Sometimes it’s easy to draw a direct line between the skills you learn in a particular college course and your intended career. Other times, you might be sitting in a general education class and asking yourself, “How will this help me?” In this op-ed, Angeline Thomas, a first-year pre-med student at Rutgers University, makes a …
Continue reading Books as medicine: Angeline Thomas on why reading matters for future doctors
Some say there is a vast “cheating epidemic” in colleges today. Writing studies scholar and Miami University professor Elizabeth Wardle disagrees. Instead of putting all the focus – and the blame – on students, Wardle argues that the problem lies in colleges themselves: how they are staffed, how they are funded, and what they say …
Continue reading Toward a better university: Elizabeth Wardle on how to fix higher education
College campuses have a long history of student protests, and these demonstrations invite questions about the limits of free speech. How far is too far? In this pair of essays, University of Pennsylvania law professor Claire Finkelstein and Trinity Washington University president Patricia McGuire present two different views of the role of free speech in …
Generative A.I. tools are rapidly evolving, and universities are quickly developing guidelines for how – and if – students should use them in the classroom. But what do students think? This op-ed, written by first-year college student Tylar Macintyre, responds to the growing use of A.I. detector tools to determine whether students have illicitly used …
College tuition costs continue to rise in the U.S., and even with student loan debt and college affordability reforms, middle-class students often struggle to pay for a college degree. The college affordability crisis matters beyond higher education: researchers have connected it to the shrinking middle class in the U.S. In this op-ed, Christine Schueckler, a …
How do people discover if their beliefs are true or false? Philosopher Peter Singer, an emeritus professor of bioethics at Princeton University and co-editor of Journal of Controversial Ideas, argues that this can only happen through free debate of controversial issues. In this short six-minute video, Singer examines the consequences of censorship and explains why …
Continue reading Courting controversy: Peter Singer on why we need to test our ideas in open debate
Free college? No thanks, writes electrician and author Skylar Adleta. Adleta explains why he believes proposals to make college tuition-free ignore the concerns of many in the working class. He argues that more employers should drop degree requirements for positions where “working experience can suffice.” Skylar Adleta, "Free College Will Only Deepen the Class Divide: …
Virtual reality, widely used in gaming, is now being adapted for a range of purposes, including medicine, therapy, and sports. But could virtual reality work for higher education? In this essay, Nir Eisikovits, an associate professor of ethics at University of Massachusetts-Boston, explores the ethical and social challenges of virtual reality. He explains what is …
People of color are underrepresented in a variety of fields and settings, including in medicine, clinical trials, and the military. This problem also exists in U.S. higher education. In this essay, scholars J. Nathan Matias, Neil Lewis Jr., and Elan Hope show how “Black, Hispanic, American Indian and multiracial faculty members are underrepresented in faculty …
Is college a public good or a consumer good? E. Michele Ramsey asks this question in her May 5, 2020 post on the blog Mere Rhetoric. She critiques the rise of consumer metaphors in higher education, showing how this “language of business” affects students’ and society’s perception of the purpose of college. In the face …
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