-
BACKGROUNDER
The New Cheating Economy
Business is booming right under colleges’ noses. It’s not just papers and assignments anymore. Now it’s the whole course. -
Contract Cheating’s African Labor
If clients ask, the man from Nairobi, Kenya, is supposed to say he is American or British. -
The Review
Reimagining College as a Lifelong Learning Experience
The value of college is increasingly found in the connections it creates. We should embrace that role, aiming for deeper and more lasting ties to graduates. -
Payroll
Colleges Brace for Impact of Overtime Rule
A change in federal labor law that takes effect in December has institutions scrambling to sort out which salaried employees will be due extra pay if they work more than 40 hours in a week. -
News
What I’m Reading: ‘Arctic Dreams’
A president gains new understanding from a book on the Arctic that he first read as a student at the college he leads. -
News
2004: Psst. Wanna Buy a Ph.D.?
Diploma mills had become a multimillion-dollar, worldwide industry, attracting some memorable characters. -
News
For Santa Ono, an Inexorable Pull Toward Home
No attempts at persuasion could keep him at the University of Cincinnati when he had a chance to lead a university in his Canadian birthplace. -
What You Need to Know About the Past 7 Days
The news has been good for graduate-student unions, bad for University of California chancellors, and absurd for anyone following the guns-on-campus debate in Texas. -
News
Appointments, Resignations, Deaths (9/2/2016)
Top Chief Executives Colorado Christian University, Donald Sweeting DeVry University at North Brunswick, Steven Nelson Laredo Community College, Ricardo Solis Ogeechee Technical College, Lori Durden Resurrection University, Therese Scanlan Tarrant County College District, Eugene Giovannini United… -
News
Deadlines (9/2/2016)
Awards and prizes October 10: Humanities. The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is accepting submissions for the 2017 Translation Prize. A $5,000 award will be given for outstanding translations of contemporary Austrian literature (both poetry and prose). Selected texts from a living author have to… -
-
Graduate Students
NYU’s Graduate Union: Success Story or Cautionary Tale?
The NLRB’s ruling on Tuesday, that graduate students are employees, prompts a look back at the labor-union battle that started it all. -
Graduate Students
Ruling Pushes Door to Grad-Student Unions ‘Wide Open’
The National Labor Relations Board’s decision in a case involving Columbia University has made clear that graduate-employee unions are legal at private colleges. Experts predict a surge in organizing similar to what has taken place among adjuncts. -
Students
What Will College Be Like for a Transgender Student in North Carolina?
The recipient of a prestigious scholarship talks about how he will navigate his freshman year after the passage of the state’s controversial “bathroom bill.” -
In the States
A New Academic Year Brings Fresh Anxiety at Illinois’s Public Colleges
A state-budget stalemate means the colleges haven’t seen permanent funding in over a year. Administrators now wonder if the crisis will reverberate for years to come. -
Backgrounder
The New Gun-Violence Scholars
A discipline with little federal funding now has some momentum. But the researchers who study firearms violence and policy still face emotional and financial demands. -
The Review
The Insidious Imps of Writing
To outwit them, you’ve got to hypnotize yourself, shaking off the shackles of everyday routine. -
The Review
Casting Into the Unknown
What can fly-fishing teach us about theoretical physics? More than you might guess. -
Research
To Curtail Violence, Researchers Say, Reduce Economic Inequality
If a coherent antiviolence strategy exists, it’s built on two precepts: Think small, and start by creating jobs. Both of those guidelines present researchers with challenges. -
Leadership
With a Sudden Vacuum at the Top, What’s Next for Berkeley?
The abrupt announcement on Tuesday that Nicholas B. Dirks will step down as chancellor leaves professors and others wondering how the campus will pick up the pieces. -
Race on Campus
Leaked Faculty Letters Expose Racial Fault Lines at Smith’s Social-Work School
The letters, which allude to a “tainted” admissions process and students being “set up for failure,” drew quick rebukes from students who said the language was racially insensitive. -
News
How 3 College Presidents Are Trying to Move Their Campuses Past Racial Tensions
Student activism and demands at Towson University, Oberlin College, and the University of Washington took different shapes. But the leaders of all three institutions are searching for common ground between protesters and administrators. -
The Review
Peter Singer on Robots, Kidneys, and Changing Lives
The controversial philosopher discusses ethics, challenging students, and the importance of surfing. -
Graduate Students
Why Colleges Still Scarcely Track Ph.D.s
A lack of resources and an unwillingness to confront reality may hold institutions back, but like students, they may also benefit from studying postdoctoral career paths. -
News
For the Wealthiest Colleges, How Many Low-Income Students Are Enough?
Colleges with large endowments have long faced criticism for not serving more of the neediest students. But there’s no clear standard on how many they should enroll. -
Diversity
At an All-Science Institution, LGBTQ Students Take Visibility Into Their Own Hands
Members of Prism, or People at Rockefeller Identifying as Sexual Minorities, say they founded the group to shed light on the particular challenges they face in the sciences. -
Publishing
Zika Moves Quickly, and Scientists Fear That Journals Aren’t Keeping Pace
It typically takes months to shepherd a piece through the peer-review process at top publications. What should scholars do when their work examines how an outbreak might spread within days? -
-
Career Paths
Grants Seek to Foster a Culture Change in Humanities Graduate Education
With help from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other groups, some colleges are experimenting with ideas for reorienting the humanities Ph.D. to today’s job market. -
News
What $500 Tuition Could Mean for 3 UNC Campuses
Three of the system’s chancellors discuss the potential benefits and consequences of a Republican-backed measure that, starting in 2018, will slash tuition at their universities. -
Curriculum
General Education Gets an ‘Integrative Learning’ Makeover
Breadth requirements, often loathed as annoyances, get retooled to be more coherent, interconnected, and appealing. -
The Review
Holding On to What Makes Us Human
Defending the humanities in a skills-obsessed university. -
The Review
How to Win an Academic Argument
They don’t move mountains, they move minds. And the making of the arguments is its own reward. -
Academic Workplace
Stigma, Stress, and Fear: Faculty Mental-Health Services Fall Short
Counseling and other support for troubled students have become easier to find in recent years. But many professors still deal with their problems in isolation. -
Athletics
‘We Write the Violence Out Completely’: A Journalist Says Rape Culture Is Systemic in College Football
A new book details how stories about sexual assaults by players extend far beyond each perpetrator. Coaches, administrators, and to some extent the news media all run the same plays when a new case breaks. -
Advice
Scholars Talk Writing: Steven Pinker
“Good prose requires dedication to the craft of writing, and our profession simply doesn’t reward it.” -
Legal
What the Future Holds for the Federal Crackdown on Campus Sexual Assault
In the Obama administration’s waning months, hundreds of colleges remain under investigation. Legal challenges may change the landscape, but the government’s action has already left its mark. -
On Leadership
Video: A Longtime Force in Higher Education Reflects on the Changing Landscape
David Longanecker, set to retire as president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, says colleges must become more “friendly” to low-income and first-generation students.