Opprtun* (for Opportun*)

Recent college graduates face a nine percent unemployment rate and many of them end up living at home with their parents because they're financially unable to support themselves. Not only is there a shortage of jobs requiring the four-year degrees they've worked so hard to obtain, but the burden of trying to pay off their monstrous students loans eats up all the money they do have. It's a very sad situation, for many reasons, but one still finds occasional cause to smile at the thought of equal educational opportunities. I laughed outright when I came across the following typo the other day: "Equal Educational Opportuniact." Yup, I thought, all things being equal, given the current cost-benefit ratio of higher education these days, one could be forgiven for supposing that only a maniac would care to avail themselves of the opportunity. Today's typo, Opprtun*, comes up three times in OhioLINK and 92 times in WorldCat.

(Wesleyan College graduates in 1913, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid