During the recession and its aftermath, public schools took a hit as both state coffers and local property taxes shriveled. That showed up in shrinking employment, but also in teacher salaries.

According to a report being released Tuesday, the vast majority of teachers in the nation’s largest school districts took a pay cut or saw their pay frozen at least one year between 2008 and 2012.

The report by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit group that advocates for tougher teacher standards, looked at salary data across 41 of the country’s 50 largest school districts. Average annual teacher pay increases, which included cost-of-living and contractually negotiated raises as well as increases awarded for extra years of experience, dropped from 3.6 percent in the 2008-09 school year to 1.3 percent in the 2011-12 year. (The report did not include increases that teachers may have received for extra degrees or certifications.)

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

Teaching isn’t known to be a lucrative profession, but online marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers is changing that for some educators.

Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, has made $700,000 selling her lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, an ecommerce startup where teachers offer their lesson plans to fellow educators.

» via Yahoo! News

Miguel Hernandez, the founder of a company specializing in explanatory videos for startups, said he spent about three hours a day for three weeks making an online video course explaining his craft. But, last year, that one video series earned him nearly six figures on the online course platform Udemy. This year, now that he’s created a second course for students (on “How to Create an Awesome Online Course,” of course), he said that if momentum keeps up, “I’ll be making more money selling online courses than through the studio.”

And he’s not the only one finding a new stream of income from Udemy. This morning, the San Fransciso-based startup released the salaries of the top 10 instructors on the 2-year-old platform. In total, the group earned $1.65 million in the last year, with all of them bringing in more than $50,000 on their own and the top individual making more than $200,000. All of the instructors’ top courses focus on Web development, programming and tech entrepreneurship – not a surprise given Udemy’s roots in those field and increasing interest in coding.

» via GigaOM

To the graduating class of 2012: All that money you or your parents have spent or borrowed to pay your tuition for the past few years? It’s not getting the same return on investment it did a decade ago.

According to the folks at the Economic Policy Institute, the average inflation-adjusted wage for male college graduates aged 23 to 29 was $21.68/hour. That’s an 11% over decline over the last ten years. And while wages for females in the same age and education group are only down 7.6% during that same time period, women still make significantly less on average ($18.80/hour).

» via The Consumerist

Student loan debt continues to rise, and with it concern among educators and politicians (including President Obama) and new federal policies aimed at reducing students’ burden. One small private Christian college is expanding its own efforts, embracing a trick of the trade historically used by many law schools.

Huntington University, a liberal arts college in Indiana, is offering a loan reimbursement program that will pay students’ federal and private loans if their annual salary after graduation is below $20,000; students will be covered on a proportional scale as their salaries increase up to $40,000.

As of this year, Huntington is the first institution to offer such a program to all of its incoming freshman and transfer students; most offer it only on a case-by-case basis. The approach is meant to entice students who choose a service-based career path after college and are afraid of facing unrealistic loan payments because of the generally higher tuitions at private institutions. At Huntington, about 400 students are enrolled in the program, with federal, private alternative and parent loans all covered.

» via Inside Higher Ed

The term “merit pay” has gained a prominent place in the debate over education reform. First it was former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee trumping it as a key to fixing the District’s ailing public schools. Then a handful of other cities gave it a go, including Denver, New York City, and Nashville. Merit pay is a big plank of Education Secretary Arne Duncan‘s reform platform. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has just launched his own version of merit pay that focuses incentives toward principals.

There’s just one problem: educators almost universally hate merit pay, and have been adamantly opposed to it from day one. Simply, teachers say merit pay won’t work.

In the last year, there’s been some pretty damning evidence proving them right; research showing that merit pay, in a variety of shapes and sizes, fails to raise student performance. In the worst of cases, such as the scandal in Atlanta, it’s contributed to flat-out cheating on the part of teachers and administrators. So, are we surprised that educators don’t respond to monetary incentives? Is that even the right conclusion to draw?

» via Freakonomics

One in five graduates earns less than a person who left school with as little as one A-level.

The official figures raise doubts that thousands of students have wasted their time with ‘useless’ degrees.

On average, the Office for National Statistics says that a person with a degree or higher academic qualification, such as a PhD, earns £16.10 an hour.

» via Daily Mail