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. Related Reading Is Reading Over for Gen Z? (College Matters)  My Students Can’t Read (The Review)  Using AI Without (Really) Cheating (College Matters) 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.