College Matters from The Chronicle

Young college students are getting a bad rap lately. To hear it from professors, many are struggling to read, they’re glued to their phones, and they’ve become heavily reliant on AI to do their work. But what do students have to say about all of this? When is the last time they actually read a book? Are they cheating as much as people say? The answers might surprise you.

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Guest

Beth McMurtrie, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

Colleges across the country are cutting programs and slashing budgets on a grand scale. What began as a slow trickle from some seemingly unlikely places, like Princeton and MIT, has become a sector-wide deluge. Wealthy private colleges, major public research universities, and lower-resourced institutions alike are eliminating courses of study, laying off staff, and cutting some faculty jobs. How bad is it out there, really? And how will these cuts define the next era of higher education?

Related Reading

The Latest News on Campus Finance (The Chronicle / Live Updates) 

How Colleges Cut (The Chronicle / Robert Kelchen) 

This is Why Some Regional Colleges Are in So Much Trouble (The Chronicle) 

Guests

Dan Berrett, senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Robert Kelchen, professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

For weeks, the world has been reeling over allegations that multiple Cornell University students raped a woman at a fraternity house. The lurid case has renewed calls for banning fraternities, but pushback from alumni and fears of the groups going underground tend to scuttle these efforts. Fraternities, it seems, are a proverbial third rail in higher education. Not unlike big-spending athletics programs, Greek Life is supported by powerful people whom college leaders are loath to confront. What are higher education’s other third-rail issues? And why are they so challenging to take on?

Related Reading

Cornell’s President Says Banning Fraternities Would Make Things Worse. Is He Right? (The Chronicle)

Why Don’t Colleges Just Ban Fraternities? (New York Magazine)

Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics’ Amateur Ideal (Andy Thomason/ U. of Michigan Press)

Guests

H. Holden Thorp, editor in chief of Science

Andy Thomason, assistant managing editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

The details of a lawsuit filed last month by a former Cornell University student, who says she was raped two years ago by multiple men at the Chi Phi fraternity house, are tough to stomach. Ketamine, alcohol, and misogyny figure prominently into the account laid out by the plaintiff, who is identified in the lawsuit only as Jane Doe. The suit has raised troubling questions about how the university and the county’s district attorney handled the case. More than that, the charges at Cornell have recentered waning conversations about the Greek system, the college party scene, and campus safety. Why has this case broken through, and what does it say about the darkest aspects of our culture?

Related Reading

At Cornell, a Rape Case Defines an Era (The Chronicle)

More to Hate (Substack/Kate Manne) 

How a Cornell Student Went from Shame to Action (The New York Times)

Guests

Nell Gluckman, senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Kate Manne, philosophy professor at Cornell University

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

Nearly four years after the introduction of ChatGPT, colleges and universities have propagated plenty of rules related to students’ use of AI. But what about administrators and faculty? Can they live by the same standards they’ve handed down? Should they? As more faculty and even some college leaders admit to using AI in their writing, charges of hypocrisy abound. News last week that Dartmouth College will investigate its provost for his use of AI has further intensified concerns that even the nation’s top institutions lack clear guidelines in this area. It’s also brought urgency to a deeper question: If everyone is using AI to write, what constitutes an original work?

Related Reading

What Even is an Author? (The Chronicle) 

When AI writes the words, who is the author? (Nature Africa) 

The Dartmouth’s provost investigation (The Dartmouth) 

Why I Want More AI at Dartmouth (The Atlantic) 

Guest

Andy Thomason, assistant managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

University of Texas at Austin football fans have good reason to be happy right now. After narrowly defeating the Ohio State University Buckeyes earlier this month, the Longhorns are sitting pretty at No. 1 in the college football rankings. But all is not well in Austin. The morning after the Longhorns’ big win, a Republican political candidate posted an inflammatory message on X, expressing dismay at a photo of students of South Asian descent celebrating in the stands. Bo French, who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, has stirred a tempest, suggesting that students of color have overrun the flagship university and “displaced” more deserving “Americans.” The controversy has ratcheted up tensions over immigration, diversity, and admissions in a state where some students from immigrant families say they feel unwelcome. It’s also shed light on the power of football fandom to shape a culture and define a community. 

Related Reading

Hook ‘Em, But Not All of ‘Em (The Daily Texan) 

‘A Slap in the Face’: How UT-Austin Axed a DEI Division (The Chronicle) 

Disappearing White Students (College Matters) 

Bo French’s social-media post (X) 

Guests

Thomas Oates, professor of journalism and American studies at the University of Iowa

Pauline Strong, professor of anthropology and past president of the UT-Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors

Isaiah Williams, news editor of The Daily Texan

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

Jodi Kantor, whose reporting for The New York Times helped expose years of sexual-misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein, has been thinking a lot lately about the next generation. What will a fulfilling career look like a decade from now? How worried should college graduates be about AI gobbling up entry-level jobs? And how can employers, including universities, do a better job of stopping workplace harassment, which can derail careers before they even start? Kantor doesn’t have all the answers, of course, but she’s using her platform to start a more focused conversation about the future of work for college-educated people.

Related Reading

How to Start (Jodi Kantor) 

A Year of Reckoning (The New York Times) 

The Consequences of Faculty Sexual Misconduct (National Bureau of Economic Research) 

She Left Harvard. He Got to Stay. (The Chronicle)

Guest

Jodi Kantor, investigative reporter for The New York Times

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, burst onto the scene more than a decade ago with a seemingly simple theory about successful people. They are incredibly determined, Duckworth argued, exhibiting that quintessentially American trait called “grit.” In her new book, Situated, Duckworth says that people have enormous power to change their “situations,” ensuring success by reducing distractions and bolstering connections with mentors. But what about low-income students for whom changing a "situation" is harder than turning off a cell phone? Is Duckworth’s blueprint for success applicable to everyone? Or is it just helpful advice for the already-privileged few?

Related Reading

Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best (Angela Duckworth) 

U. of Michigan's Plan to Pass/Fail Freshmen Draws Ire — and Cheers (The Chronicle) 

Has Harvard Gone Soft? (College Matters)

Guest

⁠Angela Duckworth⁠, psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania 

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

Is the student reading crisis real? Is AI panic justified? What’s next for the partisan battles over higher education? Each week, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s podcast delves into the thorniest issues facing colleges and universities. Through interviews with newsmakers and conversations with Chronicle staff, College Matters delivers sharp insights and deep analysis of the biggest stories in higher ed.

Catch up on previous episodes

⁠Are the Kids Alright? We Asked Ian Bogost ⁠

⁠Higher Ed Is as American as Apple Pie ⁠

⁠Dan Ariely Emailed With Epstein for Years. He Has (Mostly) No Regrets.⁠

For more on today’s episode, visit ⁠chronicle.com/collegematters⁠. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

More than 60 years after its publication, John Williams’s novel Stoner remains a revelatory portrait of higher education and the professoriate. Spanning much of the first half of the 20th century, the novel follows William Stoner from his undergraduate days at the University of Missouri through his career as an English professor at the same institution. The common tropes of the academic novel are all on display in Stoner, which features an illicit affair and a nasty interdepartmental feud. But it is Stoner’s intense focus on the purpose of college and the ineffable power of education that make it vital reading for anyone in academe. In the inaugural meeting of the College Matters Book Club, we’re diving into what one reviewer has described as “the perfect novel.”

Related Reading: 

The Inner Lives of Men - Morris Dickstein’s review of Stoner (The New York Times) 

The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard Of (The New Yorker) 

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Guests:

Nell Gluckman, senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Julie Schumacher, novelist and English professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.