Higher education’s grade inflation conundrum
Students do less work than in the past, in some cases seem less prepared for higher education than past generations, and yet grades have gone up
Grade inflation is all the rage in higher education. Harvard has a proposal to reduce the number of A’s it awards. A Yale faculty committee proposed that 3.0 should be the mean grade.
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Accreditation’s AI reckoning: Can colleges still prove students are learning?
Higher education is approaching a credibility crisis: Colleges may still be awarding degrees, but can they prove that students—not their AI tools—have actually learned? Accreditation has long depended on evidence that institutions define outcomes, assess student achievement, and use results to improve.
Strengthening campus pathways to student mental health care
Among college students, 37 percent report moderate to severe depressive symptoms and 33 percent report moderate to severe anxiety. More than three-quarters (76 percent) of college students report moderate or high stress levels, and almost one-quarter (20.6 percent) experience significant psychological distress while on campus.
Intentional governance: Responsibility, judgment, and leadership in the age of intelligent systems
Artificial intelligence is changing the conditions under which institutional purpose is interpreted, pursued, and realized through the exercise of institutional judgment. As institutions increasingly adopt AI, discussions related to governance have expanded to include fairness, bias, transparency, explainability, privacy, accountability, and regulatory compliance.
Escaping the tech debt trap: Why governance matters more in the age of AI
Artificial intelligence is now emerging as a strategic priority across higher education, but many institutions are still determining how to move from experimentation to institution-wide adoption.
What “friction maxxing” teaches us about IT skill development in the age of AI
As AI adoption accelerates, a countertrend has emerged that reinforces the old saying: What goes around comes around. After spending years looking for ways to remove friction from everyday life, a growing number of people are embracing it by choosing to perform certain tasks without the assistance of AI and other forms of automation.
Building AI that teaches: Scaling learning systems
I’ve spent nine years building learning infrastructure, and during that time I’ve gone from staff engineer to founding member of our first AI engineering team. Along the way, I’ve come to believe that educational AI is a fundamentally different engineering discipline than the consumer AI most people read about.
Most states struggle to bring adult learners back to college
Most states still rely on fragmented, short-term initiatives to support adult learners rather than coordinated statewide strategies, according to new research from ReUp Education.
How should we evaluate professorial work?
College faculty are all aware of the three pillars of professorial work: instruction, scholarship, and service. Faculty are generally assessed on peer review publications, academic presentations, grants authored, and service on university and professional committees.
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The Visual Edge: How High-Impact Technology Redefines Campus Differentiation and Enrollment Strategy
In the current higher education landscape, waning enrollment is still a present challenge. While overall enrollment numbers are showing signs of a rebound, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data indicates that undergraduate enrollment has yet to fully return to pre-pandemic levels.