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.

CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY V. MARTINEZ DELENDA EST. Gotta be among the worst SCOTUS decisions ever.

WHAT PUBLIC POLICY SCHOOL SHOULD TEACH. As the article points out, maybe the Trump Administration would be a little less, er, exciting if right-leaning students didn’t have every reason to avoid public policy schools. Heck, I knew to avoid them back in the year 2000. I can only imagine what 20+ more years of that trend has wrought.

THE SOLUTION TO AI CHEATING: PEN AND PAPER. I would also support IBM Selectric III typewriters with that cool correction tape that sucks letters off the page. That’s peak tech right there.

UNC MAKES BUDGET CUTS BEFORE FORCED TO DO SO: Never thought I’d live to see the day anyone did this. Will other schools get the memo?

WILL RACE-BASED SCHOLARSHIPS SURVIVE? I hope not. I can imagine a world where they might solve more problems than they cause, but it’s clear we don’t live in that world.

DO THE WORST GET ON TOP IN ACADEMIA? A Hayekian analysis. I don’t know if the “worst” get on top in academia any more than normal corporate jobs. But it’s worth considering the idea of more administration being done by faculty on rotation.

WE MADE COLLEGE AN OBLIGATION, AND STUDENTS TREAT IT LIKE ONE. Shockingly, they are not that amped up for more mandatory schooling that is also super expensive.

THE LAW SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS RACKET. This is a huge problem at all sorts of schools. Are you the chump if you’re not taking advantage of it? I wonder…

COLORADO REPEALS REQUIREMENT THAT ATTORNEYS NOT COOPERATE WITH ICE IF THEY WANT TO USE E-FILING. FIRE was prepared to sue, but it looks like Colorado finally found a First Amendment-violating hill it wasn’t prepared to die on.

WHAT WOULD A PRO-FAMILY ACADEMIA LOOK LIKE? Yeah, I know, but after you stop laughing, give it a read.

HIGHER ED – IS DOOM NIGH? Doom is nigh, says Richard Vedder.

WHEN TRUTH IS NO LONGER PARAMOUNT. I don’t think it’s clear what a campus is supposed to be doing if truth-seeking is not primary to its mission, but plenty of folks on campus don’t agree.

SOCIAL JUSTICE RUINS EVERYTHING, ARCHIVIST EDITION: “Archiving is about shaping memory, advancing justice, and ensuring access in a digital age. Our ARM students preserve the past and build ethical frameworks for the future…”

No, it’s not. Nobody wants this. The constituency of people who want archivists making decisions based on “shaping memory” (Orwell much?) or “advancing justice” is effectively 0% of the population. Not everything has to be politics. People are begging higher ed to stop being this way.