by Pharoh Martin
For New Pittsburgh Courier

WASHINGTON (NNPA)—Like thousands of recent college graduates who have marched proudly in their caps and gowns, 22-year-old Nikole Pegues’ plan is to now get a job. But, how that plan is going to pan out is a little bit of a mystery at this point.

The Queens, N.Y., native, upon receiving her bachelor’s degree from Howard University, went from being a college student with high hopes to an unemployment statistic with a six-month countdown to pay back four years of student loans. “I don’t know many people who have paying jobs lined up after graduation,” Pegues said. “I only know of two or three.”

LOOKING FOR WORK—Nikole Pegues is among thousands of graduates who are looking for permanent jobs, but who might have to settle for internships.

by Martha Irvine

CHICAGO (AP)—Bria Fleming has been through a lot in the last year, including her mother’s hospitalization and job loss and a fire in their home. It’d be enough to get most 18-year-olds down.

But the Black high school student is surprisingly optimistic about the future and her chances for a better life—an attitude common among her African-American peers, according to a new nationwide survey of high school students.

(NNPA)—Across the U.S., another group of Black students have earned their college degrees this month, and have progressed to the next stage in their lives. But they do so carrying the burden of greater debt than their White peers, according to a new study conducted by The College Board’s Advocacy and Policy Center.

The study revealed that 27 percent of Black bachelor’s degree recipients in 2007-2008 borrowed $30,500 or more compared to 16 percent of Whites, 14 percent of Latinos/Hispanics and 9 percent of Asians.

IRVINE, Calif. (AP)—If campus activism still brings to mind peace signs, a sea of White faces and liberal strongholds like Berkeley, meet Jesse Cheng.

Cheng is a third-year Asian-American studies major at the University of California, Irvine, a campus less than five decades old in the middle of Orange County, a place of strip malls and subdivisions that gave birth to the ultraconservative John Birch Society. He is part of a growing movement of minority students rallying around a new cause—fighting a budget crisis that’s undermining access to higher education at a time when students of color have become a stronger demographic force.