The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in two lawsuits on Oct. 31, 2022, brought by a group that opposes affirmative action in college admissions. Here, Natasha Warikoo, a sociology professor at Tufts University and author of the newly released “Is Affirmative Action Fair?: The Myth of Equity in College Admissions,” shares insights on how […] … learn more→

“The two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain. According to the indicators of academic performance of undergraduate students in Spain, one in three new students for the 2015–16 academic year dropped out of the undergraduate degree. Of this percentage (specifically 33.2%), 12.4% changed […] … learn more→

Microcredentials — attestations of proficiency in a specific skill or knowledge base that are certified by an authority — can provide evidence of a person’s skills to employers. While microcredentials are becoming more popular, the concept is hardly new: A driver’s licence or the St. John Ambulance certificate could be considered as microcredentials, attesting respectively to a person’s driving […] … learn more→

“Moral panic”: this was the expression used 50 years ago by the sociologist Stanley Cohen when observing the disproportionate coverage by the British media of some fights that took place on the beaches between young people of the counter-culture of the 1960s , rockers and mods. In his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (never translated into French), the […] … learn more→

I always feel the need for more information, at the same time as feeling completely overwhelmed by what I already have. What I’m describing is a weird (highly privileged of course), 21st century form of anxiety… But perhaps you can relate? Certainly, a lot of people wrote to me after my most recent post on […] … learn more→

The past couple of weeks have seen wall to wall coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s death. Many media outlets took to eulogizing the Queen with effusive praise of her service and duty. But not everyone saw her and the insitution she headed in the same light. Many took to social media to discuss the Queen’s role in Britain’s imperial project, […] … learn more→

South Africa’s government has ambitious plans for doctoral education. The country aims to increase its output to 5,000 doctorates annually by 2030. In 2013, the figure stood at 2,051; by 2019 it was up to 3,445. It also wants 75% of all academics employed at universities to hold a PhD by 2030. In 2019, that figure was just 46%. […] … learn more→

Universities pride themselves on their founding stories. These stories, however, tend to privilege dominant institutional narratives and reproduce settler memories — and erase institutional participation in the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their lands. In our preliminary research on Indigenous presence at Western University with Sally Kewayosh, a filmmaker and instructor with the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, we find […] … learn more→

If it is not lacking in irony, the invitation launched in April 2022 by the Chinese president to the universities of his country to leave, almost 20 years after its invention, the Shanghai ranking may constitute a pivotal moment to promote d Other Models for Ranking Higher Education Institutions. The European Union seems particularly well equipped to […] … learn more→

As we witness the reversal of women’s rights worldwide, it’s clear that women cannot become complacent about protecting their civil liberties. According to the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda, the world is not on track for meeting its goal of gender equality for women by 2030. Although Canada has committed to gender equality, there is still an ongoing struggle for women […] … learn more→