With drastic improvements, the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was launched ahead of the October 1 deadline—marking the earliest rollout in the program’s history. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon contrasted the milestone with the Biden-Harris administration’s botched launch two years ago, when technical failures delayed aid processing for millions of students. […]
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Editor’s Note: This response was submitted in early September 2025 in response to Jared Gould’s Top of Mind column, “If You Want Young Adults to Grow Up, Don’t Bar Them from Serious Work,” published December 5, 2024. Well, I am back from Gotham [Manhattan]. We walked through Hudson Yards on our way to Moynihan Station, […]
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The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently published an essay in its flagship magazine, Academe, titled “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity.” Written by Lisa Siraganian, the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and professor at Johns Hopkins University, the piece makes a sweeping and unsettling claim: that efforts to foster intellectual diversity on […]
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The presence of artificial intelligence (AI) on college campuses is a foregone conclusion—a recent report found that 93 percent of students use it regularly for coursework. By this point, it is no longer a question of whether AI tools will be used on college campuses, but instead, how they will be used. Back in July, […]
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As universities attempt to rebrand their “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs and offices, many have embraced the term “inclusive excellence,” promoting it as a strategy to recognize and cultivate both individual and institutional success. Inclusive excellence is framed as a method that values multiple perspectives to enhance overall performance. But in practice, it is […]
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For my entire adult life, I can’t recall an initiative to collect data to combat racial discrimination that has not been met with enthusiastic support. But then President Trump announced that colleges would have to submit more of their admissions data to combat racial discrimination, and things got weird. To understand the context here, recall […]
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International students have long been a lifeline for universities; one could even argue that they are a cash cow. They bring global perspectives, help fill enrollment gaps, and—very importantly—pay tuition at higher levels that subsidize the tuition of domestic students. For decades, countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia competed […]
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Yesterday, we reported that Texas State University (TXST) had terminated Thomas Alter, a newly tenured associate professor of history, following remarks he made on a virtual September 7th Socialist Horizon conference. At the time of that publication, we didn’t yet know that a Hays County district judge had already ordered the university to reinstate him […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs on September 29, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Oklahoma’s new social studies and science standards make it possible for students to have much-improved instruction in Oklahoma’s public K-12 classrooms. It […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an interview with Minding the Campus contributor Joe Nalven, published initially on Harald Johnson’s Substack, Create or Die, on August 20, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Joe Nalven is a creative, artist, instructor, and writer based in San Diego. He covers […]
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The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the indispensable role of emergency responders in the healthcare system—and the pressing need to bolster that workforce. Since 2020, shortages of healthcare workers, including first responders, have become especially acute. A 2024 study by Mercer projected that the U.S. will see a total deficit of 100,000 critical healthcare workers by 2028 […]
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What if I told you that a college dropout did more for higher education than many college professors? Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), never earned a formal degree; yet, his influence on American campuses has reshaped discussions around free speech and viewpoint diversity. Kirk dropped out of college, opting instead to […]
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This article presents a sharp and witty critique of the challenges faced in navigating modern technology in higher education. It effectively blends humor and personal anecdotes, utilizing clever cultural references. The engaging writing style is accessible yet insightful, pulling readers in with vivid metaphors and irony. I know this because the artificial intelligence (AI) platform […]
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Conservatives do not need to go out of their way to defend academics who celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk. “People have come out caping for the devil that walked among us […] so no. I will not pull back from CELEBRATING that an evil man died by the method he chose to embrace,” University […]
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Editor’s Note: Find an update to this article here. Texas State University (TXST) is now at the center of a lawsuit following the dismissal of Thomas Alter, a recently tenured associate professor of history, who alleges that the institution violated his constitutional rights and breached his employment contract. According to local sources, Alter was terminated […]
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Perusing the preliminary rosters for my first-year college writing courses, I thought half-humorously that I could easily have been looking at the United Nations staff directory. Most of the names were of Middle Eastern, Indian, Pakistani, or East Asian origin, with a sprinkling of African, Hispanic, and Eastern European backgrounds. Common Anglo-Saxon surnames were conspicuous […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on Real Clear Education on September 22, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Every morning, millions of students start their day the same way: roll over, reach for the phone, and open a social media app. Scroll. Snap. Like. […]
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Earlier today, I published Joshua T. Katz’s essay, “Food for Thought Goes Hungry at Princeton.” His piece zeroes in on the university’s decision to cut meal privileges for non-advising fellows in the residential colleges, framing it as a small but telling loss in the broader culture of academic life. Princeton’s endowment is so vast that […]
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At the start of the academic year, Princeton University announced that, effective immediately, faculty and staff members who are “non-advising fellows” in one of the seven so-called residential colleges would no longer enjoy meal privileges in their college. The reason is, of course, the “new financial environment.” Princeton’s endowment is so large that Malcolm Gladwell […]
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It came to my attention yesterday that the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), my alma mater, is at the center of a disturbing hazing lawsuit. The plaintiff, Raphael C. Joseph, alleges that he was so brutally beaten during Omega Psi Phi’s Nu Eta chapter “Hell Night” in April 2023 that he required emergency surgery, a […]
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The managing editor of Minding the Campus, Jared Gould, recently wrote an essay on the University of Chicago (UChicago). He thoughtfully summarized its finances, providing a factual overview of a problem faced, in one form or another, by nearly all universities. As an alumnus of UChicago’s Booth School of Business, his essay caught my attention, but […]
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I knew something was fundamentally broken the day a senior colleague grabbed my shoulders and shook me frantically in the faculty dining hall after a contentious meeting of my school’s social science faculty. The assault was shocking, especially because it happened in what should have been a routine lunch gathering at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), […]
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