WHEN UNIVERSITIES PRETEND TO BE BUSINESSES. Interesting point here about why the “flat” organization of a university (compared to a similar size business) might actually make the problem of ideological mobbing worse on a campus than in a big, faceless corporation.

COLLEGES TEACHING STUDENTS TO HATE AMERICA. Yeah, this is a dog-bites-man story now, but it’s still worth being concerned about. If all this focus on “critical” studies had meant students were learning to think critically, we might be OK. Even if that had been the intent (which I doubt), that clearly isn’t what actually happened, and the failed experiment needs to end ASAP.

COLLEGES CREATED THE AI CHEATING PROBLEM. “We’ve created an environment wherein the appearance of accomplishment can be just as rewarding as accomplishment itself.” That line’s probably going on our society’s collective tombstone.

GOVERNMENT GHOULS HASSLE PHILLY-AREA MAN OVER ‘OFFENSIVE’ HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS. The horror-movie style bodies wrapped in black plastic and duct tape hanging from trees were deemed too much like lynching. Media reporting on it wouldn’t even show pictures so you can judge for yourself, so FIRE went out and did it.

COLLEGE SPORTS – AT WHAT COST? The Martin Center is out with a report on what sports cost UNC system students, not just in fees, but in other, less fungible, ways.

I loved my time at Duke in part because of the fun of being a “Cameron Crazie.” But there’s a point where the big money and attention of college sports becomes a liability instead of an asset, and if we weren’t already there in the late 90s (and I suspect we were), we’re way past it today.

DOJ TAKES U. OF DELAWARE TO COURT OVER IN-STATE TUITION TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. As the article points out, the University of Delaware has been home to some of the most ham-handed diversity efforts known to man, including the (in)famous Residence Life program that asked freshmen “When did you discover your sexual identity?” –and answering “none of your damn business” was not considered acceptable.

THE AI ECONOMY STILL NEEDS BEGINNERS. This strikes me as very true: “The result is a difficult paradox: AI can make experienced workers more productive while it could reduce the number of opportunities through which beginners can acquire experience.” We need to figure out how to fix this, fast.

THE STANDARDIZED TEST WAR HEATS UP AGAIN. Between the sudden reemergence of woke thought policing, campus sexual assault being on the front pages again, and a plague arising from the East, it seems like everything old is new again.

THINKING THROUGH AI IN HIGHER ED. This is one of those areas where doing practically anything different than the status quo is likely to be an improvement.

UCLA WOULD RATHER YOU DIDN’T READ THE SYLLABUS. Not just UCLA, I suspect.

GEORGIA TECH BRINGS CIVICS ED TO STEM. “Simply put, society needs the creators, users, and regulators of future technologies to be not just savvy but wise.” Of course, we could always let the “effective altruists” have this field to themselves, but they might kill us all to spare the bugs.

THE DEATH OF GENERAL EDUCATION. When I was in college I thought the idea of a “core curriculum” or general education was silly because everyone already knew the basics. But with K-12 the disaster it is, colleges probably need to buckle down more and skip the “Video Game Storytelling” and “Indigenous Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, and Futurisms” and just make students read The Iliad or something.

ANOTHER COLLEGE ‘CONSCIOUSLY UNCOUPLING’ FROM CHINA. Hard to believe this took so long to start happening, given the obvious security concerns. China would have to be silly not to try to take advantage of us.

MICHIGAN THINKS GRADES ARE THE PROBLEM. Replacing first semester grades with “pass/no credit” is not going to work any better than going test-optional did, and it’s not going to “curb the mental health crisis” among students.

A $600K BLOW TO MANDATORY ‘LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS’ ON CAMPUS. Congrats to University of Washington professor Stuart Reges and the FIRE litigation team who defended his right to parody the university-approved “land acknowledgement.” This is America. Public universities don’t get to write sacred texts and make you respect them.

NOT ALL GRADUATE DEGREES PAY OFF. And you’ll never believe which ones! Just kidding, you’ll believe it, though engineering is a closer shave than you’d think.

THE STRUGGLE WITH TEACHING ‘FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY’ ON A 2026 CAMPUS: “FAD is a Catholic idea that is being introduced into a university system that is profoundly Unitarian Universalist.”

PARTNERING 4-YEAR DEGREES AND WORKFORCE ED IN FLORIDA: “The broader policy lesson is that technical education should not be treated as a fallback for students who are not ‘college material.’” A thousand times yes, especially as we have made college increasingly intolerable for (and intolerant of) more and more people. Moreover, it seems to me that making Ivy Leaguers figure out how to fix a broken air conditioner as a condition of graduation would be doing them an enormous favor.

FROM SCHOOL CHOICE TO COLLEGE CHOICE. Make Education Savings Accounts, uh, greater.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK, DESTROYER OF HIGHER ED WORLDS, HAS A NEW BOOK OUT. Say what you will about those Congressional hearings, they were a serious “the emperor has no clothes” moment.

FROM A STUDENT, A ‘VIA MEDIA’ ON AI. I suspect this is about where most people will end up, once the hype/doom cycle starts to get boring. I do think the concern about it destroying writing skills is misplaced, though, because writing skills had been destroyed years before AI came around.

UNIVERSITIES MUST POLICE FOREIGN INFLUENCE. Maybe, but you know what would be even more effective? Having a diversity of views on the faculty and among students. If everyone has to actually defend their arguments and has the change to be exposed to counterarguments, the policing happens automatically. Wild, I know.

RACE-BASED SCHOLARSHIP SHOT DOWN AGAIN IN COURT, BUT MANY STILL REMAIN. Look, this is not hard. If we don’t want colleges to have awards like a Ku Klux Klan Scholarship for Excellence in Whiteness–and, contrary to what some on the left would have you believe, virtually no American wants to live in a society that does–you also can’t have awards meant only for black people, Latinos, or (in the linked case, oddly) Asians from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia but not Thailand (because screw Thailand, I guess?). Just stop with the race discrimination already. We’re done. It’s over.

TIME TO COUPLE THE LIBERAL ARTS WITH VOCATIONAL TRAINING? Probably worth a shot. The British Empire took over the world with people who worked with their minds and their hands.

BANS ON DIVISIVE CONCEPTS RISK STIFLING SPEECH. Rather than go tit-for-tat trying to shut down the people who have been shutting you down, you know what would really throw them off their game? Creating an environment where they have to make and defend their arguments.