At AKA, we closely follow trends and latest developments in higher education and the nonprofit sector.
Here are some recent articles and reports that we found particularly informative.
Articles
From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Can We Finally Topple the Tyranny of Rankings? By Leon Botstein Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, reviews the history of the U.S. News Rankings of Colleges and Universities and delineates how top universities could have put an end to the rankings before they even took hold. He argues that the U.S. is a nation uncomfortable with
judging experiences that cannot be reduced to standardized numerical comparisons and describes how the inherent qualitative nature of higher education is not well-suited to such metrics. Further, the ranking criteria perpetuate inequalities by rewarding schools that serve wealthy students and penalizing those that have a greater number of lower-income students. Read this article
From The New York Times: The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT By Kevin Roose ChatGPT is the best AI chatbot ever released, its abilities prompting both viral exchanges of jokes and stunts as well as more serious applications, such as repairing coding errors or proposing likely medical diagnoses. While releasing the bot publicly will allow Open AI to better assess its blind spots and mitigate its use for harmful purposes, the biggest challenge may be to recognize that ChatGPT is only likely to improve, beginning with the planned release of GPT-4 next year. Read this article
From The New York Times: What Would Plato Say About ChatGPT? By Zeynep Tufekci Considering ChatGPT in the context of teaching and learning, sociologist Zeynep Tufeckci argues that “the right approach when faced with transformative technologies is to figure out how to use them for the betterment of
humanity.” It is essential, however, to do so with an eye for equity: “If AI enhances the value of education for some while degrading the education of others, the promise of betterment will be broken.”Read this
article
From Nature: International students are returning to the United States, but will that last? By Virginia Gewin While the 2021-22 academic year saw a 3.8% increase in international students enrolled in U.S. institutions, the prior year had a 15% drop in international enrollment caused primarily by a substantial decline in students from Asia. It is unclear if the trend this year
will continue in view of such factors as growing U.S.-China tensions, higher costs of living, long waits for visas, anti-Asian hate crimes, and increasing competition from institutions in other nations. Read this article
Further Reading
From The Atlantic: Breakthroughs of the Year By Derek Thompson There was an extraordinary number of exceptional scientific achievements this year in fields ranging from AI to biological research, medical discoveries, and intergalactic exploration. This article highlights some of the most notable: novel vaccine therapies,
at-home cancer screenings, lab grown meats, and state-of-the-art nuclear reactors. Read this article
.The AKA Review will be taking a break for the holidays and will resume on January 6, 2023
Best wishes to you and yours for the holidays
and a very happy New Year!
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