Press pause and catch up on the week’s biggest stories. Delivered on Saturdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, sign up to receive it in your email inbox.
Subject: Weekly Briefing: Not all students who use AI are trying to cheat
Can AI be just one more tool in a student’s belt?
Illustration by The Chronicle; Getty
Threading a needle. Horror stories abound of college students using ChatGPT and other artificial-intelligence tools to avoid doing any real work or any real thinking. While that problem is real, some students are trying to use AI in more productive ways — studying for tests, overcoming poor teaching, and staying organized. But even those students wonder at times if their use of the technology slips toward the unethical. To make things worse, they are often surrounded by other students who have no such qualms. Our Beth McMurtrie
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
Threading a needle. Horror stories abound of college students using ChatGPT and other artificial-intelligence tools to avoid doing any real work or any real thinking. While that problem is real, some students are trying to use AI in more productive ways — studying for tests, overcoming poor teaching, and staying organized. But even those students wonder at times if their use of the technology slips toward the unethical. To make things worse, they are often surrounded by other students who have no such qualms. Our Beth McMurtrie has more.
Classroom debate. Since January 2024, at least a dozen states have enacted bills that either restrict what professors can teach in the classroom or dictate which courses colleges can require their students to take. Conservatives say the bills are necessary to push back against what they view as the liberal indoctrination of students in higher education, while liberals say they trample on academic freedom and free speech. Our Katherine Mangan has more on the battle.
No precedent. Higher education has faced crises before, including the Great Recession and the pandemic, but today’s moment is different in a very important way, argues Brendan Cantwell in a Chronicle Review essay: “This time the crisis has been intentionally engineered by the federal government.” That means colleges could look fundamentally different four years from now, he says. Read the full essay, in which Cantwell analyzes the possible fate of each type of institution.
New podcast episode.College Matters from The Chronicle is running a special summer-podcast series highlighting interesting courses.In the first episode, Stephanie Kelley-Romano, a professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies at Bates College, discusses her course, “Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics, and Pop Culture,” which focuses on conspiracy theories. Among the things her students learn are how to recognize the components of conspiracy theories and how to identify the trends that fuel them. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
No newsletter next Saturday.The Chronicle is taking an editorial break next week, so the Weekly Briefing will take a break too. We’ll be back in your inbox on July 12. Happy Fourth of July!
Lagniappe
Read. In 1994, when she was 20 years old, Elena Gosalvez Blanco began working for the crime novelist Patricia Highsmith, who was 74 years old and dying of cancer. Their few weeks together, Blanco writes, was both befuddling and unnerving, perhaps most notable for Highsmith’s extreme penny-pinching. (The Yale Review)
HBCUs’ mission-driven effort to serve Black communities could now result in severe budget cuts under Trump’s crusade against DEI. It’s all a big misunderstanding, advocates say.
