Jeanne Boeh, professor of economics and business department chair at Augsburg University, recently spoke with WCCO about the rising cost of a college education.

Boeh noted that a college degree is still worth it.

“It is a different experience than it was 20 years ago. All the amenities have improved. There is more support for students. The dorms are better. The food is better. The kind of help students need is more available. All of that costs money,” Boeh told reporter Angela Davis.

Read and watch the full report at the WCCO site.

The Augsburg Education Department East African Student to Teacher program partnered with The Minnesota Education Equity Partnership to research and publish the report Somali Student Achievement in Minnesota about the state’s largest East African diaspora community.

This report, which was released and discussed at a launch event in May at Augsburg, invites readers to consider and recommend innovative practices to strengthen academic achievement for Somali students and to guide educators across Minnesota to better support Somali students and their families.

View the Somali Student Achievement in Minnesota report.

Watch a Somali language video about the Somali Student report launch here.

According to WCCO, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Netflix, Amazon, John Deere and more have all recently announced they are raising prices. So why are things getting more expensive?

To answer this question, WCCO’S Heather Brown spoke with Augsburg’s Business Department Chair Jeanne Boeh. “Prices are going up partly because people have more income,” Boeh said.

There are two main ways for inflation to occur, Boeh explained to WCCO. The first is called “demand pull,” and that is when people have more money, they demand more and, in turn, businesses charge more. The second way is “cost push” inflation, when the inputs — like gas or wages — that go into a making a good or service rise.

See the full interview on the WCCO website.

The Star Tribune reported about thousands of recently disclosed fake Facebook ads and posts and interviewed Augsburg political science professor Andrew Aoki.

Many of these ads and posts released by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee referenced several Minnesota events, including the police shooting cases of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile.

“There’s obviously some significant division in this country, and so my guess is that they looked for where there are real divisions and then tried to make them deeper,” Aoki told the Star Tribune. “Because it’s a lot easier to stoke the fires that are already burning than to start new ones.”

Read full story on the Star Tribune website.

Cory Hepola from Kare 11 spoke with Augsburg economics professor Keith Gilsdorf to discuss the country’s current unemployment rate, which is the lowest it has been since 2000. Unemployment topped out at 10 percent in October 2009, and ever since it has been on a steady decline.

“I don’t think that you can think of it as a permanent kind of place where the economy is going to continue that for a long period of time,”  Gilsdorf said. “It’s a tight labor market and there’s going to be pressure for employers to try to attract workers to their business, and at some point they’re going to have to offer higher pay.”

Watch full report on the Kare 11 website.