Learning to “Code”

A college campus should be one of the least lonely places in America. Students pack lecture halls, dormitories, dining halls, football games, and coffee shops every day. There are clubs,…

It is a running joke with my repeat students that “it depends” is the phrase most likely to set me off during a classroom discussion.  Don’t get me wrong, I…

Fans of the classic, North Carolina-set sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show, immediately recognize the exclamation “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” The character Gomer Pyle frequently and humorously utters this expression. Many may…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have gotten a lot of attention over the past decade. In these pages, we’ve often lamented that universities’ focus on superficial measures of diversity undermines merit…

Late last year, I had the honor of being nominated by Governor Kim Reynolds to serve on the advisory board of the newly created Center for Intellectual Freedom at the…

Why do public university officials do the things they do? What drives their decisions to allocate scarce resources in some ways and not others? In his recent book The University…

When the United States began its experiment with federally backed student loans in the 1960s, no one predicted that, by the early 21st century, students would have run up over…

This academic year, Harvard has endured a dark night of the soul, including (among other troubles) facing down the consequences of grade inflation and searching for curricular absolution. In a…