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By Nick DeSantis. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced last week that it was pushing back the deadline for states to comply with a law that requires public colleges to charge veterans lower in-state tuition rates, regardless of their state of residency. More...

By Andy Thomason. The data underlying a popular study that ostensibly showed that short conversations could change opinions on same-sex marriage may have been faked, the blog Retraction Watch reports. A co-author of a paper describing the study, “When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality,” has asked that the journal Science retract it. More...

By Andy Thomason. Bernard Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and long-shot candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would make attending all four-year public colleges free. More...

By Alan Wolfe. "Revolutions devour their own children." (The line is usually attributed to the German playwright Georg Büchner, although it has been repeated so often that authorship hardly matters.) It is also incorrect; it ought to tell us that revolutions chew up the parents who launch them. In The Paradox of Liberation, a fascinating excursion into the ironies of political action, the political philosopher Michael Walzer adds a new twist: Secular revolutions unwittingly give rise to religious zealotry. More...

By Richard D. Kahlenberg. On Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to decide in a private conference whether to accept an appeal from Abigail Noel Fisher in the Fisher v. University of Texas litigation challenging UT-Austin’s affirmative-action policies. If the court takes the case for review, as I think it should, that would be a big victory for poor and working-class students hoping to attend selective colleges and for those who believe racial considerations should not be a factor in deciding who gets ahead in society. More...

By Kentaro Toyama. In 2004, I moved to India to help found a new research lab for Microsoft. Based in Bangalore, it quickly became a hub for cutting-edge computer science. My own focus shifted with the move, and I began to explore applications of digital technologies for the socioeconomic growth of poor communities. India struggles to educate its billion-plus population, so during the five years that I was there, my team considered how computers, mobile phones, and other devices could aid learning. More...

By Cecilia Gaposchkin. It’s that time of year again: At many colleges, second-year students must declare their majors. Uncles, grandmothers, and friends will almost certainly ask: "What are you going to do with that?" Some parents will say, "I am not going to shell out this amount of money for my kid to major in …."
Such responses are based on the premise that choosing a major amounts to choosing a career path, and thus a particular financial future, a degree of security, a lifestyle, an entire identity. More...

By Marc Parry. In October 1984, a young Skidmore College professor, Sheldon Solomon, traveled to a Utah ski lodge to introduce what would become a major theory of social psychology. The setting was a conference of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, a prestigious professional organization. Solomon’s theory explained that people embrace cultural worldviews and strive for self-esteem largely to cope with the fear of death. The reception he got was as frosty as the snow piled up outside. More...