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Dec. 13, 2019
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Volume 66, Issue 15

Cover Story

Backgrounder
Large introductory courses are notorious for being tedious, confusing, and even harmful. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is betting it can change all that.

Highlights

News
This regional gathering attracts teenagers from small-town high schools that few admissions officers ever visit. Here’s how it changed one student’s perspective on college.

The Review

The Chronicle Review
Stanley Fish is skeptical of free speech, and dismayed by the ubiquity of Subarus.

Also In This Issue

The Review
By Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
When applying for grant money is a ritual of rejection.
The Review
By Claude M. Steele
Identity, stereotypes, and the fraying of the college experience.
The Review
The proposals floated by presidential candidates are nonsensical. There’s a better way.
The Review
By Mistress Snow
She rescinded her letters of recommendation.
Curriculum
Overhauling developmental education will require faculty buy-in and wraparound supports, reformers say.
Student-Loan Debt
Federal data show startling racial disparities even after those plans became available.
News
Lonnie Burnett has been interim chief executive at Mobile since May. Rhodes College’s new provost comes from Virginia Commonwealth University.
News
The University of North Dakota’s next chief executive is a retired dean from the U.S. Air Force Academy.
News
Elisabeth Bik quit her day job as a microbiologist to search for research misconduct.
News
Presidents of universities in the United States’ territories face challenges similar to those encountered by their mainland counterparts.
The Review
Once-robust fields are being broken up and stripped for parts.
The Review
By Karen E. Spierling
The field has bought into the notion that “useful” and “moneymaking” are synonymous. They’re not.
Chronicle List
By Chronicle Staff
The total number of new tenure-track hires was up nearly 5 percent from the previous year at four-year public institutions.
Advice
Can a new gen-ed curriculum in the liberal arts boost undergraduate and graduate education at the same time?
News
The university system has ensured that the divisive Confederate monument won’t return to its Chapel Hill campus. But its method of doing so is “insane,” said one professor.
News
The historically black college nearly lost its accreditation. Instead, the federal and state government and an accreditor have taken big steps to keep it open.
Small Colleges at Risk
Don’t dismiss the state as a mere outlier: It’s at the leading edge of a decline in students that is looming over other parts of the country.
News
Three takeaways from the sale of the historic Iowa College for the Blind, expected this month.
News
Students have for years turned to crowdfunding to help with tuition and study-abroad costs. Now the strategy’s being used to try to save scholars’ jobs.
News
Harvard denied tenure to Lorgia García-Peña, a Latina/o-studies professor, sparking outrage from students and scholars who say ethnic studies aren’t valued.
Student Loans
NextGen will allow borrowers to pay off their student loans through a website and will give advice on lending options. But critics say it’s unlikely to absolve the department of its failure to oversee servicers.
Immigration
Almost all of the undocumented immigrants who enrolled in the federal agency’s fake university are from India, and most of those arrested have been granted “voluntary departure,” according to a newspaper’s report.