It’s getting tougher to assess how much university students have learnt. In his work as a Mathematical Statistics lecturer, Michael von Maltitz has tried a new way of getting students to learn, and of assessing what they’ve absorbed and retained. Students have to show and discuss how they arrived at their understanding of the subject. They can’t […] … learn more→

Is it time to get rid of group assignments at university? Federal Opposition education spokesperson Julian Leeser thinks so. On Thursday, he called for universities to drop group assessments entirely, arguing they are fundamentally “unfair” and “cheapen” degrees. In a speech to the Universities Australia conference in Canberra, Leeser said: Students feel, instinctively, that in […] … learn more→

Throughout the 20th century, college and university presidents spoke out on everything, from wars to civil rights struggles, with a sense of moral authority attempting to guide the course. Their language was typically direct and free of jargon. “Democracy is the best form of government. It is worth dying for,” Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of […] … learn more→

Australian students are returning to university campuses for the start of the academic year. They do so amid highly charged debates around racism and antisemitism. Australian universities have been accused both of failing to protect freedom of speech and academic freedom, and failing to protect the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students and staff. A new Australian Human Rights […] … learn more→

For the past decade I have volunteered at St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Kensington, for those not from Philly, has long had a reputation for potent but affordable street drugs. Interstate 95 and the Market-Frankford elevated commuter train line provide easy access to the neighborhood for buyers and sellers, and […] … learn more→

In the Phaedrus , Plato tells us that Socrates distrusted the written word. He believed that committing knowledge to writing would weaken memory and discourage dialogue. Writing, he warned, is inferior to debate because it cannot respond. It only creates an appearance of wisdom, not genuine wisdom. The parallel with AI is clear. We now have systems […] … learn more→

In the past five years, higher education has been in a seemingly endless state of disruption. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a mass rapid pivot to emergency remote teaching. In shifting to unfamiliar digital learning environments, instructors scrambled to replicate classroom learning online. When restrictions lifted, many institutions pushed for a “return to normal,” as […] … learn more→

Texas A&M University told philosophy professor Martin Peterson in early January 2026 that he could not teach some of Greek philosopher Plato’s writings that touch on “race and gender ideology.” The university’s local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, an organization of professors and academics in the U.S., quickly denounced this requirement. Peterson, in response to […] … learn more→

Imagine trying to fill a water bottle with a fire hose at full pressure. Most of the water would spill out, and the bottle would still be half empty. Something very similar happens in our brains when we try to learn by rote memorization, which is why we’ve all found ourselves reading a text over […] … learn more→

As Canadian federal election candidates prepared for their final debate in April 2025, youth across the country were preparing for collaborative conversations around timely and potentially divisive issues for the National Ethics Bowl at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. Ethics Bowl Canada is a non-profit organization that hosts competitions where high school and university students […] … learn more→