By Melonie Fullick. “Everyone loves to identify things that have not been identified.
The rabbit hole, where ever I find it, symbolizes solitude.”
–Terrance Hayes, For Crying Out Loud
Recently I’ve been finding it much harder to blog because I’ve been homing in on certain aspects of my dissertation, which has taken up an ever-larger chunk of my focus and thinking time. This is a good thing of course, but it means I’ve also been more impressed than ever at how others are able to write excellent and timely article and blog posts on the latest issues, while I can barely keep up with the higher ed news. Read more...

By Léo Charbonneau. A group called the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has released its 2013 Campus Freedom Index, a report card of sorts on the “state of free speech” at Canada’s public universities. I was unaware this “freedom index” existed, even though it is in fact the third annual such exercise by this group.
It is a rather glaring understatement to say that the issue of free speech on campus is fraught with controversy. As institutions that are meant to foster open intellectual debate and promote the clash of ideas, universities are in a tricky position when it comes to dealing with speech that may be perceived by some as harmful or dangerous. As in the famous “yelling fire in a crowded theatre” metaphor, where do you draw the line? More...

Forbes. Of all the dramatic changes in higher education in recent years, one that goes largely unnoticed is the tremendous growth in the mission, services, and facilities of health centers. Decades ago most colleges and universities believed their only responsibility for student health was to set up a clinic to treat the sick and injured. Today, driven by a broader and, in our judgment, better understanding of health and its impact on learning, many institutions of higher education provide much more. More...

USA Today. When Chaunie Brusie saw the blue positive lines on her pregnancy test, she panicked. At 21 years old, she had just started her senior year at Saginaw Valley State University in University Center, Mich. More...

The Boston Globe. To the legions of students who have been tutored and molded and prodded toward a top college most of their young lives, it would be an absurd question: How many of you had to explain to your parents what MIT is?
When a dean asked a Massachusetts Institute of Technology classroom full of 20-odd freshmen recently in their first few days away from home — at one of the most famous colleges in the world — almost every hand went up. Then, they laughed. And someone cracked a math joke. More...