There’s a huge pile of work awaiting the next Secretary of Education. There’s the No Child Left Behind act to be dealt with, charter school issues, under-performing teacher improvement, accountability, a universal pre-K system, etc.

It would be great if higher education were a priority on that to-do list, but historically, nearly all of the previous appointees have had strong backgrounds in primary or secondary education. Admittedly, it’s a short history; Carter was the first president to appoint a Secretary of Education, so Obama’s Education chief will only be the ninth in U.S. history. Of the eight we’ve already had, only Lauro F. Cavazos, Jr., who served from 1988-1990, has had a background in post-secondary education.

Waiting and trying to guess at who will be picked is like some weird combination of high school prom (Who’s gonna ask who?), March Madness (Who’ll win the office pool?) and the weather report (read Chaos by James Gleick to fully appreciate how impossible it is to accurately predict the weather).

The not-so-short list of Obama’s possible picks are:

David Boren: Current President of the Univ. of Oklahoma; former Governor (D) of Oklahoma (1975-1979) ; former U.S. Senator (1979-1994)

W. Gaston Caperton III: President of the College Board

Michael Cohen: President of Achieve, a group that works to help states raise elementary and secondary academic standards

Linda Darling-Hammond: Top Obama education advisor

Arne Duncan: CEO of Chicago Public Schools

Christopher Edley, Jr.: Dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley

James B. Hunt, Jr.: Former governor of North Carolina

Michael Johnston: Director of the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts

Timothy M. Kaine: Governor of Virginia

Thomas Kean: Former Governor of New Jersey, served as the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission in 2002

Caroline Kennedy: Daughter of President John F. Kennedy

Joel I. Klein: New York City public schools chancellor

George Miller: U.S. Rep. (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and author of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act

Janet Napolitano: Governor of Arizona

Hilary C. Pennington: Director of Special Initiatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Colin Powell: Former Secretary of State in the first Bush Administration

Michelle Rhee: Washington, D.C. public school system chancellor

Sharon P. Robinson: President of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

Andrew J. Rotherham: An Obama campaign advisor; co-founder of the education policy research group Education Sector

Jonathan Schnur: Chief executive of New Leaders for New Schools

Kathleen Sebelius: Governor of Kansas

Diane Shust: Director of government relations at the National Education Association

Paul G. Vallas: Superintendent of the Recovery School District of New Orleans

Robert E. Wise, Jr.: President of the Alliance for Excellent Education

The economy is tanking (or so they keep telling us), and that’s starting to make the the lives of college students everywhere more pinched and frowny and less chipper and skippy. Working while taking a full course load just sucks, even on a good day.

Alan Bradford at Geek Stew has some excellent pointers for anyone requiring a sure fire money-making project. It didn’t work all that well for the Germans during the Weimar Republic, but you could get lucky.

If you enjoy demoralizing statistical reports and analyses, please be sure to read “Measuring Up 2008.” It’s the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education’s biennial report on how the U.S. is doing educationally and it will make you want to stick your head in the sand and just wait this one out.

I stopped reading after these two statistics nuggets: (a) college tuition has increased 439% since 1982-1984 (the median family income has only increased 147%); and (b) about half of American college students attending four-year colleges don’t complete their degrees in six years.

The good news is, someone cares enough about the problem to not only realize there is one, but to research the depth of the conundrum and to (hopefully) work out some solutions.