The Week

Duncan Departs

Andrew Harnik, AP Images

Minutes after Arne Duncan announced that he would pack up his office at the U.S. Department of Education, observers began to pick over what he will leave behind as secretary, and to wonder what will happen next.

Mr. Duncan (below) won benedictory praise for his effort to get a fairer shake for America’s college students. Under his leadership, the department took federal student loans away from private lenders and opened up better repayment options. He never failed to couch his regulatory crusade against for-profit colleges as a fight to protect vulnerable students from sinking into debt to pay for an education of dubious quality and value.

He also drew criticism over the increased regulatory burden on colleges, and for the blame he sometimes aimed at them over high costs and inadequate levels of student success. While many laud the volume of data Mr. Duncan’s department made available to inform students’ college decisions, the failed attempt to create a federal college-rating system goes in the loss column.

John B. King Jr. is no new broom. A public-schools specialist, Mr. King has served as Mr. Duncan’s deputy for less than a year and, as acting secretary, is expected to lean on the policies and approaches that have defined the department for the past seven. Not that higher education should expect a lull — the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act still looms — but colleges shouldn’t anticipate many surprises from Washington in the near term.

The longer-term outlook for Mr. Duncan’s legacy, the department, and federal oversight of higher education lies in the hands of the voters in next year’s presidential election. Another Democrat in the White House might extend Mr. Duncan’s student-first emphasis and the policies he established on behalf of the Obama administration. A Republican might be expected to shelve limits on for-profit colleges and other recent attempts to create more accountability, with deregulation hawks like Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate education committee, cheering from the Hill.

Mr. Duncan served as education secretary for seven years, a term second only to the eight years served by Richard W. Riley, a Clinton appointee. Mr. Duncan held the office during one of the most tumultuous periods in higher education in living memory. Yet his legacy remains unsecured. (Read more here.)

Incorporating the Leopards

Franz Kafka once encapsulated how the shocking becomes routine. His parable reads as follows: “Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.”

The recent mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., left behind 10 dead, many wounded, and a grieving community. But it shouldn’t have surprised anyone who has been paying attention to the rise in mass shootings in this country, and the number of times in recent years that a man with a gun has taken out his anger in an educational setting. After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, the federal government mandated through the Clery Act that all college campuses must have in place an emergency-messaging system to warn students, faculty, and staff of imminent danger. We, as a society, need no such warning. It will happen again.

The New York Times reported last week on evidence that mass shooters study past incidents, taking away lessons and inspiration. Colleges are also trying to adapt to prevent or minimize the peril presented by a stalking gunman. But community colleges like the one in Roseburg usually don’t have the resources of four-year colleges to devote to increasing security or mental-health counseling — not that most four-year colleges are flush with funds either these days. And there’s little consensus on what colleges could do, specifically, to head off such terrible incidents. (Read more about the safety issues at community colleges on here.)

Barring some form of effective gun control, they may be forced to try. Ben Carson, the former neurosurgeon and current Republican presidential candidate, suggested after the Oregon shooting that teachers be armed — a suggestion not likely to be well received in most of academe. In fact, Gun Free UT, an advocacy group in Texas, is urging the University of Texas to ban guns from campuses after the Legislature passed a bill this year allowing concealed-carry at state universities and community colleges.

Increased police presence on the quad, or maybe even gated campuses and widespread metal detectors, may not be well received either, but it’s possible to imagine that’s where colleges are headed.

Noting the Nobels

Jonathan Nackstrand, AFP, Getty Images

The first 2015 Nobel Prize awards were announced last week, and, as usual, academic researchers dominated the winners. The Nobel Prize in Physics went to Takaaki Kajita, of the University of Tokyo, and Arthur B. McDonald, of Queen’s University, in Ontario, for their work in showing that subatomic neutrinos have mass. The prize for medicine and physiology was shared by several researchers. William C. Campbell, of Drew University, and Satoshi ¯Omura, of Kitasato University in Japan, won for developing a new therapy to treat roundworm parasites. Tu Youyou, of the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, also won for her work on treating malaria. The prize for chemistry was shared by two university researchers — Paul L. Modrich of the Duke University School of Medicine and Aziz Sancar of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — as well as Tomas Lindahl of the Francis Crick Institute in England. They studied how cells repair damaged DNA (below, a model of a DNA strand displayed during the chemistry announcement).

Finally, a Use for MOOCs

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology got in early on massive open online courses, becoming one of the forerunners in developing the platform. Last week it continued at pace by announcing that it had found a new, and seemingly practical, role for the technology.

Through a pilot program, those who apply to an MIT master’s program in supply-chain management can go through a series of free online courses and take a related exam. Those who do well on the exam have a better chance of being admitted to the program. If they win admission, their success on the test absolves them of half of the coursework, saving them time and money.

Perhaps the biggest impediment limiting the widespread adoption and success of MOOCs is that their pathway to a valued credential remains in question. Using free online courses as an internal credential, for admission and for coursework, may change the game.

Mac and Cheese

History will not remember the name Luke Gatti, but the Internet will. Last week a video emerged of Mr. Gatti demanding that food-service workers at the University of Connecticut at Storrs serve him bacon-and-jalapeno macaroni and cheese, even though he had been refused service for allegedly carrying an open beer. In the video, he curses at a manager. He pokes his chest and shoves him. As the abuse goes on, you start to ache for the campus police to come and take him away, which they do around the nine-minute mark. He was eventually charged with breach of peace and criminal trespass.

The Internet found Mr. Gatti’s tirade, and his comeuppance, hilarious, and the clip went viral. It has been shared across social media as a mere goof, as an exemplar of millennial entitlement, as an object lesson in how a young white man can display such public belligerence and survive while a young black man may die for far less.

The subsequent cavalcade of news stories and hot takes revealed that Mr. Gatti was twice arrested last year for similar behavior as a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Some might see him as an obnoxious repeat offender who doesn’t belong on a college campus. But what it reveals to these eyes is a young man with serious problems, problems that aren’t going to get any better with the prospect of a lifetime of Internet shame. And that doesn’t seem like anything to laugh about.

Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and assorted other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.