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:
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