AKA Review - 09.11.2026

From The New York Times

By Michael Roth

As fall term starts, could there be a simpler reminder of what college is for? Wesleyan’s president ticks off higher ed’s woes: declining trust, AI, uncertain job market, affordability. But anticipating students’ arrival on campus, he reflects happily, “parents will cry; kids will check one another out,” develop friendships, open themselves to new possibilities, and work out what it means to be decent humans in an increasingly hostile world. Let them enjoy the highs and lows of the ride. “We should cheer them on, for their sake and ours.” Read this article

From Liberalism.org

A Civic Education That Extends America

By Melvin Rogers

Proponents of civic-education schools springing up nationally often describe them as “counterweights” to a perceived liberal trend in higher ed. This runs counter to our nation’s and universities’ founding documents, the author asserts. Effective civic education must teach students “to distinguish between those traditions and iterations of our past that expand freedom and equality and those that do not…,[offering] a shared framework within which citizens can genuinely disagree” rather than havens that allow one to avoid political disagreement. Read this article

From Steven Mintz on Substack

The Scientific Talent Race America Is Losing

By Steven Mintz

How did China move so quickly from sending its best scientific talent to U.S. universities to building institutions able to compete with them for faculty, students, and prestige? It’s not just money. Four failures—of guidance, access, support, and autonomy—illustrate a highly fragmented U.S. approach to scientific talent development. This contrasts with China’s systematic, cross-institutional, connected sequence of talent identification and cultivation, one that demonstrates how a national focus can close gaps that once seemed insurmountable. Read this article

From Inside Higher Ed

That Chart From Brown Isn’t Really About Cheating

By Leo Schumann

You’ve probably seen the chart—comparing implausibly high scores on a take-home midterm with results half that level on the in-class final, suggesting extensive cheating with AI. But, “did students cheat” is the least interesting question the chart raises. Widespread cheating, the author argues, is evidence of a broken incentive system in which AI cheating makes sense. Drawing on extensive interviews and literature on motivation, he suggests solutions for redesigning assessment so that “learning, not just outputs…gets rewarded.” Read this article

From Next

Why the Focus on Syracuse University? Higher Ed’s Winner-Take-All Era

By Jeff Selingo

Syracuse’s well-publicized decline is instructive for the many private universities that were national institutions 20-30 years ago but are now flirting with declines in reputation and prestige as they “lose market power in an increasingly winner-take-all higher ed system.” Highlighting Syracuse’s historical vulnerabilities, the author describes four choices that its competitors made behind the scenes to ensure their market position and which Syracuse, and most universities, will need to make more publicly in the coming years. Read this article