What’s in the Name on Your Diploma?

Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be

For a certain stratum of the American middle class, a college acceptance letter is the culminating moment in the lives of children—and their parents. But is our obsession with college rankings and prestige overblown? Have we lost sight of what matters? And have our universities, in their quest for exclusivity, done the same? New York Times columnist Frank Bruni visits Zócalo with Arizona State University president Michael M. Crow to ask what universities are for. In advance of their discussion, below is an excerpt from Bruni’s new book, Where …

The Death of the College Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

The University Will Survive, But in Very Different Form, Says Kevin Carey

American society is obsessed with change and the future—yet our institutions of higher education love to advertise how long they’ve been around. Why? Kevin Carey, author of The End of …

Goodbye, Chalkboard. Hello, Chat Room.

Free Online Courses, Crowdsourcing, and Big Data Are Transforming the University from a Gatekeeper to a Public Resource

In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it was going to put the university’s entire body of course materials online, for free. That meant syllabuses, as well as problem …

The University of Everywhere

The End of College

The Japanese television crew and excitable L.A. producer were the first signs that something unusual was happening at MIT.

It was a warm evening in April, barely a week after a …

Your Family Tragedy Won’t Get You Into College

I've Spent 13 Years Helping Kids Write Admissions Essays. Here's Where They Go Wrong.

November is National College Application Month (yes, there is such a thing), and for millions of students–and their parents–urgent deadlines loom. Applications for University of California and California State University …

Is the University of Pennsylvania Really America’s Top Party School?

My Alma Mater Was Never That Wild—Except Maybe That One Night in 1972 with the Belly Dancers

I truly bleed red and blue. From my first day at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1968 to the present, my pride in being a Quaker has …