“DISECONOMIES OF SCALE” IN HIGHER ED. Higher ed is so screwed up it seems to have managed to make economics work backwards.

HARVARD ADMITS ITS GRADES HAVE LOST ALL MEANING: Hey, they’re not paying a jillion dollars a year to not get A’s…

IS ONLINE LEARNING ‘COMPLIANCE THEATER’? If you have to ask…

PEER REVIEW IS BROKEN. HERE’S HOW TO FIX IT. An actual idea here! We need more of this.

THE NEXT STEP IN ENDING HIGHER ED RACIAL PREFERENCES: Grants for [name your favored ethnicity] serving institutions?

SHOULD STATES ELECT OR APPOINT UNIVERSITY BOARDS? Kind of like with judges, no option seems to be clearly best (at least, to me). Appointed cronies or elected hacks?

TOMORROW AT UTAH VALLEY U., SITE OF CHARLIE KIRK’S ASSASSINATION: Greg Lukianoff, my friend, boss at FIRE, and occasional Instapunditeer, speaks on the topic of “Free Speech: An Antidote to Violence.” I’m proud that Greg and FIRE are part of this event, honoring Charlie Kirk’s legacy of engaging friend and opponent alike.

TIME TO BRING BACK GEOGRAPHY? I mean, if people are going to mock Americans for not knowing where countries are on a map, it might help to actually make some kind of effort…

‘STOP MEETING STUDENTS WHERE THEY ARE.’ It can tend to turn into an excuse…

BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS WALLETS: “The school (allegedly!) ‘self-financed thousands of temporary employment opportunities for their graduates through schemes with non-profits and paid-off vendors to give the false impression to incoming students and federal regulators that their graduates were gainfully employed.'”

COLLEGE IS WORTH SAVING. I hope so, I’ve spent my career trying!

HOW TO REFORM SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION. I tend to think they are too far gone, myself.

ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ADVOCATES’ NEW WEAPON: Cold, hard, numbers.

CHARLIE KIRK REPORTEDLY SHOT IN NECK AT UTAH VALLEY U.

Charlie Kirk and the TPUSA event at UVU – let’s wait to get info. pic.twitter.com/907f7Etq28

— An Intelligent Home (@AnIntelHome) September 10, 2025

Actual video with the gunshot here; it’s from far away but as you see him get hit, so I am not going to embed.

From Fox News, he’s hospitalized.

UPDATE: Ok, this is extremely graphic, and I think we need to be cautious that someone did not do some quick AI editing, but if authentic, this looks extremely serious.

WOKE CAMPUS WITCH HUNTS ARE LOSING IN COURT. Finally. But you have to get to court, and that’s difficult and expensive.

HIGHER ED NOT RESPONDING TO THE AI CHALLENGE. Yeah, I know, a shocker, but things could get really bad, really fast unless they take some seriously dramatic action. It was one thing when a diploma meant you could at least fake your way through stuff. If it doesn’t even mean that, college will lose perceived value ultra fast.

HOW WILL AI IMPACT HIGHER ED? My own feeling is that like a whole lot of “advancements” we have seen, it will end up benefiting people who are curious and energetic wildly disproportionately, and harm people who just use it as a crutch. Most will be in the latter category.

NEW BOOK OUT FROM FIRE THIS WEEK: AUTHORITARIANS IN THE ACADEMY. China gets the headlines for creepy campus censorship right here in the USA, and rightfully so, but they’re not the only ones–and campus leaders here have been totally craven.

‘DUKE IS ABANDONING AMERICAN HISTORY.” Yeah, I know, big surprise, but this nugget seems like hair-on-fire bad news that should have alarmed my ole alma mater: “Between 2011 and 2022, the number of primary history majors at Duke plummeted from 90 to just 22.” Duke has 6600 undergrads. 22 history majors should not even be possible.

TRUMP’S “BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” CUT GRADUATE-SCHOOL SUBSIDIES – NOW DO UNDERGRAD. The sooner the better.

DE-DEI-ING IS COMPLICATED. While the federal government should not be setting classroom curricula–and Trump’s DEI executive orders don’t require unlawful changes to classes (at least how I read them)–removing the “systemic racism” that is so much of DEI is going to be really thorny. Here’s some free advice to get them started: colleges need to immediately get control of race preferences in hiring. Faculty largely still have no idea they’re violating the law by routinely just skipping people in searches because of their race or sex.

INDIANA LAW PROMPTS PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES TO ELIMINATE OR MERGE 400 DEGREE PROGRAMS. The higher ed reckoning is here.

NEW BOOK: ‘SLACKING: A GUIDE TO IVY LEAGUE MISEDUCATION.’ Get it now for your favorite nepo-baby to help them sneak through to graduation! (Though I am pretty sure the authors don’t mean it that way.)

MICRO-CREDENTIALS NOT WORKING OUT AS HOPED? “Just 12 percent of the 1.1 million ‘micro-credentials’ currently on offer lead to significant wage gains.”

U OF WYOMING RENAMES ‘SCHOOL OF CULTURE, GENDER, & SOCIAL JUSTICE’ TO ‘DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES.’ Oh, well, that should solve the problem.