PERSPECTA

News from every angle

Results for “Graduates”

34 stories found

Estonian Universities Adopt Final Exams Over Master's Theses
err-news1d ago

Estonian Universities Adopt Final Exams Over Master's Theses

Estonian universities are increasingly offering master's students the option to complete their degree with a final exam instead of a thesis. This shift is seen by some as practical, though others express concerns about its implications for graduates' skills.

Most of my kids have moved out of the house, except for my youngest. I'm worried she's lonely in our near-empty nest.
CultureBusiness Insidervarietydeadline3d ago3 sources

Most of my kids have moved out of the house, except for my youngest. I'm worried she's lonely in our near-empty nest.

The author is worried her daughter might be lonely in the near-empty nest. Courtesy of Laura Falin I'm preparing myself to deal with an empty nest, but my youngest is still living here. I recently realized she might feel left behind and lonely in the house with just me and her dad. I want to help her with the transition to being the only child at home. I'm in the middle of what feels like a long transition period. One of my four kids is a young adult who has already moved out on his own. Another one of them graduates this year and will likely move away to college. Another opted for a community college but plans to move out in the next few years. I've been thinking about what I want my life to look like when I become an empty nester. I've already been making changes — like trying to make some new friends — with that life in mind. But recently, it hit me that my youngest daughter will probably have some similar "empty nest" feelings when she's the last sibling stuck at home with her parents. My youngest hasn't known a quiet house since she was born As the youngest of four, my daughter probably hasn't known a totally peaceful day since she arrived home from the hospital. She was the travel baby — waking up in her infant seat to discover she'd been carted to a school play, T-ball practice, or school pickup. She had built-in playmates right from the start, though, of course, they bickered and fought like any other siblings. Since I was a stay-at-home mom, even when her brothers and sister were in school, she was always going somewhere. We headed to the library, to storytime, or out hiking in the mornings because neither of us liked being stuck at home. And now, when all of my kids are teens or young adults leading busy lives, we still have noisy dinners or pile on the couch together to unwind with a TV show before bed. Our house is still pretty active, and her siblings might take her on a coffee run or to the thrift store on a Saturday to hang out. I'm concerned she might get lonely when everyone leaves It seems likely that my daughter will have some time living with just me and her dad after everyone else has moved out. I can't even comprehend what that will be like. The thought of just one child here at every dinnertime or weekend? We haven't had that in 20 years. But it goes beyond just the fact that the house will be quieter. She tells her sister about school drama, and they hash things out together. Her brother jokes around with her, or they talk about mutual friends and after-school activities. They're involved in her life in ways that I can't be, and I think she's going to be lonely when they're not there. I sought out expert advice I wanted advice from an expert on all of this, so I spoke with child therapist Alisha Simpson-Watt of Collaborative ABA Services. She told me that yes, the transition can be hard for some kids. "Siblings often serve as companions, role models, and sources of emotional support. When that daily interaction changes, younger children may experience feelings of loss, loneliness, or uncertainty," Simpson-Watt told me. She also said younger kids can get clingy, moody, or anxious when a sibling moves out. The best thing parents can do for their younger kids is to prepare them and communicate a lot. My daughter is older, but I know she'll still need some extra attention, and we'll need to communicate well with her. We'll also need to be ready to listen to her. Simpson-Watt said, "Research consistently shows that children who feel heard and supported during family transitions demonstrate stronger emotional adjustment." I'll plan some fun things for us to do as well We may be missing the other family members, but we'll have time to spend together as a smaller family. Simpson-Watt also said it's important to continue with our regular family routines to give everyone a sense of stability and security. I'll encourage my daughter to keep up her relationships with her siblings, even if they're not physically here as much. When my oldest son moved out, we all stayed in touch with texts and phone calls. He only lives about an hour away, so we also see him often, which has helped with the transition. In fact, my husband and I were out of town one weekend, and my son invited his siblings over for dinner. He cooked for them, they played games, and they all watched the Grammys together. I was kind of sorry I missed it, to be honest. But it makes me very happy to know that my kids are forging relationships with each other that go beyond my husband and me. Read the original article on Business Insider

Over 2,000 schools will have 10 or fewer graduates by 2030
PoliticsKorea Herald4d ago

Over 2,000 schools will have 10 or fewer graduates by 2030

Amid a continuing decline in South Korea’s school-age population, government data showed Thursday that 2,026 elementary, middle and high schools will have 10 or fewer graduates by 2030. A total of 1,863 schools recorded 10 or fewer graduates this year, according to a government report submitted to Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. The figure is projected to rise to 1,917 in 2027 and 1,994 in 2028, dip slightly to 1,914 in 2029, then surpass 2,000 in 2030. Elementary schoo

Miami is not the next Silicon Valley. It's something much weirder.
BusinessBusiness Insider4d ago

Miami is not the next Silicon Valley. It's something much weirder.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BI Tech's elite are taking their talents to South Beach — again. In January, David Sacks, the venture capitalist and crypto and AI czar, proclaimed that Miami will soon replace New York City as America's financial capital. Stripe's Patrick Collison has been marveling at the city's "boomtown" vibes. With California flirting with a one-time tax on billionaires, said billionaires like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg are buying oceanfront mansions. And on Tuesday, Palantir announced that it's moving its headquarters from Denver to Miami. Is Miami the next Silicon Valley? We've been here before. The pandemic sent waves of coastal workers to the city, turning it into a Zoomtown full of online venture capitalists like Keith Rabois and Delian Asparouhov, bitcoin bull runners, and purveyors of the finest NFTs. Billboards went up in San Francisco featuring a mock tweet from then-Miami mayor Francis Suarez: "Thinking about moving to Miami? DM me." Here's the thing: It's easy to fall for Miami when a big chunk of the workforce is stuck at home and online. Five years later, it's a lot harder to build companies there. "Miami is great three months out of the year," says one prominent venture capitalist who moved to the city during the pandemic but is now returning to an established hub. While the Floridian tax benefits are real, the investor has found that the social scene hollows out in the summer as residents leave, making it "hard to build roots or have reliable friends." More critically for the startup ecosystem, the scene lacked the "hustle" of San Francisco or New York. Silicon Valley practically runs on a conveyor belt from Stanford and Caltech to Y Combinator's Dogpatch offices. The machine turns students into founders, builders into companies, and companies into the next wave of founders. Miami, meanwhile, lacks a major university to pipe in tech talent. Instead, the investor says, the city tends to attract people who have already "made it." Miami and Fort Lauderdale-based startups raised $3 billion in 2025. Bay Area-based startups raised $177 billion. The Miami market, while busy, significantly lags behind the major hubs. Startups in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro raised about $3 billion in 2025, per PitchBook, down from $8.6 billion in 2022, when money and crypto sloshed about. The Bay Area, by contrast, still grabs 52% of the nation's venture funding, with $177 billion in capital pouring in last year. Alligators may be all around in Miami, but unicorns are hard to find. In January, Cast AI, a startup that helps companies cut cloud costs, crossed the $1 billion valuation mark, becoming the region's first homegrown unicorn in years. Before that, Adam Neumann, the ousted WeWork cofounder, debuted his Miami residential real-estate venture, Flow, at a $1 billion valuation in 2022. Even Garry Tan, the Y Combinator president and gadfly who's usually first in line to dunk on San Francisco's politics, has been blunt about where the breeding grounds are best. Tan recently said on X that the accelerator still hasn't opened offices outside the Bay Area because founders are simply more likely to build unicorns there. According to a Business Insider analysis of Crunchbase data, of the at least 97 new unicorns that investors minted in 2025, 43 of them were based in the Bay Area. But those who dismiss the city entirely miss the point. Miami isn't the next San Francisco. It's establishing itself as something else. Patrick Murphy, a former Florida congressman and entrepreneur, says that Miami's tech scene is growing, it's just being built in "reverse order." Silicon Valley, he says, emerged from an if you build it, they will come approach: Engineers built great companies first, which eventually created fortunes that cycled back into the community to fund the next generation of companies. Miami, however, has a more if you come, they will build it tact. It's attracted the "wealth achievers" first — the family offices, private equity names, and already-successful founders who emigrated for lifestyle reasons. Finance heavyweights like Citadel and Thoma Bravo arrived early. Vanguard, one of the world's largest asset managers, is eyeing an expansion in Miami as it targets more Latin American wealth. The city is now importing the machinery that follows them. Legal, accounting, and consulting firms are opening local offices to stay close to clients — and scoop up star talent that no longer needs to live near HQ. This dynamic has established Miami as a "control center" for decision-makers, Murphy argues, but not yet the "factory floor" where the actual work gets done. Murphy says that despite running a successful construction-tech startup, Togal.AI, his engineering team has been offshore from the beginning because the local talent pool simply "didn't exist" when he started in 2019. "If you go to Miami, you're not going to see dozens of engineers at a Starbucks cranking away," he says. "That's not here yet." Still, Miami's flood of wealth is creating demand for startups built on the city's local economy, especially in property tech and fintech, Murphy says. Togal.AI's annual recurring revenue has grown 1,000% over the past two years, Murphy says, and is now raising fresh venture funding in order to hire dozens of new employees this year. Palantir's move immediately became a kind of Rorschach test for Miami's future. "Florida is the new crypto," one user wrote on X. Maya Bakhai, a Fort Lauderdale resident and founder of the early-stage venture firm Spice Capital, tells me that the city will flourish alongside "net new" industries that are still taking shape and where the center of gravity isn't locked in yet. Crypto firms like MoonPay and QuickNode still treat South Florida as a home base, she notes. A new space-tech accelerator backed by the state is trying to persuade founders to stick around by pairing them with funders. Bakhai's bigger bet is that just as New York became the hub for e-commerce, Miami could become the place where creator businesses get built. Research out of the University of Hong Kong found Miami has more top influencers per capita than New York or Los Angeles. And then there's Palantir, the strongest signal flare yet that tech is taking America's Playground seriously. It's hard to know what the data giant's HQ move will mean in practice — Palantir hasn't said how many employees it plans to relocate, or whether it will offer moving packages to lure talent south. The company did not respond to an email request for comment. If Palantir does move a meaningful slice of its workforce, it would give Miami something it's been short on: a marquee tech employer that can recruit and keep technical workers on the ground year-round. On X, Palantir's move immediately became a kind of Rorschach test for Miami's future. ""Florida is the future," cheered Andreessen Horowitz investor Katherine Boyle. Others were less convinced. "Florida is the new crypto," one user wrote. "For the next 20 years, nothing will change, but they will always tell you 'big things are happening in Florida.'" Turning Miami into Silicon Beach is a long game, Bakhai argues. It won't be built by the billionaires buying houses to snowbird in today, she argues, but by the young strivers arriving for their first serious jobs — the entry-level analysts heading to Citadel and the junior lawyers starting at firms like Orrick. For the first time, she says, ambitious graduates can launch careers in Miami instead of treating New York or San Francisco as the default. The payoff, she says, comes years later, when they eventually spin off to start their own companies. Until then, Miami remains largely a playground for the "made it" crowd, waiting in the sun for the builders to come. Melia Russell is a reporter with Business Insider, covering the intersection of law and technology. Read the original article on Business Insider