlake High School officials misspelled "education" on the diplomas distributed last weekend. It's been the subject of mockery on local radio.

Principal Timothy Freeman says he sent back the diplomas once to correct another error. When the diplomas came back, no one bothered to check things they thought were right the first time.

The publisher has reprinted the diplomas a second time and sent them to the 330 graduates. >>>>

Whether you were a geek, athlete, cheerleader, teacher's pet, class clown or honor student in high school, chances are it influenced your career choice.

Thirty-nine percent of 6,000 full-time workers questioned in a survey said their experiences in high school had an impact on their career.

Geeks gravitated toward engineering and retail jobs. Athletes tended to work in the transportation industry, while former cheerleaders, who were more likely to reach vice president level, were drawn to careers in travel and insurance.

Cheerleaders also had the second highest level of job satisfaction, after teacher's pets, at 76 percent.

"These are enthusiastic individuals, they're strong motivators. They know how to get others excited about projects. You can see how that enthusiasm and motivation can translate into a role where you're in charge of managing a large department or whatever it may be," said Jennifer Grasx, of CareerBuilder.com which conducted the survey.

Former members of student government earned the most money and tended to work as directors or managers. Twelve percent reported making $100,000 or more, and nearly half had a salary of $50,000 or more. But they were also the most dissatisfied with their career progress.

Forty-one percent of teacher's pets held administrative or clerical positions, many in the construction, banking and finance sectors. Although 37 percent earned less than $35,000 a year, the majority were happy with their jobs.

Nearly 60 percent of former honor society members chose professional and technical services jobs, many in the healthcare industry, while many former athletes had careers in the transportation sector.

"I thought it was really interesting when we thought about the traits, and we thought about the industries and professions they were drawn to -- there were some interesting correlations there," Grasx added.

Seven percent of former athletes, geeks and class clowns earned six figures, and 45 percent of athletes earned over $50,000 a year. More than half said they were satisfied with their career progress.

Geeks and class clowns reported the most job dissatisfaction, at 21 and 18 percent respectively. Thirty-one percent of geeks were also unhappy with their career progress.

Solarina Ho; Patricia Reaney

The United States and Asia's four largest powers voiced concern on Saturday after a record spike in oil price as worries grew that energy costs may derail the global economy.

Oil prices, which have soared five-fold since 2003, posted their highest ever one-day gain of 10.75 dollars to close at a new record of 138.54 dollars in New York after hawkish remarks by an Israeli official on oil producer Iran.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said that the record oil prices were "a shock" and warned oil producers that it would do them no good if the US economy took a hit.

"It's not good for producing nations to see the US struggling economically (as) they depend on us to be a significant engine in world economic activity," Bodman told reporters ahead of the talks in Aomori, Japan.

Bodman held talks with energy ministers from China, Japan, South Korea about the energy markets. India's oil minister cancelled at the last minute and was replaced by New Delhi's ambassador to Tokyo.

Their talks will be followed Sunday by a meeting of the energy ministers of the Group of Eight industrial powers here in Aomori, a hub of Japan's nuclear energy industry 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Tokyo.

Japan's energy minister Akira Amari, the chair of the meeting, said that the meeting should send a signal about oil prices.

"This has become a major risk factor for the world economy," Amari said.

"It is very important that we, the five nations that consume half of the world energy, get together and issue a united message on what action we should take," he said.

Meeting with South Korea's Knowledge Economy Minister Lee Youn-Ho, Amari said that he believed crude oil prices were "abnormally high."

"We want to issue a message on this to the world," Amari said.

Lee added: "I don't think the oil prices are at normal levels either. It is fairly questionable whether the world economy will be able to develop further at this level of crude oil prices."

Japan, the world's second largest economy, is nearly entirely dependent on imports for its oil and gas. Its fishing industry recently said the situation had become so severe it was considering a strike this summer.

India's government on Wednesday hiked fuel prices after its state-run oil companies said they had been hit hard by the soaring global prices while having to sell fuels at heavily discounted prices.

The decision triggered angry protests and strikes.

Soaring oil prices have been blamed on a variety of factors including turbulence in the Middle East and rising consumption by emerging economies such as China and India.

Analysts said the sharp spike overnight was a reaction to reported remarks by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz on Iran, a major oil producer.

Mofaz, a former defence chief, warned that the Jewish state would attack Iran if it continued its alleged nuclear weapons drive, although he stressed such an operation could only be conducted with US support.

Despite the spike, Bodman said he did not see oil prices as a "crisis" and denied the need for tighter regulations of oil markets.

Climate change will also be on the agenda for the 11 countries, which together release 65 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.

The climate will be a major issue when the leaders of the G8 hold a summit from July 7 to 9 in Japan's northern resort of Toyako.

The International Energy Agency said in a report Friday that no single form of energy or technology could solve the problem alone, calling for increased use of carbon dioxide capture and storage, renewable and nuclear energy and better energy efficiency.

Miwa Suzuki

Stephen Colbert, the host of his own Comedy Central show, Emmy winner, faux presidential candidate and best-selling author, added to that esteemed collection an award from Princeton University: "The Great Princeton Class of 2008 Understandable Vanity Award."

The award was mounted on a mirror.

"I have to say, I've never seen anything more beautiful," Colbert on Monday told the 2,611 Princeton graduates-to-be assembled at Class Day, which is held each year the day before commencement. Senior Class President Tom Haine pointed out that the ceremony was held in front of ivy-covered Nassau Hall in an area where Gen. George Washington defeated the British in the Battle of Princeton.

"Mr. Colbert is, as George Washington was, a great patriot," Haine said. "He stands firm against the liberal tyrannies of our time. In other words, he fits right in."

During his speech, Colbert — in character as a right-wing, blowhard political commentator — tweaked the customary message of graduation speeches by imploring students to maintain the status quo.

"You can change the world," he said. "Please don't do that, OK? Some of us like the way things are going now."

And instead of telling graduates to conquer their fears, he admitted his. "I'm scared of you," he said. "I can tell you are go-getters. At my college, for instance, no one got out of bed before 11 o'clock."

He also made fun of the black and orange class jackets — known as "beer jackets" — that the graduates wore, and other aspects of Princeton culture.

"When you leave here," the comedian said, "no one will ever, ever want to hear you sing a capella. And those jackets you're wearing, do not wear them to your job interview."

Then, he was presented with one.

"In that case," he said, "I take it back. This is a beautiful jacket. Change the world."

GEOFF MULVIHILL