Currents: School Takes New Tack on Work Study

NEW YORK — “I was raised into believing that money is everything,” said Maire Mendoza, 19, crying at her own tale.

Her parents are near-invisibles in this city that they’ve heard called a city of dreams. They left Mexico before Maire was born and have toiled anonymously ever since — her mother a baby sitter these days, her father a restaurant worker.

They raised their girls as pragmatic survivors. So it was startling when Maire came to them not long ago with an epiphany: “I now know that I don’t want to work for money,” she said, to bafflement. But her father, sensing his limitations, deferred. “You’re probably right,” she remembers him saying, “and it’s because you go to school and you know things that we don’t know.”

Ms. Mendoza’s self-discovery was no accident. Such discoveries are the goal of an audacious experiment in New York that seeks to improve the fortunes of community college students by demolishing and rebuilding their perceptions about work.

Community colleges are the bedrock of American higher education. They often take all comers — clever teenagers, 25-year-old ex-drifters, middle-aged downsizees in need of retraining — and let them study as needed: a class at a time or a full load, for a degree or for fun. In a nation whose mythology declaims that all who try can make it, community colleges are among the last hopes of proving the mythology true.

But their anything-goes approach has come under fire in recent years, in part because of dismal graduation rates, which can hover in the twenties, teens or even single digits in some cases.

“The job the country needs community colleges to do now (better success) is different from the job needed from them (broader access) when the community college movement began,” said Allan C. Golston, president of the U.S. program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pressed for major reforms.

Thanks in part to the reformers’ pressure, the New Community College opened here this autumn, with Ms. Mendoza in the inaugural class. It is an experimental institution within the City University of New York, with a mission to take the students whom community colleges usually fail — they’re still taken first-come, first-serve, not by application — and hugely lift their trajectories.

The college pulls on many levers to achieve that goal — requiring students to be full-timers; limiting courses of study to six fields with proven job prospects; offering abundant counseling. But the most intriguing idea may be a mandatory first-year class called “Ethnographies of Work.”

The course grew out of findings that students who attend community colleges — who in New York come overwhelmingly from low-income or minority backgrounds — often harbor negative associations with work, said Nancy Hoffman, an education scholar who has advised the new college. In these students’ communities, work may be primarily experienced as soul-crushing or exploitative or elusive or illegal.

“Mostly in my community, it’s just to survive,” said Jesus A. Paredes, 18, another first-year student at the New Community College. “Nobody really followed their passion. Or if they did follow their passion, it didn’t go right.”

And so, for their ethnography class this autumn, students fanned out across New York to investigate work. They sat in offices and recorded observations (how workers dressed, their mood, how authority was expressed). They interviewed lawyers, social workers, techies. They kept journals about their own attitudes. The purpose was to reach a deeper understanding of what work is (the topic of their final paper), and how — as Ms. Mendoza was seeking to do — to reconcile the impulse to survive with one’s passions.

“Work is something people do and get paid for,” one student wrote in her final paper. “Work is the foundation of purpose,” said another.

For Jeslyn Ruiz, 18, the class gave her the courage to tell her grandmother that, no, she won’t be a nurse; she wants to be a lighting director for concerts. Her grandmother, who came to the United States from Puerto Rico, laughed in her face. “Oh, no, you’ll be a nurse,” she said, not commanding, just mournfully predicting.

Sherine Smith, 21, came to the course with the notion that “I have to make the most money possible” doing the least possible work. Meeting real-life workers had convinced her that money may not leave you better off and was forcing her to reconsider.

Out of nine students who gathered to meet with a reporter, six said they emerged from the class persuaded that job and passion must align. Derek Norman, a 22-year-old musician who wants to join the Fire Department and confine his music to after-hours gigs, spoke for the keep-them-separate camp: “I don’t feel that you need to take the two of them and mend them together.”

Some of the students seemed less sure of their ultimate direction but were still savoring a strange and stirring semester. For Mr. Paredes, a denizen of this most vertical of cities whom fate has kept close to the ground floor, the homework to interview a successful lawyer delivered on a long-deferred dream: “I’ve never been to a 52nd floor,” he said. He quite liked it up there.

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Games top App Store revenue in 2012

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AP NewsBreak: Yankees hit with $18.9M luxury tax

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees were hit with an $18.9 million luxury tax by Major League Baseball, the 10th consecutive year they will pay a penalty for their spending.

The team finished with a $222.5 million payroll for purposes of the tax, according to figures sent to teams Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press.

Following its payroll-shedding trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers last summer, Boston finished just $47,177 under the $178 million threshold. The Los Angeles Angels wound up at $176.7 million and Philadelphia at $174.5 million.

Figures include average annual values of contracts for players on 40-man rosters, earned bonuses and escalators, adjustments for cash in trades and $10.8 million per team in benefits.

New York has run up a luxury tax bill of $224.2 million over the past decade, with the fee increasing from $13.9 million last year. The Yankees' tax rate rose from 40 percent to 42.5 percent this year and figures to climb to 50 percent next season. But they hope to get under the threshold in 2014, when it rises to $189 million. Dropping under the threshold would lower their potential tax rate in 2015 to 17.5 percent.

"It affects my decision-making process, my communication about the pressure points we have," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said, adding that market rates for free agents also impact his choices.

For the regular payroll calculation — 2012 income plus prorated shares of signing bonuses — spending by the 30 big league teams broke $3 billion for the first time at $3.15 billion after falling $43,000 short of the milestone last year.

The Yankees finished at a record $223.3 million, their 14th consecutive year as the biggest spender and topping their previous mark of $222.5 million in 2008.

However, the Dodgers could break that mark next year following a summer and autumn of acquisitions. Los Angeles currently is at $207.9 million for 21 signed players, including adjustments for the August trade with Boston that brought Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett to the Dodgers. The Yankees are at $182 million for 14 players, including a deal with Ichiro Suzuki that hasn't been finalized.

"You don't get a trophy for having the highest payroll," Cashman said. "I'm not going to feel weird either way, if we're the highest or we're not the highest. That's not the issue. Just want to be the best."

Philadelphia was second at $169.7 million, followed by Boston ($168.6 million), the Angels ($160.1 million), AL champion Detroit ($140.7 million) and World Series champion San Francisco ($138.1 million).

Even while shedding some stars during the season, Miami rose from $61.9 million to $89.9 million. The Marlins figure to drop to the bottom of spending next year after trading nearly all their veterans.

Among the big slashers were the New York Mets (from $142.2 million in 2011 to $103.7 million) and the Chicago Cubs (from $140.6 million to $107.7 million).

Oakland won the AL West despite the lowest payroll in the major leagues at $59.5 million. The division rival Angels rose from $143.1 million to $160.1 million yet still missed the playoffs. They added slugger Josh Hamilton this week with a $125 million, five-year deal set to be announced Saturday.

The Dodgers, sold during the season to a group headed by Mark Walter, Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson, climbed from $109.9 million in 2011 to $129.1 million. In the last week they added pitchers Zack Greinke ($147 million over six years) and Ryu Hyun-jin ($36 million over six years).

The commissioner's office computed the average salary at a record 3,104,563, up 2.2 percent from last year's $3,039,161, The players' association, which uses a slightly different method, pegged the average at $3,213,479, up 3.8 percent.

Payroll figures are for 40-man rosters and include salaries and prorated shares of signing bonuses, earned incentive bonuses, non-cash compensation, buyouts of unexercised options and cash transactions, such as money included in trades. In some cases, parts of salaries that are deferred are discounted to reflect present-day values.

According to the collective bargaining agreement, checks to pay the luxury tax must be sent to the commissioner's office by Jan. 21.

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The Neediest Cases: Disabled Young Man and His Protective Mother Deal With Life’s Challenges

Though he would prefer to put his socks on without his mother’s help, Zaquan West, 25, does not have a choice.

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Joann West is a constant caretaker for her son, Zaquan. Though Ms. West works as a receptionist, the family fell behind on rent.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,104,694

Recorded Thursday:

$137,451

*Total:

$3,242,145

Last year to date:

$2,862,836

*Includes $596,609 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

A genetic disorder has encumbered Mr. West all his life, but he has needed assistance with this particular task since only last year. In November 2011, he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his left thigh that was as big as a football, but he was left less flexible.

“He doesn’t do well with disability, with the label,” his mother, Joann West, 55, said. “He doesn’t tell people that he has a disability. If they can’t see it, they just can’t see it.”

When her son was 13 months old, Ms. West learned he had neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to grow on the nerves and, in some cases, to infringe on vital organs, or as was the case last year, to become malignant. It also creates large bumps on the skin known as nodules.

At ages 5 and 8, Zaquan had operations to remove neurofibromatosis clusters that were eating away at his left hip bone. The disease has left his left leg a few inches shorter than his right. After each operation, he had to relearn how to walk.

Because of his physical disability, he was placed in a special-education class at school and given the same homework every night, his mother said.

“I advocated for him,” Ms. West said. “I kept fighting, because he was no dummy. He was physically impaired, not mentally. I went out of my way to try to give him a better life. The system would have failed him more than it did if I hadn’t stepped in.” Her efforts led to his being moved from a special-education classroom to a regular one in second grade.

Ms. West, a single mother, acknowledges that her protective instincts made her a very controlling parent, and she did not allow Zaquan out of the house much, which limited his friendships.

“I was afraid for him,” she said. “The streets, they don’t care about your disability.”

When Mr. West entered high school, it was the first time he had truly been away from his mother’s watchful eyes. He began skipping class, often going to the park or wandering their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, neighborhood with truant friends. He eventually dropped out of school.

“It was just me being out on my own and making my own choices,” Mr. West recalled.

Though she did not agree with her son’s decisions, Ms. West said that his need to explore was in some ways a result of her actions. “At a point, I stepped back,” she said, “to allow him to do certain things on his own and do what he wanted to do.”

In 2007, a couple of years after he dropped out, Mr. West joined the Door, an organization focused on empowering young people to reach their potential. There, he obtained his high school equivalency diploma.

Today, Mr. West is job hunting so that he can help pay his and his mother’s expenses.

But paying the monthly bills has become a struggle, Ms. West said, in part because of a recent change in her budget. In August, after an increase in income, they stopped receiving $324 a month in food stamps. The additional income did not cover all their expenses, however, and Ms. West eventually fell behind in the rent on their apartment.

Ms. West, who has been employed in various administrative jobs, currently works as a receptionist for Howie the Harp Advocacy Center, an agency that provides employment help to people with psychiatric disabilities. Her annual salary is about $25,000 before taxes. Her son receives $646 in Social Security disability benefits. After the family’s food stamps were cut off, Mr. West applied individually, and he now receives $200 in food stamps each month.

With the addition of Mr. West’s disability benefits and food stamps, their net monthly income is $2,213. Their contribution for the Section 8-subsidized apartment Ms. West has lived in for the past 30 years is $969.

Knowing she was in need of help, Ms. West’s boss told her about the Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And the society drew $1,598 from the fund to cover her debt.

Ms. West remains a constant caretaker for her independent-minded son, who, she says, has come to accept her help grudgingly. She says that even if they are not on speaking terms after a disagreement, she is there to lend him a hand.

Both are continuing to deal with the inevitable challenges: Mr. West is awaiting word from doctors on whether a new growth in his lungs is cancerous. But one of his greatest assets, given all that he has overcome, is that he is comfortable in his own skin.

“I’m just always going to be me,” he said, “so why deal with somebody else?”

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After Fighting Markets, Europe Now Prefers Working With Them

BRUSSELS — Buoyed by an agreement to establish a single supervisor to watch over the biggest banks in countries that use the euro, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, declared victory Friday over global financial markets, declaring them “totally wrong” for “seriously questioning whether the euro and indeed European integration would survive.”

Mr. Barroso’s triumphal comments, made at the end of a two-day summit meeting of the European Union’s 27 member states, could still prove premature, but they do signify a noteworthy evolution in the thinking of a Brussels bureaucracy that has long either ignored financial markets or denounced them as an alien and predatory force.

When the Greek debt crisis exploded three years ago, European officials often tended to vilify global markets and rating agencies, blaming “speculators” for the turmoil then stirring serious doubts about the long-term viability of the euro currency and even the entire “European project,” a six-decade-old venture to knit the region together through a gradual pooling of sovereignty.

As the crisis has developed, however, officials at the union’s headquarters in Brussels have stopped denouncing markets and learned instead to argue with them, presenting concrete steps to address their concerns. The banking supervisor deal, which will place about 150 of the most important banks in the 17 countries that use the euro under the supervision of the European Central Bank, is just part of a wide array of measures introduced over the last year to calm worries about the stability of Europe’s banks, government finances and, by extension, the union’s fundamental institutions.

“One of the big problems of Brussels has been that it is so remote from financial markets,” said Guntram B. Wolff, a former European Commission official who is deputy director of Bruegel, an independent economic research center in Brussels, the Belgian capital. “Now there is much more of a view of what is going on in the markets. This is a good thing.”

The traditional remoteness from, and often distaste for, financial markets, Mr. Wolff said, is largely a function of Brussels’ distance from major financial centers. The nearest is London, which for reasons of British domestic politics and fears in the city’s financial sector of meddling by the European Union, has often had testy relations with functionaries of the European Commission, the group’s main administrative and policy-making arm.

But ideology has also played a role, with many Brussels officials looking askance at what they have tended to scorn as an Anglo-Saxon preoccupation with markets, a phenomenon exemplified by the former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Mrs. Thatcher is despised by many so-called Eurocrats because of her robust hostility to the organization’s goal of an “ever closer union,” a mission laid out in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, and her insistence that Europe should focus instead on building a common market for goods and services and keeping the sovereign powers of individual states intact.

“The European Parliament has many rooms named after famous Europeans, but there is no Margaret Thatcher room and there never will be one,” predicted Derk-Jan Eppink, a Dutchman elected to the parliament by voters in Belgium and vice president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group. A member of the legislature’s budget and economic monitoring committees, Mr. Eppink said he had nonetheless noticed a sharp shift in attitudes toward markets among his colleagues and also E.U. officials since the debt crisis began shaking investors’ faith in the euro’s future.

“At the beginning of the crisis, everyone was always talking about greedy speculators and Wall Street sharks,” but such views were now “limited mainly to the hard left,” he said. “There has been a change in thinking. These markets and rating agencies are not widely seen anymore as an alien force of evil but as basically investors who don’t want to lose their money.”

“This changed over the past year,” Mr. Eppink added, when officials and politicians in Brussels “realized that many problems in the euro zone were bought on by ourselves, not by sharks and speculators.”

Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at ING Bank in Brussels, said, “It has been a steep learning curve, not just for the commission but also for markets.”

Accustomed to viewing the European Union through an American prism, many investors took fright at Europe’s fragmented and glacial decision-making process, Mr. Brzeski said. European officials, for their part, he added, often viewed the wild swings of the market, and the pain this caused as borrowing costs in Greece and Spain soared, with uncomprehending horror.

A big reason anxiety about markets has waned is that they have stayed calm in recent months, largely in response to a pledge this summer by the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, to “do whatever it takes” to defend the euro. The previous panic among investors has lifted to the point that the central bank has so far not needed to make any of the bond purchases Mr. Draghi vowed to make to shore up the debt of troubled countries.

Mr. Wolff, of the Bruegel research center, said this week’s summit meeting, far more tranquil and methodical than many previous conclaves, was an important step forward, but by no means the end of Europe’s troubles.

“There is a sense of direction at the moment, but the crisis is not over,” he said, warning that a grim economic outlook for next year, which will see much of the euro zone in recession, could upend the current optimism, especially if anger over unemployment — now at over 25 percent in Greece and Spain — leads to serious social unrest and political tumult.

James Kanter contributed reporting.

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World Briefing | Africa: Mali: Interim Prime Minister Sworn In

Mali swore in an interim prime minister on Thursday, just days after soldiers behind this year’s military coup arrested his predecessor and forced his resignation. The new prime minister, Diango Cissoko, officially took office in the capital, Bamako, where he said the former prime minister, Cheick Modibo Diarra, would be available as needed during the political transition. In recent weeks though, Mr. Diarra had taken stances that sometimes conflicted with the coup leader, Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo. Captain Sanogo has maintained his hold on Mali since the coup in March, and the political instability has raised concerns about a proposed military intervention to retake Mali’s north from radical Islamists. The African Union on Thursday welcomed Mr. Cissoko’s appointment despite the circumstances under which Mr. Diarra left office.

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Bengals beat Eagles 34-13

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Now the Cincinnati Bengals can focus on that other Pennsylvania team.

Andy Dalton threw a touchdown pass and ran for another score, an opportunistic defense forced five turnovers and Cincinnati beat the Philadelphia Eagles 34-13 on Thursday night.

The Bengals (8-6) took a half-game lead over the Pittsburgh Steelers for the last playoff spot in the AFC. But their game at Pittsburgh next week is far more important in the standings than this one.

"We've got nothing to celebrate here," coach Marvin Lewis said. "But we won and we do have some time to get ready for Pittsburgh."

The Bengals would clinch their second straight playoff berth with a win over the Steelers if Pittsburgh loses at Dallas this Sunday. A loss to the Steelers, though, likely would ruin Cincinnati's chances because it would lose the tiebreaker.

"Our goal is to win games. Period. We did that. Doesn't matter how we got there," cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones said. "We can be better. We can be higher. And that's what we take from this game. Listen, we all know we need to play better as a defense next week. Because we have ourselves a big one next week."

The Eagles' season was lost a long time ago. They fell to 4-10, losing double-digit games for the first time since 2005, the year after losing the Super Bowl to New England.

There were plenty of empty seats at the Linc, where fans are hoping this is Andy Reid's final season as coach. Reid led the Eagles to nine playoff appearances, six division titles and five NFC championship games in his first 13 years. But the Eagles will miss the playoffs for the second straight year and owner Jeffrey Lurie already said 8-8 would be "unacceptable."

"Five turnovers, 31 points. That says it all," Reid said. "Guys played hard, but you can't have those turnovers. You have to take care of the ball. Guys have to do it. I take full responsibility for them."

An interception by Leon Hall set up Dalton's go-ahead 11-yard TD run in the third quarter. Then Wallace Gilberry picked up Bryce Brown's fumble and ran it back 25 yards for another score and an 11-point lead.

BenJarvus Green-Ellis ran for 106 yards, including a 1-yard TD run in the first quarter for Cincinnati. Dalton tossed a 5-yard TD pass to A.J. Green in the fourth to cap a 24-point outburst in a span of 3:23.

"We realize what's at stake here, and we know we needed to put some football plays together," Lewis said. "We put ourselves at risk tonight, but we made plays when we needed to. We were able to get some things going with the turnovers and that definitely helped. We redirected some things at halftime and got everyone on the same page."

The Eagles committed three turnovers on three straight possessions at one point and then fumbled a kickoff when defensive lineman Cedric Thornton let the ball fall through his hands on a short kick.

After beating Tampa Bay on a last-second TD last week to snap an eight-game losing streak, the Eagles tried to make it two in a row. Turnovers got in their way again. They've committed an NFL-high 34 and forced just 12 all season.

The Eagles snapped a drought of 22 quarters without a turnover by recovering two fumbles in the second. Both led to field goals by Alex Henery, helping Philadelphia to a 13-10 halftime lead.

Rookie Nick Foles made his fifth straight start for Michael Vick, who just returned to practice this week after sustaining a concussion on Nov. 11. Foles threw for 182 yards, one TD and one interception.

Down 13-10, the Bengals started their rally with a turnover.

Hall intercepted Foles' deep pass and returned it 44 yards to the Eagles 40. Foles underthrew Jeremy Maclin, who was a few steps behind Hall.

"I feel really good anytime I have one of our receivers vertical on a guy," Foles said. "I just have to get the ball out there and make a better throw."

Green made an acrobatic catch for an 11-yard gain on third-and-9 a few plays before Dalton ran for the score to put the Bengals up 17-13.

Foles, who threw for 381 yards to lead that comeback against the Bucs, hit Riley Cooper on an 11-yard TD pass to cut it to 10-7. Foles connected with Maclin on a 46-yard pass during the drive.

The Eagles then forced their first turnover since Nov. 5 against New Orleans. Brandon Graham sacked Dalton, the ball popped loose and Trent Cole recovered at the Bengals 29.

"We win as a team, we lose as a team," said Eagles defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, who replaced Juan Castillo after six games. "We lost as a team today."

Just two plays in, Maclin fumbled after a 6-yard catch. Carlos Dunlap recovered and the Bengals started at the Eagles 44. Green-Ellis ran 29 yards on first down and scored a few plays later for a 7-0 lead.

It got uglier for Philadelphia on the next possession. Mat McBriar punted into his own blocker, Daniel Herron picked it up and ran 3 yards to the Eagles 11. But Graham sacked Dalton and Cincinnati settled for Brown's 24-yard field goal that made it 10-0.

The Eagles were again without running back LeSean McCoy and tight end Brent Celek also sat out. Both players also are recovering from concussions. McCoy missed his fourth straight game, but returned to practice this week with Vick.

NOTES: Green-Ellis surpassed 1,000 yards rushing for second time in his career. He did it with New England in 2010. ... The Eagles had a season-high six sacks. They have eight in two games since defensive line coach Jim Washburn was fired, and had 20 in first 12 games. ... Bowles confirmed he interviewed for the coaching vacancy at Temple, his alma mater.

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Recipes for Health: Red Cabbage, Carrot and Broccoli Stem Latkes — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I love finding things to do with broccoli stems. I find that allowing the cabbage mixture to sit for 10 to 15 minutes before forming the latkes allows the cabbage to soften a bit, and the latkes hold together better.

5 cups shredded red cabbage

1/2 pound carrots, shredded (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 1/2 cups shredded peeled broccoli stems

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

1 teaspoon baking powder

Salt to taste

3 tablespoons oat bran

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons cornmeal

2 tablespoons buckwheat flour

3 eggs, beaten

About 1/4 cup canola, grape seed or rice bran oil

1. Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment and place a rack over another sheet pan.

2. In a large bowl mix together the shredded cabbage, carrots, broccoli stems, baking powder, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, salt, oat bran, flour, cornmeal and buckwheat flour. Taste and adjust salt. Add the eggs and stir together. Let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Begin heating a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Take a 1/4 cup measuring cup and fill with 3 tablespoons of the mixture. Reverse onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining latke mix. You should have enough to make about 30 latkes.

4. Add the oil to the pan and heat for 3 minutes or until hot. When it is hot (hold your hand a few inches above – you should feel the heat), slide a spatula under one portion of the latke mixture and transfer it to the pan. Press down with the spatula to flatten. Repeat with more mounds. In my 10-inch pan I can cook four at a time without crowding; my 12-inch pan will accommodate four or five. Cook on one side until golden brown, about four to five minutes. Slide the spatula underneath and flip the latkes over. Cook on the other side until golden brown, another two to three minutes. Transfer to the rack set over a baking sheet and place in the oven to keep warm.

5. Serve hot topped with low-fat sour cream, Greek yogurt or crème fraîche.

Yield: about 30 latkes, serving 6

Advance preparation: You can prep the ingredients and combine everything except the eggs and salt several hour ahead. Refrigerate in a large bowl. Do not add salt until you are ready to cook, or the mixture will become too watery, as salt draws the water out of the vegetables.

Nutritional information per serving: 226 calories; 14 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 4 grams polyunsaturated fat; 8 grams monounsaturated fat; 93 milligrams cholesterol; 20 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 151 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 7 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Degrees of Debt: Colleges’ Debt Falls on Students After Construction Binges

John Freidah for The New York Times

Harvard University continues to expand its Allston campus as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to maintain its position atop the academic heap.

Some call it the Edifice Complex. Others have named it the Law of More, or the Taj Mahal syndrome.

A decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students — has left colleges and universities saddled with large amounts of debt. Oftentimes, students are stuck picking up the bill.

Overall debt levels more than doubled from 2000 to 2011 at the more than 500 institutions rated by Moody’s, according to inflation-adjusted data compiled for The New York Times by the credit rating agency. In the same time, the amount of cash, pledged gifts and investments that colleges maintain declined more than 40 percent relative to the amount they owe.

With revenue pinched at institutions big and small, financial experts and college officials are sounding alarms about the consequences of the spending and borrowing. Last month, Harvard University officials warned of “rapid, disorienting change” at colleges and universities.

“The need for change in higher education is clear given the emerging disconnect between ever-increasing aspirations and universities’ ability to generate the new resources to finance them,” said an unusually sobering introduction to Harvard’s annual report for the fiscal year ended in June.

The debate about indebtedness has focused on students and graduates who have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars and are struggling to keep up with their payments. Nearly one in every six borrowers with a student loan balance is in default.

But some colleges and universities have also borrowed heavily, spending money on vast expansions and amenities aimed at luring better students: student unions with movie theaters and wine bars; workout facilities with climbing walls and “lazy rivers”; and dormitories with single rooms and private baths. Spending on instruction has grown at a much slower pace, studies have shown. Students end up covering some, if not most, of the debt payments in the form of higher tuition, room and board and special assessments, while in some instances state taxpayers pick up the costs.

Debt has ballooned at colleges across the board — public and private, elite and obscure. While Harvard is the wealthiest university in the country, it also has $6 billion in debt, the most of any private college, the data compiled by Moody’s shows.

At the Juilliard School, which completed a major renovation a few years ago, debt climbed to $195 million last year, from $6 million in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2002. At Miami University, a public institution in Ohio that is overhauling its dormitories and student union, debt rose to $326 million in 2011, from $66 million in 2002, and at New York University, which has embarked on an ambitious expansion, debt was $2.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.2 billion in 2002, according to the Moody’s data.

The pile of debt — $205 billion outstanding in 2011 at the colleges rated by Moody’s — comes at a time of increasing uncertainty in academia. After years of robust growth, enrollment is flat or declining at many institutions, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. With outstanding student debt exceeding $1 trillion, students and their parents are questioning the cost and value of college. And online courses threaten to upend the traditional collegiate experience and payment model.

At the same time, the financial crisis and recession created a new and sometimes harrowing financial calculus. Traditional sources of revenue like tuition, state appropriations and endowment returns continue to be squeezed, even as the costs of labor, health care for employees, technology and interest on debt have generally increased.

Students are requiring more and more financial aid, a trend that many believe is unsustainable for all but the wealthiest institutions.

“We’ve had a lot more downgrades than upgrades in the last five years,” said John C. Nelson, managing director of the higher education and health care practice at Moody’s, which has a negative outlook on all but the top state universities and private schools. “There is going to be a thinning out of the ranks.”

For now, the worst financial struggles are confined to stand-alone professional schools and small, tuition-dependent private colleges. For instance, $63 million in debt has left Mount St. Mary’s University, a small Roman Catholic college in Maryland, with thin financial resources and junk-rated credit, according to a Moody’s rating in March.

“We borrowed a lot of money, but we had no choice,” said Thomas H. Powell, the university’s president, who maintains, despite the credit rating, that it has regained its footing and has no need for additional debt. “I wasn’t going to watch the buildings fall down.”

Almost no one is predicting colleges will experience default rates on par with those of indebted students and graduates, at least not anytime soon. While payments on debt principal and interest have increased over all, they remain a manageable piece of the expense pie for most institutions, partly because of historically low interest rates, financial analysts said.

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IHT Special: Internet-Driven Fame and Fortune for Mideast Comedians

DUBAI — While the world watched the demise of Egypt’s political leadership last year, some Egyptians were tuning online to YouTube clips lampooning the Egyptian state channel’s fumbling version of the events.

In early 2011, Bassem Youssef began filming clips in his laundry room to provide comic relief amid a crumbling political situation in his home country. His work struck a chord with a wide audience. A year and tens of millions of views later, Mr. Youssef — a heart surgeon by profession — is now the host of Egypt’s first live political satire show on television.

His bold show — modeled after Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” — tackles topics that were once taboo under the regime of the ousted president, Hosni Mubarak, including political corruption and religious extremism.

Money has been quick to follow the success. At one point, he received financial backing from the Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris while his show aired on ONtv, a liberal Egyptian channel. Since then, the show “El Bernameg,” meaning “The Program” in Arabic, has moved to CBC, another Egyptian channel with a wider audience, airing an episode every Friday. It has secured sponsors and a brand-new venue.

“We were always afraid, and when we started, there were always problems with the military, because we use satire and humor as stinging weapons of truth,” Mr. Youssef said via a Skype call from Cairo.

“We’re doing something right because now we get bigger budgets that have gone to renovating the theater where we film and to our researchers and writers,” he said.

When he appeared as a guest on “The Daily Show” this year, Mr. Youssef said there was more money in comedy than in cardiology. It seemed like a joke, but similar examples of Internet-driven fame and fortune are cropping up across the region, from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates, as political satire and sophisticated forms of comedy turn into widely watched and profitable entertainment.

“Stand-up content is what feeds into movies, talk shows and witty sitcoms,” said Jamil Abu-Wardeh, managing director of J.A.W. Media, a creative agency that produces original content for Web, television and stage, and founder of www.standub.com, a resource for all things funny in the region.

Mr. Abu-Wardeh also produced the Axis of Evil comedy tour, which introduced stand-up comedy to the Middle East.

“Stand-up comedy is evolving into a real industry today,” he said.

Comedy has always had a role in Arab entertainment. Egyptian and Kuwaiti theater plays were the most popular — featuring popular actors. Slapstick sketches dominated television comedy.

Since being introduced by the Axis tour and Mr. Abu-Wardeh’s team, a stand-up culture featuring a quick-witted comic on stage with a microphone, slowly evolved and gave rise to the variety now seen in the region today, including political satire.

This shift happened in parallel with the rise of YouTube over the past several years, giving audiences the opportunity to choose between entertainment programmed by broadcasters on television and unknown funny clips by random people online.

The changes have penetrated even the most conservative countries. While experimenting with small, local stand-up events in Saudi Arabia, Fahad Albutairi and his producer, Ibraheem al-Khairallah, began a YouTube channel called La Yekthar last year, on which they posted satirical clips.

They created an alligator mascot that has become a branding tool. Millions of views online led to ticketed events, and eventually, the team started a full-fledged video and events production company called Luxury Events KSA. Mr. Khairallah, whose day job is in advertising, managed to convince the telecommunications operator Mobily to sponsor a full month of comedy events.

Now, soft drink and electronics brands want to be in their coveted “presenting sponsor” slots. Comedy is winning a big chunk of the audience. Statistics from Argaam.com, which is an online statistics portal with data on different sectors, including media and stock markets, show that comedy attracts an average of 40 percent of the four million Saudi YouTube views per day.

Comedy has become a serious business.

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