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#highered
As my sessional instructor semester winds down, I’ll go see my students present their projects at a social event. And, yeah, I’m going to be the person who shows up to a student #UrbanPlanning event on a Brompton. I will fold it up and bring it inside too. #BikeTooter #highered
"Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By “functionally illiterate” I mean “unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.” I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an objective standard of “serious adult novel.” Furthermore, I’ve read them all and can testify that they are brilliant, captivating writers; we’re not talking about Finnegans Wake here. But at the same time they aren’t YA, romantasy, or Harry Potter either.
I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read,2 and most certainly not the attention span to finish. For them to sit down and try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron Man triathlon: much suffering with zero chance of success.
Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training. Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn't even take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu is a chore and to be avoided."
https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/the-average-college-student-today
What would you expect?
"The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.
The trend was particularly pronounced among early-career researchers. Of the 690 postgraduate researchers who responded, 548 were considering leaving; 255 of 340 PhD students said the same.
Trump’s administration has slashed research funding and halted broad swathes of federally funded science, under a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees, including many scientists, have been fired and rehired following a court order, with threats of more mass firings to come. Immigration crackdowns and battles over academic freedom have left researchers reeling as uncertainty and disruption permeate all aspects of the US research enterprise"
"it appears the Trump administration is quietly targeting even more students for deportation and doing so in a way that is taking universities and the students themselves completely by surprise"
https://zeteo.com/p/ice-manually-revoking-university-students-residency-status-middle-east
#Rutgers Senate proposes a mutual defense compact amongst the Big Ten:
https://senate.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Resolution-to-Establish-a-Mutual-Defense-Compact-for-the-Universities-of-the-Big-Ten-Academic-Alliance-in-Defense-of-Academic-Freedom-Institutional-Integrity-and-the-Research.pdf
Zeteo reports that the status of some international students at US universities in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), are being changed without their knowledge, and without the knowledge of their universities: https://zeteo.com/p/ice-manually-revoking-university-students-residency-status-middle-east?r=dzzz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A change in student status can lead to a visa revocation, but at least according to the story it's the universities, not ICE, who normally set *status*. I presume universities can also set it back if alerted to a change.
Open letter to the Utrecht University Executive Board: Calling for a transformation to digital autonomy.
We, the undersigned, express our concern about Utrecht University’s increasing reliance on services from Big Tech companies (particularly Microsoft, Google, Amazon) for our research, teaching and administrative activities. https://www.uu.nl/en/opinion/open-letter-to-the-executive-university-board-calling-for-a-transformation-to-digital-autonomy
Two leaders of #Harvard’s Middle Eastern studies center to step down but remain as faculty members
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/29/harvard-middle-eastern-studies-departures
#NewYorkTimes #GiftLink #AI #Education #HigherEd #Academia #Edtech #TressieKicksAss
"But what we’ve already seen in academia is that the use cases for artificial intelligence across every domain of work and life have started to get silly really fast. Most of us aren’t using A.I. to save lives faster and better. We are using A.I. to make mediocre improvements, such as emailing more."
This op-ed could lead to me being deported from the US | Berna León | The Guardian
#USPol #ICE #HigherEd #deportations
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/29/trump-ice-deportation-universities
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/29/trump-ice-deportation-universities
MSU students demand university officials take a stance on #Trump policies
The war on #higherEd threatens economic prosperity and manifests the rise of totalitarianism https://observer.case.edu/the-war-on-higher-education-threatens-economic-prosperity-and-manifests-the-rise-of-totalitarianism/
South by Southwest EDU was an amazing event, with a lot of shared knowledge, experience, and interesting discussions.
It's clear there are many opportunities in higher education to leverage artificial intelligence, not only for students and student experience, but for educators, researchers, and administrative departments.
"The Encampments": New Film on Mahmoud Khalil & Columbia Students Who Sparked Gaza Campus Protests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVYd_CWiuv8 #USpol #Gaza #HigherEd #Documentary
Déplacements professionnels aux États-Unis : l’UdeM met en garde ses membres | Radio-Canada
Univ of #Montreal issues warning to its faculty students and staff over travel and conferences in the USA under #Trump admin #highered
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2151439/deplacements-etats-unis-universite-avertissement
"A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.
Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Stanley told the Daily Nous, a philosophy profession website, that he made the decision “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.
He said in an interview that Columbia University’s recent actions moved him to accept the offer. Last Friday, Columbia gave in to the Trump administration by agreeing to a series of demands in order to restore $400m in federal funding. These changes include crackdowns on protests, increased security power and “internal reviews” of some academic programs, like the Middle Eastern studies department."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/yale-professor-fascism-canada
Happy Friday to everyone except the “civil discourse will save us” romantics, who have misunderstood what we’re up against.
Sue or hold back? The University of California does both as it faces Trump’s wrath
“One sentiment I have heard echoed by all levels of UC and campus administration is their desire to escape the ever-watchful, punitive eyes of the federal administration,” Aditi Hariharan, president of the undergraduate student association of the UC, told UC leaders last week. “However, hiding the UC support for specific communities targeted by the federal government will actually have a chilling effect on students’ experiences at the UC.”
https://calmatters.org/education/2025/03/university-of-california/ #Fascism #HigherEd #California
