Depleting Higher Education

The most important decision that grad students have to make is who to work with as their supervisor. A common joke in grad school is that graduate student-supervisor relationships outlast many marriages. Your choice of supervisor helps determine the trajectory of your graduate an ...  Show more

A few weeks ago my eldest daughter turned 10. It's so incredibly hard to believe because of how truly how fast did time flew. Thinking back 10 years ago, it was an incredibly chaotic time. I had interviewed for a job without knowing I was pregnant. Then after I received my offer, ...  Show more

We think of them as intellectual enclaves and the surest route to a better life. But U.S. colleges also operate like firms, trying to differentiate their products to win market share and prestige points. In the first episode of a special series originally published in 2022, we ...

America’s top colleges are facing record demand. So why don’t they increase supply? (Part 2 of our series from 2022, “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”)

Today’s book is: Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History (University of Illinois Press, 2024), which is an essay collection co-edited by Eric Fure-Slocum and Claire Goldstene. It explores why in the United States more than three-quarters of the pe ...  Show more

American higher education is under attack. Project 2025 laid out the battle plan pretty clearly: Get rid of the Department of Education, shut off federal funding, take control of the accreditation system, and take down diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And in the end, ch ...  Show more