The bottom line

The rising cost of graduate degrees

When adjusted for inflation, the average graduate student’s debt load rose 43 percent between 2004 and 2012 to a median of $57,600. Debt for students pursuing advanced degrees in the humanities and social sciences grew more sharply compared with professional degrees—in, say, business or medicine—which also yield greater long-term returns.

The Wall Street Journal

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NSA surveillance affects tech profits

U.S.-based technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, are projected to lose between $35 billion and $180 billion through 2016 thanks to anxiety and indignation over the National Security Agency’s surveillance efforts.

MIT Technology Review

A glass ceiling for female chefs?

Women hold just 6.3 percent of head chef positions in the U.S., according to a survey of 15 prominent restaurant groups. And while female workers make up a majority of food service employees—and up to 40 percent of graduates from some of the country’s top cooking schools—government data shows there’s currently a larger percentage of female CEOs in the U.S. than head chefs.

Bloomberg.com

Bonding to a brand name

According to researchers at the University of British Columbia, consumers are more likely to develop emotional attachments to brands and products when they are alone and afraid—like while watching a scary movie—because they perceive the product to have “shared” the frightening experience with them.

Businessweek.com

Generous Wall Street bonuses

Wall Street bonuses covering 165,200 employees totaled $26.7 billion in 2013. That’s more than twice the annual salary of the 1 million Americans working full-time for the federal minimum wage, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

PolicyMic.com