College Matters from The Chronicle

After about a year of battling with the Trump administration, higher-education leaders and analysts are collectively catching their breath. But this doesn’t feel like a break: The discourse around colleges and universities of late has taken on a dire tone. There’s open talk about the end of the great American research university as we know it. And no one feels fine.

Related Reading

The Unmaking of the American University (The New Yorker) 

Some Data on College Earnings (Bob Shireman’s Substack) 

Young Graduates Face the Grimmest Job Market in Years (The New York Times) 

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.

Ted Carter’s resignation this month as president of Ohio State University carries the hallmarks of a tabloid scandal. Announcing his departure, the university cited Carter’s "inappropriate" relationship with a woman who was “seeking public resources to support her personal business.” Reporting from The Columbus Dispatch suggests Carter had a romantic relationship with a female podcaster, and that Carter had used his university position to connect the woman with influential state leaders. Carter is just the latest high-profile academic to imperil an institution through reckless personal conduct. Given what social scientists know about how people in power behave, he’s unlikely to be the last.

Related Reading

‘Inappropriate Relationship’ Leads Ohio State’s president to resign (The Chronicle) 

Carter's relationship included dinner with OSU leaders, business lobbying (The Columbus Dispatch) 

Flirty emails got Mark Schlissel fired. A deeper history weighs on Michigan’s Flagship. (The Chronicle)

Guests

Sarah Brown, senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Nell Gluckman, senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the U. of California at Berkeley

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.

What began as a controversy last September over a lesson on gender identity in a children’s-literature class at Texas A&M University has morphed into something altogether more substantial. In recent months, Texas A&M has set about purging from its catalog any courses that “advocate race or gender ideology.” Courses on religion and culture, and even readings from Plato, have all been singled out for scrutiny or elimination. But how does a university respond behind the scenes when censorship becomes policy?

Related Reading

Inside Texas A&M's Scramble to Censor Its Curriculum (The Chronicle)

Censoring Courses Isn’t the Law in Texas. Public Universities Are Doing It Anyway. (The Chronicle)

Texas A&M Bans Plato Excerpt From a Philosophy Course (The Chronicle) 

Inside the Ousting of Texas A&M’s President (The Texas Tribune) 

Guest

Jasper Smith, staff reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Scott Galloway, a prolific podcaster and marketing professor at New York University, has had enough. For anyone who knows Galloway’s schtick, that’s not too surprising. On his popular podcast, Pivot, which he co-hosts with Kara Swisher, variations on the theme of Galloway reaching his limit are practically a recurring segment. But few things set Galloway off quite like highly selective universities, which he says have unscrupulously constrained enrollments to justify unfathomable tuition increases. The catch? Galloway has spent his career at just such a university — and he’d be “crushed” if his son didn’t get admitted to one.

Related Reading

Higher Ed’s Prickliest Pundit (The Chronicle) 

Scott Galloway’s Ted Talk (YouTube) 

The Making of Michael Crow, a Higher-Ed Agitator (The Chronicle) 

Guest

Scott Galloway, marketing professor at New York 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.

The Justice Department’s recent release of millions of pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019, shines a harsh light on a privileged network of scholars who had entered his orbit. Throughout the documents, professors butter up the financier to fund their pet projects, banter crudely about women, and appear to overlook the criminality of a man who had already been convicted on prostitution-related charges involving a minor. What do the documents reveal about the gilded world of high-profile scholarship — and about elite higher ed’s fraught relationship with money, power, and prestige?

Related Reading

Unmasking Academe’s Gilded Boys’ Club (The Chronicle)

Jeffrey Epstein’s Academic Fixer (The Chronicle)

'A Moment of Reckoning': After Epstein, Higher Ed Faces Hard Questions About Its Proximity to Power (The Chronicle) 

Guests

Nell Gluckman, senior writer at The Chronicle

Emmy Martin, reporting intern at The Chronicle 

For more on today’s episode, visit ⁠chronicle.com/collegematters⁠. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.