Filter by:

Filter by published date

A gate with the dollar signs on the front.

No Change In Elite College Low-Income Enrollment Since 1920s

A comprehensive new study found that the socioeconomic makeup of highly selective colleges is roughly the same as it was a century ago.

It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel

Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.
Women with field hockey sticks in a physical education class circa 1920.

How the US College Went from Pitiful to Powerful

In its first century the American higher-education system was a messy, disorganised joke. How did it rise to world dominance?
A man tacks applications to Princeton University on a bulletin board
partner

The Rise of the College Application Essay

The essay component of American college applications has a long history, but its purpose has changed over time.
Student watching smoke emanating from the student center after 1969 protests.

The CUNY Experiment

The City University of New York has long stood at once for meritocratic uplift and for civil disobedience.
Sign reading "Welcome to the People's University for Palestine" at Harvard protest encampment

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.
A Yale University student labeling and sorting Army recruitment posters on campus during World War I.

This Forgotten American Orwell Had a Lot to Tell Us

Malcolm Ross is unknown today. That’s too bad. This son of privilege has much to teach us about labor and civic leadership.
IMPERATOR Steam ship.

The Students Who Went to Sea

"The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the Politics of Knowledge"
Chains with ivy on it

Endowed by Slavery

Harvard made headlines by announcing that it would devote $100 million to remedying “the harms of the university’s ties to slavery.”
JFK and Jackie Kennedy with wedding party

You’ll Miss Us When We’re Gone

The rise and fall of the WASP.
UC Berkeley campus

The Prophet of Academic Doom

Robert Nisbet predicted the managerialism that has brought universities low. But he also saw a way out.
The 1.25-million-square-foot USC Village residential complex in Los Angeles.

The Rise of the UniverCity

Historian Davarian Baldwin explains how universities have come to wield the kind of power that were once hallmarks of ruthless employers in company towns.
Students at Colby College

Harvard–Riverside, Round Trip

In the contemporary United States, higher education does more to exaggerate than relieve class and cultural divisions.
Aerial view of the University of Chicago
partner

Higher Education’s Racial Reckoning Reaches Far Beyond Slavery

Universities helped buttress a racist caste system well into the 20th century.
A row of black and white pencils.

Anna Deavere Smith on Forging Black Identity in 1968

In 1968, history found us at a small women’s college, forging our Black identity and empowering our defiance.

This Could Be the First Slavery Reparations Policy in America

Georgetown University students consider a fund to benefit descendants of 272 slaves sold by the school nearly two centuries ago.

The Decline of Historical Thinking

For the past decade, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college.

The Little College Where Tuition Is Free and Every Student Is Given a Job

Berea College has paid for every enrollee’s education using its endowment for 126 years. Can other schools replicate the model?

Evangelicals Bring the Votes, Catholics Bring the Brains

To understand Catholic overrepresentation on the U.S. Supreme Court, we must look to the history of American Catholic education.
Football players kneeling in prayer on the field.

Football and the Political Act of Prayer

In football, prayer is—and has always been—political.

Have Elite US Colleges Lost Their Moral Purpose Altogether?

The ethical formation of citizens was once at the heart of the US elite college. Has this moral purpose gone altogether?

The Princeton & Slavery Project

A vast, interactive collection of resources related to Princeton's involvement with the institution of slavery.
A 1902 football game mid-play, with men from both sides rushing at each other

God and the Gridiron Game

America's obsession with football is nearly as old as the game itself.
partner

When ‘Free Speech’ Becomes a Political Weapon

What we can learn from liberal anti-communists.

From Public Good to Personal Pursuit: Historical Roots of the Student Debt Crisis

The roots of the student debt crisis are neither economic nor financial in origin, but rather social.
Pro-Palestinian campus protest.
partner

Why Colleges Don’t Know What to Do About Campus Protests

Despite frequent litigation, U.S. courts have created a blurry line that puts administrators in an impossible situation.
Georgetown University building.

Confronting Georgetown’s History of Enslavement

In “The 272,” Rachel L. Swarns sets out how the country’s first Catholic university profited from the sale of enslaved people.
The Supreme Court building.

Everything We Know about the History of Diversity Is Wrong

And historians aren't exactly helping in the Harvard case currently before the Supreme Court.
Student loan debt activists rally outside the White House a day after President Biden announced a plan that would cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 a year in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 25, 2022.
partner

The 50-Year Path That Left Millions Drowning in Student Loan Debt

How new student loan programs turned students into consumers — and ignited a competition among universities that left them drowning in debt.
Formal portrait photo of Destin Jenkins.

Public Thinker: Destin Jenkins on Breaking Bonds

“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea