In a good economy, college grads go to work; in a bad economy, they go to grad school. So goes the long-held thinking -- but it seems that the current crop of incipient grads has other ideas, if GRE (for Graduate Record Examination) applications are any guide. Early projections anticipated over 675,000 potential applicants would sit for the exam; those numbers have been revised steeply downward, to about 621,000, with the drop attributed (no surprise here) to the effect of the tanking economy on grad-student funding like grants and loans -- and on the teaching assistantships that often support students working on advanced degrees. (The Times reports that grad school test-takers increased steadily from 2005 to 2007, from 539,000 in '05 to 633,000 students last year.)

The drop underscores last week's dire reports on skyrocketing college costs-- if fewer people go to grad school, and fewer students attend college, the costs of the economic downturn will have enormous, lasting social and cultural repercussions. Into this fray comes the Gates Foundation, which will turn a nearly $70 million focus on improving college and post-secondary outcomes for poor kids, via grants to improve post-secondary education and scholarship programs at colleges in four states, including two New York schools. The Gates Foundation, long the economic engine behind small-school creation and high school reform here in New York City, says its commitment to high schools will continue, although largely in teaching and curriculum reform, according to the Times (and perhaps less in actual new-school creation or direct funding for efforts like the principal-grooming Leadership Academy).

On a local level, UFT and AFT president Randi Weingarten says she's in the ring for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, should Clinton be approved as Secretary of State. But in the meantime, she's teaching a model lesson today at RFK High Schoolin Queens, on the life and legacy of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a social-justice curriculum element intended for citywide use.

On the hyper-local level, Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill and her daughter Allison Snyder are the focus of a profile by Jennifer Medina that's small consolation for the parents of this year's 80,000+ eighth-graders applying for high-school seats -- if some cool comfort: the cumbersome, daunting high-school search is hard for everybody. Are DOE enrollment planners paying attention?