Monday, October 12, 2026
Thursday, October 8, 2026
The woman with the mattress: the radical, rage-fuelled history of anti-rape art [ The Guardian ]
The flava:.JPG)
In September 2014, Emma Sulkowicz began to carry a blue mattress weighing 23kg around her university campus. The mattress was similar to the ones New York’s Columbia University used in its dorm rooms, where Sulkowicz said she had been raped by a fellow student two years earlier. Her performance/endurance artwork constituted her visual art senior thesis, drawing attention to the lack of criminal charges brought against her alleged attacker and his continued presence at the university. As she hauled it across campus, others could choose to assist her with her burden. Many did. She recorded responses to the piece in a diary. . . .
The article:
The wiki:
The Former NFL Lineman Who Solved a Decades-Old Math Problem [ WSJ ]
A former NFL player named John Urschel decided to do some light reading this week, and for him that meant leafing through the latest math papers from OpenAI about topics such as the Riemann hypothesis.
“Oh my lord,” he thought. “I was absolutely floored.”
Urschel was blown away by the findings because he happened to understand the hundreds of proofs better than nearly any human on the planet. Nine years ago, he traded the National Football League for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Monday, instead of studying abstract play designs, he was publishing some impenetrable language of his own to prove a decades-old mathematical conjecture.
Urschel’s paper, titled “On the Growth Factor of Random Matrices,” is one in a deluge of AI-assisted proofs that mathematicians have achieved in this new era when they can combine their genius with supercomputing power. But within this community of brainiacs, there isn’t a single person quite like the 35-year-old Urschel. After three years with the Baltimore Ravens, the offensive lineman who was listed at 6-foot-3 and 313 pounds ditched his helmet to become a professional egghead in 2017. And he hasn’t regretted it for a moment since. . . .
The article:
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Sunday, October 4, 2026
Thursday, October 1, 2026
How colleges are responding to Trump administration’s ‘call to action’ [ CSMonitor.com ]
The flava:
Two months after the Department of Education called on colleges and universities to publicly state their commitment to principles the Trump administration accuses them of abandoning, a pair of major state university systems have complied, while many more institutions remain wary.
Even that limited response is vastly different from the uniform rejection from nine leading universities last year of the administration’s previous initiative, the Compact for Academic Excellence. That effort tied compliance to federal research and grant funding.
This time, the U.S. government has not issued an overt threat of consequences. Still, college leaders worry their answers could become grounds for punishment or that not answering could draw its own wrath. They question whether complying risks institutional independence. Complicating the decision: The questions themselves deal with subjects that colleges wrestle with constantly and feel to many like they are already addressing.
The National Call to Action issued by Education Secretary Linda McMahon in August asked colleges and universities to respond publicly by the end of the year. The list of questions probes how institutions are handling admissions transparency, the free exchange of ideas, intellectual pluralism, affordability, academic rigor, foreign influence, and the goal of advancing the nation’s interests. . . .
The article:
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
College Leaders Are Using A.I. Students Call It Hypocrisy. [ NYTimes ]
College professors and administrators have been busting students for cheating with artificial intelligence for several years. Now, the professors and administrators are getting in trouble, too.
Dartmouth College last week announced it was investigating its provost, Santiago Schnell, after the college’s student-run newspaper found that some of his published writing appeared written by A.I.
Dr. Schnell, a mathematical biologist, is perhaps the most prominent in a growing cast of college professors and administrators who have been accused of using A.I. in a way that crosses ethical lines. There have been instances of opinion articles, research papers and even campuswide messages to students showing traces of A.I. influence. He issued a statement apologizing.
Administrators wring their hands, and sometime issue punishments, when students outsource writing assignments to a robot to save time or avoid the hard work of thinking.
Some students are calling out the examples of faculty doing the same thing as hypocritical. . . .
The article:
Sunday, September 27, 2026
A College Girl Was Exploited on Camera. A Network of Anonymous Men Got to Work [ WIRED ]
On the afternoon of Sunday, November 2, 2025, Maddie Kowalski stopped by a house in Gainesville to drop off a present. The University of Florida sophomore had traveled to Japan that summer, where she’d picked up an action figure from the manga One Piece as a gift.
Students referred to this building near the main campus, which has long been associated with the UF chapter of the frat Phi Delta Theta, as “Fort.” A brick multifamily colonial-style house, it was a typical frat-boy residence with worn hardwood floors, exposed cables, and “THIS IS FORT” spray-painted in UF’s orange and blue colors on the fence lining the perimeter. Phi Delta Theta didn’t have a great reputation on campus; at the time, they were being investigated for accusations of hazing. But the boys who lived there were Kowalski’s best friends: “It was a safe space, I thought.”
A few hours later, Kowalski, then 19, was at an apartment drinking when a friend told her something that would alter the trajectory of her life: Did she know that a nude image of her was circulating at FSU, a university a few hours away?
Kowalski would later learn that the image was making the rounds on Snapchat, and people were talking about it on the anonymous campus social network YikYak. When she opened the app, “that’s when I started crashing out,” she says. As Kowalski scrolled, she saw what appeared to be hundreds of messages about a “DZ” girl. (She was in the sorority Delta Zeta.) They were now referring to not just an image, but a video. Some were joking about masturbating to it.
The situation was about to get worse. Around 6 that night, an anonymous account on X with the handle u/SteveCumfull posted the video, saying: “Meet Maddie Kowalski, queen of Delta Zeta.” Kowalski had no idea who the poster was, but she immediately identified the setting in one shot as Fort. In the video, the floor is dirty, with debris strewn everywhere. She’s lying on the ground naked, her eyes half-closed, touching herself while flanked by a group of men in shorts. While their faces weren’t visible, they appeared to be some of the same guys she’d been hanging out with just a few hours prior, she realized with a sinking feeling in her gut. In another shot, from a different night and at a different location, she is being penetrated by two men.
The video that ended up going viral on X was a compilation of three different clips: one, mentioned above, that was taken at Fort earlier that fall, and two that were recorded during a separate sexual encounter with two strangers. Kowalski says she met the latter in October, not long before the video went viral, when she was walking home after a night out drinking. She was heavily intoxicated and only remembers "parts of" what happened: "I didn't recognize myself at all." She says she did not consent to being filmed, let alone have that content shared publicly.
What had been a piece of salacious on-campus gossip, transmitted via anonymous social media and group texts, was now a national story. X removed the post containing the video, but late the following day, @SteveCumfull posted it again. Then they posted a screenshot of a cryptocurrency token they'd bought with Kowalski's name on it, with a market cap of $11,400. "Put your children's college savings into this," they tweeted. @SteveCumfull could have been anyone: a close friend, a neighbor, a mutual with an axe to grind. Whoever they were, they now appeared to be profiting from the worst moment of Kowalski's life. . . .
The article:
The Reddit:
Friday, September 25, 2026
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Stanford Used A.I. to Swap Black Student for Hispanic Student in a Photo [ NYTimes ]
The flava:
Billy Ramirez had collected a plate of noodles at a Lunar New Year party in 2024 when a Stanford University photographer snapped a picture of him alongside two other students.
The university’s dining service posted the photo online the next day. But when Stanford used the image on banners last week, a Black woman had replaced Mr. Ramirez. The other students’ appearances had been altered so that they appeared thinner. . . .
The article:
The photos:
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Monday, September 21, 2026
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? [ NYTimes ]
I could feel her looking at me. Her body slung in adolescent impertinence against the front passenger seat door, shoulders turned so she could face me fully. Usually when I picked up my daughter, Najya, from middle school, she’d tumble into the car and bombard me with the day’s escapades, chattering nonstop about her friend group or complaints about an annoying teacher or her wonder at the test she’d aced despite thinking she’d failed it. But not this day.
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I worked to keep my face neutral, buying a few moments to gather my thoughts. . . .
The article:
Sunday, September 20, 2026
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
An M.I.T. Report Warns A.I. Is Causing ‘Cognitive Surrender.’ Universities Are in a Bind. [ NYTimes ]
The flava:
The worries that artificial intelligence is degrading education have been building for months. Students are using it for everything, including cheating, and a recent report out of M.I.T. said it is triggering “cognitive surrender.”
Many university leaders are embracing A.I. with enthusiasm anyway.
As A.I. leaders warn about the dangers of their own technology, the dissonance between the optimism of university leaders and the fears of many students and professors may increase. Professors and students are often in a bind about what they should do: Use more A.I. to stay relevant, or dial back to preserve learning and thinking?
While some politicians and A.I. leaders are warning about possible doomsday scenarios for humanity as A.I. models advance, many campus leaders are focused on the existential threat the technology poses to universities. . . .
The article:
Friday, September 11, 2026
Thursday, September 10, 2026
Monday, September 7, 2026
Reader's Comment on "I’m Furious. This TV Show Understands Why."
Thursday, September 3, 2026
Hundreds of Colleges Are Sending Acceptance Letters to Kids Who Didn’t Even Apply [ WSJ ]
The flava:
Hundreds of colleges are sending students letters of admission—without even requiring an application.
Schools are increasingly agreeing to admit students based on a handful of criteria, like high school transcripts. Known as “direct admissions,” this expedited process is free and omits required essays, questions about extracurriculars and mandated standardized tests.
Proponents call the approach a solution for both sides.
“Instead of a student applying to the institution, the institution applies to them,” said Angel Perez, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “It’s a way for students not to have to jump through hoops in order to get into college.”
Direct admission has ballooned in popularity, particularly among less-selective private schools vying for a shrinking pool of college-goers. On the Common App, the number of participating institutions has more than tripled since 2023-24, representing about a fifth of the app’s partners, said Chief Executive Jenny Rickard. More than a dozen states now have direct-admissions initiatives.
“We can no longer take a posture that expects our students to come to us,” said Karlyn Crowley, president of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, which added direct admissions this year through EAB’s Match platform. “We’re at a new moment.”
The article:
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
A makeover for college: No gym, no meal plan and two years of work [ NPR ]
The flava:
The buildings that frame a grassy quad on a hill above Vermont's capital city are all red brick and white trim, dating from as far back as the 1870s.
This quintessential college campus from the 19th century is where a group of business, college and government leaders is working on the task of reinventing higher education for the 21st century.
So deeply entrenched are the problems confronting higher education that a growing chorus of innovators says the easiest way to fix them is to begin again from scratch.
The Greenway Institute — "green" as in new — will adopt instructional methods proven to work well, such as real-world training under the supervision of faculty mentors, while stripping away such things as layers of administrators and nonacademic amenities that make college in the United States so expensive.
"It's not fancy. It's a place where you do have a meaningful relationship with your faculty members. But you also take out your own trash," said Mark Somerville, the founding president.
Even more unexpected than the location of this startup is that it comes at a time when so many colleges are closing. In Vermont alone, seven private colleges have shut down in the last 10 years.
But Somerville, the former provost of Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, said this "moment of mass extinction" makes it clearer than ever that "we need new models in higher ed."
Enough of these experimental higher education institutions are in the planning stages that they have been organized by Duke University into a Future Universities Alliance. Greenway is a member. . . .
The article:
Monday, August 31, 2026
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills [ WSJ ]
The flava:
When he was the director of international student services at Syracuse University, Juan Tavares received a regular Saturday email from the dean of admissions reporting the tally of student applications, acceptances and enrollment deposits.
“The problem with Syracuse is that the school thinks of itself as like an Ivy, but it’s not,” Tavares said.
Tavares, who no longer works at the school, said his recommendations went nowhere.
In 2025, the weaknesses he had pointed out collided with President Trump’s high profile crackdown on student visas. Syracuse’s international enrollment numbers declined by half for undergraduate and graduate students.
Syracuse also failed to draw enough students overall—prompting it to offer emergency financial-aid packages to lure freshmen.
This school year, which began Aug. 24, enrollment fell short, sending the school into a 1.5% budget shortfall.
Syracuse also added nearly half a billion in debt to build desperately needed new dorms, which brought on a bond market reprimand. And it recently cut programs it said weren’t popular.
A national brand-name institution with a $2.5 billion endowment and a storied 150-year tradition is suddenly beginning to flail.
The problems that have long buffeted the nation’s smaller schools are now spreading to the nation’s bigger, richer universities—with midsize private schools such as Syracuse especially feeling the pinch. . . .
The article:
Friday, August 28, 2026
A West Point for Space? Trump Calls for New Academy to Train Space Personnel [ WSJ ]
The U.S. will develop an academy to train personnel for government space jobs, along the lines of long-established institutions that do the same for the Air Force and Coast Guard.
President Trump signed an executive order Friday to establish the U.S. Space Academy, during an event at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The new institution will aim to prepare people to take on a range of positions at NASA, in military space agencies and the private sector, according to the White House.
“It’s clear we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled servicemembers and engineers and civil operators and everything else,” Trump said of the space academy, comparing it to West Point, the military educational institution in New York. He didn’t say where the institution would be located.
The academy will be led by NASA and offer both technical education and leadership training. Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, will serve as chairman of a presidential commission set up to advise the president on creating the institution. . . .
The article:
Thursday, August 27, 2026
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
There’s Really Only One Way to Stop Students From Cheating [ Adam Grant ]
When the 95 students logged in for the exam, however, they got a surprise. I’d ditched the multiple-choice and short-answer questions I usually include. Instead I asked the students to write an essay, using the principles of organizational psychology they’d been studying, on how to motivate students to stop cheating.
Their responses shocked me. Hardly any students saw cheating as a violation of integrity. A majority made excuses: We’re under a lot of stress. Everyone else is doing it. We have no choice. They sounded like major league baseball players in the steroid era. ChatGPT was their performance-enhancing drug.
--Adam Grant in the New York Times
Friday, August 21, 2026
Ex-NSA Director: The Unfiltered Truth About Steve Jobs, AI & The Next Tech Collapse [ Naomi Kent ]
Seldom have I editorialized here, but I quite enjoyed this interview with Bobby Ray Inman. For years, I used to run into him as we both exercised at Gregory Gym at the University of Texas. I haven't seen him in a while, but at 95 years old he is still a force.
Naomi Kent's YouTube channel had only 139 subscribers this morning. With content like this, no doubt the number will grow.
--Zooze the Horse
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Once globally preeminent, U.S. universities are sliding into decline [ The Hechinger Report ]
The nation was distracted by other things when a quiet warning sounded: Support was diminishing for American academic research that had led to breakthroughs and innovation.
That familiar-sounding worry came not this year, but near the end of World War II, in a pivotal government study by the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development.
The response then: infusions of government cash that would propel the U.S. higher education system into international preeminence over the subsequent decades.
American colleges and universities rose to the ranks of the best in the world. They attracted top scholars who won a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes. They helped drive the innovation economy. As trade deficits beset other industries, education became the sixth-largest U.S. services export. At their peak enrollment, international students brought in more than $40 billion a year.
Now, as a new academic year begins, American dominance in higher education globally is incontrovertibly in decline, according to data, international rankings and independent experts.
The slide has been accelerated by a year and a half of funding cuts, restrictions on international students and curbs on what can be said or taught. But it began before those political challenges, with enrollment declines, lackluster returns on ever-rising prices and public mistrust. . . .
The article:
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades to ‘Curb Mental Health Crisis’ [ WSJ ]
The flava:
The University of Michigan will drop grades for first-semester freshmen next year in an effort to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals,” according to the school.
Instead of a letter grade, first-semester transcripts will show “pass or no credit.” The program is designed to help students “acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys,” the school said.
The program, set to start in fall 2027, applies to students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which enrolls about half of Michigan’s roughly 8,000 first-year students.
A Michigan spokesman declined to comment about how the university reached the decision to enact the pilot. Although grades won’t be recorded on student transcripts or affect grade-point averages, professors will still assign them internally to track eligibility for scholarships and academic awards.
Schools including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology have implemented similar “grade-covering” programs in past years.
The shift at Michigan, among the nation’s largest and best-known public universities, comes as schools wrestle with grade inflation and the need for remedial instruction for freshmen ill-prepared for college-level classes. University of California math and science professors have urged UC regents to reinstate entrance exams because so many freshmen were unprepared. . . .
The article:
Monday, August 10, 2026
Friday, August 7, 2026
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Should you use AI for a task? Here’s a simple way to decide [ Bruce Schneier ]
"I teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And it will come as no surprise to you that my students regularly use AI to complete their writing assignments. Doing so is a waste of their tuition money. But if their entire career is going to include AI writing assistants, why shouldn’t they embrace their future?
The best way I’ve found to explain the dilemma comes from the AI researcher Daniel Meissler: it’s the difference between work and the gym.
The same analysis holds for any task an AI can do for you. If it’s work – if the task has to be done and no one cares how – then it’s fine to use AI assistance. But if the task is more like the gym, and how the task is done is at least as important, then it probably doesn’t make sense to use AI.
This, of course, assumes that the AI is actually up for the task and that it’s trustworthy: that it can do the job well, that its mistakes are minimal and correctable, that it’s been secured from cyber-attacks that would influence its results. Those are all important, and shouldn’t be minimized. There’s no point giving an AI something that it can’t do reliably. But once you’re confident that the AI can perform the task, the work v gym distinction helps you decide if it should.
The writing assignments I give my students are gym tasks, not work tasks. I ask them to write policy memos not because the world needs more policy memos. I assign them because the very act of writing, which includes thinking and outlining and drafting and editing, making and criticizing and revising arguments, will help develop the critical thinking skills they will need in their future careers. And without this constant mental exercise, those skills will atrophy. Employers are already noticing. . . ."
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
The ‘Fraud Squad’ at Caltech Will Catch You if You Lie on Your Application [ WSJ ]
The flava:
At California Institute of Technology, a little-known band of admissions officials is scrutinizing the fonts on science-fair certificates, checking addresses on high-school transcripts and analyzing signatures on awards.
Known as the “fraud squad,” these investigators are in charge of vetting applications to the highly selective STEM-focused school, which admitted less than 4% of its 11,400 applicants for the incoming class. Caltech created the team two years ago partly in response to a rising number of anonymous accusations of dishonest submissions.
The four-person team inspects every admitted student’s application, taking nothing for granted. They scour the internet to confirm obscurities, contact competition officials and high-school counselors and use a video-interview program to suss out students’ research claims.
At elite colleges such as Caltech, admissions have become more competitive and applications are increasingly complex. Some request long lists of accolades—research, competitions, awards and independent projects—that colleges can find harder to verify than grades and test scores.
At the same time, technology like artificial intelligence makes it easier to falsify submissions. And for young people, the stakes often feel higher than ever. . . .
The article:
Monty Roberts, Horse Trainer Who Preached Kindness, Dies at 91 [ NYTimes ]
The flava:
. . . His father, a horse trainer, was a proponent of conventional horse-breaking techniques that employed fear and punishment to bring a young mustang into submission.
Early in his life, Mr. Roberts recounted in his 1996 autobiography, “The Man Who Listens to Horses,” he recoiled at those methods. When he was just 7, he showed his father how effective it was to treat a young stallion with kindness to instill trust.
His father, he said, flew into a rage and beat him so severely with a chain that he had to be hospitalized. He vowed never to share his unconventional ideas with his father again. But he remained convinced that there was a better way to work with horses.
When he was 13, he went out to the high desert in northern Nevada alone and spent days observing herds of wild horses. He watched as the dominant mare used body language and visual cues to control young stallions. This nonverbal communication astounded him.
“In time, I would grasp just how exact a language it was,” he wrote. “There were precise messages, whole phrases and sentences that always meant the same thing, always had the same effect.”
He realized, he added, that “if I understood how to do it, I could effectively cross over the boundary between human (the ultimate fight animal) and horse (the flight animal).”
The article:
Sunday, August 2, 2026
Friday, July 31, 2026
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Facing political attack and falling enrollment, colleges take the fight to … each other [ The Hechinger Report ]
It seemed like a win-win: a proposal to let community colleges in Illinois award bachelor’s degrees in certain subjects to rural residents and working adults who live beyond commuting distance of four-year universities.
The change would not only make things “easier and more affordable for students,” according to backers including Gov. JB Pritzker; it would increase the supply of workers with the skills employers need.
But four-year universities lined up against it. And a political ally, flanked by several of their presidents, was blunt about why: It would cut into their business. . . .
The article:
Saturday, July 25, 2026
India’s Education Minister Steps Down, Handing Win to Protesters [ NYTimes ]
The flava:
India’s education minister stepped down on Saturday, in a major victory for a student protest movement whose explosive rise has become one of the most serious challenges in years to the power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, submitted his resignation to Mr. Modi, bowing to weeks of public pressure that culminated in nationwide street protests from Delhi and Mumbai to Kolkata and Chennai.
Mr. Pradhan said he had been “deeply pained” by the events of recent days, but he pointed a finger at what he called “anti-national forces,” saying he did not want them to take advantage of the massive protests.
The movement emerged in May, powered by widespread anger and frustration after the government ordered millions of students to retake an extremely competitive national medical school entrance exam because test questions had been leaked. Students held Mr. Pradhan, under whose watch several national exams were marred by leaks, responsible.
The article:
Colleges Promise ‘Business as Usual’ on Middle East Campuses Despite War [ NYTimes ]
The flava:
The Middle East campuses of American universities are expecting — or perhaps just hoping — to be open for classes as usual for the coming semester, even as the United States’ conflict with Iran poses new risks in the region.
Some American schools have long run programs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The war, however, meant that students spent much of the spring semester enduring shutdowns, evacuations, online courses and other emergency measures. But the unraveling of the cease-fire between Washington and Tehran is not yet curbing universities’ ambitions to teach as they ordinarily would in the Middle East.
The University of New Haven is still planning to inaugurate its new campus in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, though probably without some faculty members it intended to send from the United States.
“The word in Saudi is that students are going to school and it’s business as usual,” Jens Frederiksen, New Haven’s president, said in an interview. “We’re proceeding with the launch.”
For American universities, campuses in wealthy Persian Gulf states can offer new revenue and welcome clout. Those perks, though, come with sporadic political headaches at home, reputational perils and regional safety concerns. After a strike on a physics building at a university in Tehran, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned in March that “American universities in the West Asia region are legitimate targets for us.”
The article:
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Monday, July 20, 2026
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Monday, July 13, 2026
Monday, July 6, 2026
A Great University Undermines Its Mission [ NYTimes editorial board ]
The flava:
Seven years ago, the University of California system appointed an 18-member committee to study the use of standardized tests in its undergraduate admissions. The committee included professors from all 10 campuses and a range of disciplines. They spent a year studying the issue and published a 225-page report full of evidence and recommendations.
The committee concluded that scores on the SAT and ACT, the main standardized tests for college admissions, did a better job measuring student readiness for college than high school grades. High test scores were particularly good at finding talented students from low-income families and underrepresented minority groups. For these reasons, the committee recommended the system continue to require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores.
The university’s leaders disregarded the report.
A few months after its release, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the system’s Board of Regents voted to stop using the tests in undergraduate admissions. Initially, the university planned to make the submission of SAT and ACT scores optional, as many other colleges did during the pandemic. Almost immediately, though, the University of California began refusing to accept SAT or ACT scores, even from students who wanted to submit them. The policy was known as “test blind.” University leaders wrongly claimed that it would make admissions fairer and more equitable.
The results have been terrible. At the University of California, San Diego, a faculty group last year reported “a steep decline in the academic preparation” among entering students. Last fall, for example, nearly 12 percent of first-year U.C.S.D. undergraduates were not qualified to take pre-calculus, a low-level class, up from only 0.5 percent in 2020. “The key problem is that many of the students coming in do not know algebra,” said Mina Aganagic, a Berkeley physics professor. More than half of entering Berkeley students who took a math placement test incorrectly answered basic questions (such as solving for x in x²> 4). . . .
The article:
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
As international enrollment falls, U.S. students face program cuts and higher prices [ The Hechinger Report ]
The flava:
Harrison Keller was starting only his second year as president of the University of North Texas last fall when he was abruptly confronted with a big problem.
Enrollment was down. And the source of the crisis made it much worse: In the wake of Trump administration moves to deny and revoke visas, deport international students and impose travel bans, 2,800 students from abroad who the university expected to show up had stayed away.
Full-tuition-paying international students — especially graduate students, who Keller said bring $20,000 to $25,000 each to his bottom line — are critical to balancing the budget, underwriting services and keeping costs lower for their domestic classmates.
The loss of so many of them pushed the university $45 million into the red, Keller said, forcing it to eliminate 71 academic programs. And a continuing decline in the number of international students will mean a hit of another $47 million in lost revenue in the next academic year, according to university budget projections. . . .
The article:
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Feynman on doubt
That is, if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty… Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth.
--from chapter 13 of The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Monday, June 22, 2026
Friday, June 12, 2026
Thursday, June 11, 2026
More Than a Dozen Colleges Will Quietly Cross the $100,000 Mark This Year [ NYmag ]
[ money money money money . . . ]
The article:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/colleges-hundred-thousand-dollars-per-year.html
Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Jay Caspian Kang on A.I. in college
The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I.
By Jay Caspian Kang
Monday, June 8, 2026
Vermont’s Most Bizarre Real-Estate Listing Is a Free College Campus [ WSJ ]
The flava:
A year after Green Mountain College closed for good in 2019, the school found an unlikely buyer for its stately campus in rural Vermont.
Raj Bhakta was a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” an unsuccessful congressional candidate and an embattled whiskey entrepreneur. But he had some big ideas for the property—his plan would include 93 hotel rooms, 18 condos, a micro-distillery, restaurant and spa. He spent less than $5 million for the whole campus.
Six years later, it remains mostly empty, aside from a small elementary school founded by Bhakta’s wife, with the bigger development plans called off. He is now trying to give away the land and 16 buildings.
“If you ever want to feel like you’re going nuts,” the 50-year-old said in an interview, “buy a college campus in the middle of nowhere. . . . ”
The article:
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Spelman College Names an A.I. Expert as Its New President [ NYTimes ]
The flava:
Spelman College, the historically Black liberal arts school for women, on Friday named a roboticist and artificial intelligence expert as its next president.
The selection of Ayanna M. Howard, the dean of Ohio State University’s engineering college, represents a departure for a 145-year-old liberal arts school whose modern presidents have included doctors, an anthropologist and a psychologist.
But as the higher education industry grapples with the rise of A.I. and how the technology may reshape the global work force, Dr. Howard argued that liberal arts students at places like Spelman should lean into the development of A.I. . . .
The article:
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Friday, May 29, 2026
Sunday, May 24, 2026
Thursday, May 21, 2026
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Princeton Changes Its 133-Year-Old Honor Code Over AI Cheating Fears [ WSJ ]
The flava:
. . . In a survey of over 500 seniors conducted by the student newspaper last year, 30% reported they had cheated on an assignment or exam. Nearly half reported knowledge of an honor code violation but less than 1% had made a report.
The steps taken at Princeton underscore the enormous challenges facing colleges and universities as generative AI tools have become widespread in recent years. Nationwide, studies suggest that a third of students admit to using artificial intelligence to produce entire assignments, said Christian Moriarty, a professor of ethics and law at St. Petersburg College in Florida and a director at the nonprofit International Center for Academic Integrity. . . .
The article:
Monday, May 11, 2026
Friday, May 8, 2026
How much personal info will be leaked by the recent Canvas hack?? [ reddit.com/r/cybersecurity ]
The flava:
So apparently Canvas got hacked by ShinyHunters (3?!) times and is currently completely down. The cybercriminal group said the deadline is on May 12st, and if Instructure doesn't comply, they'll leak the PII of all students and teachers. I'm not a cybersecurity major, and I don't know much about Canvas, but how much will we be affected if no deal is reached? Like, how much information is typically stored on Canvas, and will they be able to figure out more through what is available in the system? I'm genuinely concerned....
The link:
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)