Just before winter break, news broke that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill plans to close its centers for African, Asian, European, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Slavic, Eurasian and East European studies. Though UNC administrators said in a statement that decisions on closures are not finalized, they confirmed they are evaluating centers and institutes as part of a budget-cutting effort in response to state and federal funding changes.
The article fails to acknowledge decades of evidence about the benefits of prison education. The title and framing deceptively imply that college programs increase criminal activity post-release at a national scale. The Grinnell study-an unpublished working paper-is only informed by data collected in Iowa. Of most impact to incarcerated students, the title and introductory paragraphs mislead the reader by implying that the blame for technical violations and reincarceration should be placed on the justice-impacted individuals themselves.
Denise and I met at our new faculty orientation, which seems like a lifetime ago, and grew up together as academics. She chose administration early on, and I taught for decades before giving up faculty status to become a full-time fellowship director. As she advanced from dean to provost to president, my role as the administrative "trailing" spouse altered in both subtle and overt ways at each new institution, but the core was always rooted in our dedication to the universities we served and to each other.
Colleges and universities hold huge influence in their communities. They can mediate differences and foster healthy debate. Indeed, several institutions have established schools of civic life that would, presumably, raise the alarm when constitutional rights are being violated. Academic research influences policy and informs public conversations. Scholars can put this violence into context and help remind us that this is not OK.
Chad M. Topaz's critique of the Faculty Merit Act, drafted by the National Association of Scholars, itself embodies another ill of the academy-the conflation of activism with scholarship. Dispassionate readers will quickly grasp that a "co-founder of the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity" has programmatic goals of his own-the promotion of the illiberal and discriminatory ideology frequently referred to as "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" (DEI).
Postdoctoral researchers are an essential part of academic science and the knowledge Cornell brings into the world. They often mentor students and lead projects, helping advance discoveries in areas like quantum materials, genomics and biomedicine - work that will fundamentally transform technologies, medicine and public health," said Gary Koretzky '78, vice provost for research, who will administer the grant to researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Veterinary Medicine and Cornell Engineering.
The process of identifying candidates for Overseer and HAA elected director once again underscored the extraordinary breadth of experience and commitment found across the Harvard alumni community,
Over the summer, the Trump administration held an unusual Independence Day celebration at the White House. A live band warmed the crowd with renditions of Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" and Pharrell Williams's "Happy" before the president emerged from the first-floor balcony of the executive residence. Supporters sporting red MAGA caps looked on as he signed the Big Beautiful Bill into law beneath the South Portico's white columns.
You'd be forgiven for wondering if Charlotte is cursed. Despite being America's ninth-largest city, the last time we put a full-time law school in Queen City, we needed to set up a food bank to support the students. Charlotte School of Law, an InfiLaw-run, for-profit law school, collapsed in 2017 amidst probation, bar passage carnage, and federal financial aid chaos.
In the fall, roughly three years after generative artificial intelligence tools went mainstream and some higher education institutions began partnering with tech companies, researchers surveyed 1,960 staff, administrators and faculty across more than 1,800 public and private institutions about AI's relationship to their work. Ninety-two percent of respondents said their institution has a work-related AI strategy-which includes piloting AI tools, evaluating both opportunities and risks and encouraging use of AI tools. And while the vast majority of respondents (89 percent) said they aren't required to use AI tools for work, 86 percent said they want to or will continue to use AI tools in the future.
He had accepted his fate a few months earlier when standardized test results led to the decision that he would not be eligible to participate in collegiate sports his freshman year. But nothing prepared him for this. People were looking at me, Rice says. They knew I was a football player and they knew why I wasn't playing. I'm sure they were thinking,
It's a little-known fact that Columbia University, in Manhattan, was home to the first mining school in America-the School of Mines-founded in 1864. For the past three decades, the university's program has been mothballed. Parts of its curriculum were subsumed into the more fashionable subjects of earth and environmental engineering. But next fall, Columbia University will offer a bachelor of science degree in mining engineering once again.
They were well represented among the awards focused on workforce training but were shut out when it came to addressing larger social issues. To be fair, FIPSE wasn't alone in ignoring community colleges. As Karen Stout pointed out this weekend, The Chronicle 's quarter-century forecast drew on 50 experts from across higher education to talk about emerging trends; only one was from a community college.
"These numbers reflect California's commitment to academic excellence, access, and innovation, values that have made the University of California the world's greatest research university," said UC president James B. Milliken. "The value of a UC degree is abundantly clear. An investment in UC is the best investment in the future of our students, California's workforce, and the state's economy."
College football's offseason transfer window opened one week ago, and coaches across the country have only 6,200 Division I players in the portal to choose from at the moment. Portal season being compressed to a two-week period, from Jan. 2 to Jan. 16, this year has sped up an already dizzying process, with hundreds of players making decisions daily. A dozen FBS programs have already secured commitments from 20 or more players in the portal.
The new accountability metric, set to take effect in July, could eventually cut failing programs off from all federal student aid funds-an enhanced penalty that appeared key to the committee reaching consensus Friday. Before the compromise, programs that fail the earnings test would only have lost access to federal student loans. Under the proposal, college programs will have to show that their graduates earn more than a working adult with only a high school diploma.