By Elizabeth Redden. There’s no place like Cuba, at least as far as study abroad is concerned. That was a main takeaway of a session here at the NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference on things U.S. universities should consider in offering study abroad programs in Cuba. Read more...

By 7 Humanities Professors. We write as faculty members teaching in gender/sexuality studies, critical race studies, film and visual studies, literary studies, and cognate fields.  We empathize with the difficulties our students bring into the classroom, from their pasts and/or from their ongoing battles with violence, sexual assault, racism, and other traumatizing events, both everyday and extraordinary. As faculty of color, female, and/or queer faculty, many of us have had some of the same experiences. Read more...

By Angus Johnston. Trigger warnings in the classroom have been the subject of tremendous debate in recent weeks, but it’s striking how little the discussion has contemplated what actual trigger warnings in actual classrooms might plausibly look like. Read more...

By Scott McLemee. At a certain age, you find the slang of the day growing a bit opaque or slippery. Using it becomes a calculated risk. Not that the words or usages are necessarily incomprehensible, though some of them are. (The word “random” now has implications in the American vernacular that I have yet to figure out.) But the unwritten rules of informal correctness are sometimes tricky, and mastering them a challenge. Read more...

By David Leonhardt. Some newly minted college graduates struggle to find work. Others accept jobs for which they feel overqualified. Student debt, meanwhile, has topped $1 trillion. It’s enough to create a wave of questions about whether a college education is still worth it. Read more...

By Michael D. Shear. The college presidents were appalled. Not only had President Obama called for a government rating system for their schools, but now one of his top education officials was actually suggesting it would be as easy as evaluating a kitchen appliance. Read more...

By Len Findlay. Findlay is a professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan, and chair of the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee, Canadian Association of University Teachers. Lawrie McFarlane (Academic freedom misunderstood in Canada, SP May 23) remains as ignorant today about academic freedom as he was when he was deputy minister of advanced education in the 1980s.
Indeed, he now seems even more bent on reducing such freedom to a political alibi and bureaucratic toy, seeking to trump a key set of rights and responsibilities via appeals to corporate loyalty and executive obedience. More...

By Antonia Maioni. Watching Erin Freeland Ballantyne receive the Public Policy Forum’s Emerging Leader award last month, it occurred to me how much is being overlooked in all of the soul-searching about the potential enrichment of a university education. 
Canada wants its citizens to be players in the global community, so it needs to graduate “students without boundaries”, who can move freely within and beyond our universities, provinces, national borders and academia itself to tackle new challenges and opportunities. More...

By Rob Carrick. The young adults of Generation Y want what their parents have – the full package of careers, cars, houses and kids. 
Yet many of these young people lack full-time jobs in their field and a large number of them are being supported to some extent by their parents, even into their 30s. Plenty of Gen Y members are doing fine in today’s economy, but the overall lack of financial independence is striking. More...