America’s pension crisis is one of the biggest stories and challenges of our time, and we’ve been doing our best these past few years to provide frequent and in-depth coverage. For those who want more, Fox Business is providing a new resource that we’ll be checking regularly for all things pension, and you should too.

The debate over MOOCs has quickly become polarized between defenders of the old higher-ed order on one side, and futurists predicting a total transformation of theindustry on the other. (As regular readers will know, we’ve tilted more toward the latter group, though we admit that the technology has seen some setbacks in recent months.) Over at The American, however, an excellent new piece by Edward Tenner threads the needle between these two views; positing MOOCs as both less dangerous and less transformative than either their critics and admirers claim.

Sectarian tensions in Pakistan have gone from bad to worse ever since riots broke out in Rawalpindi a month ago. On Sunday, a Shia cleric was murdered in Lahore. The killing itself was seen as a response to the assassination of a Sunni leader of religious party known for its anti-Shia rhetoric. And on Wednesday, 3 people were killed as a suicide bomber tried to break into a Shia mosque in Rawalpindi. Is Pakistan going the route of Iran and Syria?

South Sudan was never stable. It was never on a trajectory toward becoming a normal Westphalian state, no matter what foreign observers hoped and wished.

The Economist calls it “one of the most audacious challenges ever to the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish prime minister.” In a police operation, a mayor, a construction typhoon, and the sons of three of Erdoğan’s cabinet ministers were arrested as part of a corruption probe. The juicy details were leaked to the press: “$4.5 million in cash packed in shoe boxes found in the home of the chief executive of a state-run bank; a money-counting machine and piles of bank notes discovered in the bedroom of a government minister’s son.”

The vote by the 5,000-member American Studies Association to support the academic boycott of Israel, reportedly by a 2-1 margin, has evoked many responses, but none so far has identified the irony at the core of the matter.

Even though the government promised it would pay a good price for his rice, Mana Nutchyoo hasn’t seen half the money. “It’s in the system,” he said hopefully, held up by the turmoil sparked by opposition protests in Bangkok, 90 minutes to the south. But even if the political crisis eases, Nutchyoo may never see the rest of the money: the government is having serious trouble funding its rice-buying scheme and other pro-poor subsidies. If the fiscal crisis worsens the “Red Shirts” could end up turning on their government patrons.

Gallup Polls and Purdue University will be spending the next five years surveying hundreds of thousands of college graduates to paint a more accurate picture of where students from various colleges end up and what sort of impact their degree has on their life. This measurement will go far beyond more recent attempts to put a value of a degree by simply looking at post-college earnings, and looks like the best attempt yet to put a true value on college degrees.

The eurozone’s most important economy could be in for a rude awakening. In the wake of Standard & Poor’s recent downgrade of the Netherlands, Germany’s coveted triple-A credit rating may be at risk. Germany is one of only two Eurozone countries left with the top rating, but with its slowing output, aging population, expensive pledges to save the euro, and a new, untested governing coalition, the problems that brought down the Netherlands down may eventually afflict the economy holding Europe together.

The ASA’s misguided alliance with the BDS movement is just the tip of the iceberg. Academe’s intellectual and moral rot runs deep.