Finally got around to watching #TheAmateur, and although a few parts were predictable, overall it was pretty satisfying

Costs (the money needed to provide an education) have risen. Prices (what students pay) have been at or below inflation for the past decade. That doesn't get nearly enough attention. NPR folks, you know where to find me.

Breaking News: President Trump's handpicked prosecutor acknowledged that a full grand jury did not see the final indictment against James Comey before he was charged.

There is an ironically fitting level of math illiteracy involved in saying that loosening of math standards in the past few years is why more college students are purportedly unable to do middle school math. When were new college students in middle school, gang?

After two years in a row of declines in new international students, the post-Covid enrollment boom looks, in hindsight, like a bubble. An unfriendly political climate contributed to an estimated 17-percent drop in new enrollments in the U.S. this fall www.chronicle.com/newsletter/l...

NEW: ProPublica has found multiple cases of women with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions. Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old mother, was told by doctors there was no emergency before preeclampsia killed her.

Update: I asked the press office for clarification on the embargo. The response: "As noted below, 'until further notice.'" However, there is now an all-staff meeting at ED at 2 p.m., so that is 'probably' the end of the embargo??

An announcement about a background press call with the U.S. Dept. of Education said "information discussed on this call will be strictly embargoed until further guidance." Embargoes are issued with a specific end time. By joining the call am I agreeing to hold info indefinitely??

Robins The Perfect Murder Machine - Horrifying Planet

www.chronicle.com/article/inte... The number of new international students coming to the United States dropped 7 percent last fall.. A preliminary snapshot survey conducted by IIE and other global-education groups found new international enrollments plummeted another 17 percent this fall.

www.chronicle.com/article/anxi... As colleges across the country freeze hiring or even lay off employees to close the budget gaps created by demographic and political forces, faculty and staff members who hold on to their jobs are the lucky ones. But many are also sad, nervous, and overwhelmed.

When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: Jeffrey E. Epstein. Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.

Spent the weekend putting new baseboard on a basement floor - painful reminder that I should have spent more time listening to my dad, a talented carpenter

What I know is there are still great journalists - even at elite media outlets - who are doing good work. Adopting a knee-jerk cynicism about all they do abandons those journalists. And it's lazy. And it plays into hands of authoritarians who WANT people to distrust all fact-based journalism.

In a major win for UC faculty groups and unions that sued, a federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Breaking news: In a letter to UVA faculty, former president James Ryan gave his first detailed account of the circumstances that led to his departure. https://chroni.cl/3M163Vz

Reporter gripe: “off the record” doesn’t mean anything in the context of a meeting with dozens of people in attendance, even if that group includes a reporter. Might I suggest that people ask everyone to agree to Chatham House rules

A cartoon by Roz Chast, from 2022. #NewYorkerCartoons

Amazing 2019 story from @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social Worth rereading today. (And man these media outlets let us all down.) www.npr.org/2019/08/22/7...

For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files: splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app

The divisions within the Heritage Foundation highlight growing fractures facing President Trump’s winning 2024 coalition on.wsj.com/4ottEg6

"Summers declined to comment on Wednesday beyond referring to previous remarks in which he acknowledged 'regretting my past associations with Mr. Epstein.' (...Summers is a contributing writer for The New York Times Opinion section.)" They don't mention the IQ email www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

Fascinating discussion on athletics policy at #ASHE2025, including comments from Ezinne Ofoegbu at Santa Clara U, that the association rarely accepts presentations on the topic because it isn’t considered relevant

Ad Industry Veterans Honored With Cola War Memorial https://theonion.com/ad-industry-veterans-honored-with-cola-war-memorial-1819564285/

President Donald J. Trump, booster of international students?! “I actually think it’s good to have outside countries. I want to be able to get along with the world.” www.chronicle.com/newsletter/l...

We're tracking flight cancellations and delays across the US as a result of the government shutdown: www.cnn.com/us/flight-de...

I took a quick look at the debt and earnings levels of programs that the negotiated rulemaking committee deemed "professional," as well as other large doctoral programs that were excluded (in spite of having better debt-to-earnings ratios). robertkelchen.com/2025/11/10/e...

Twenty-nine sailors drowned when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in the Great Lakes' icy waters on Nov. 10, 1975. The ship was immortalized in a surprise hit 1976 folk ballad by Gordon Lightfoot.

Hot take: a major challenge for higher ed right now is responding to threats from the Trump administration without making it seem like (or acknowledging) you're responding to threats from the Trump administration...

A play in two acts:

Groceries saw their biggest jump in nearly three years last month, a worrisome sign for inflation-weary shoppers. Tariffs are contributing to higher prices for imported staples like bananas and coffee.

"Cornell is the fourth institution to achieve an agreement with the Trump administration to restore federal money, following Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University." www.chronicle.com/article/corn...

Every faculty member should read this @bethmcmurtrie.bsky.social story on how faculty are and aren’t using AI www.chronicle.com/article/ai-h...

My previous story on CPHE: www.chronicle.com/article/will...

From today's FL Bd. of Gov meeting, the Commission for Public Higher Ed, announced cohort of 10 colleges to test its standards: Texas A&M: Kingsville, Texarkana U System of GA: Columbus State, Ga. Southern SUS FL: FL Polytech, FL Atlantic U UNC: App State, NC Central FL State colleges: Chipola

Did I love every second of this? Yes. Yes, I did. www.npr.org/2025/11/05/g...

BLS job numbers are on hold during the shutdown and there are broader concerns about the integrity of that data moving forward after Trump's firing of the BLS commissioner in August. So how good of a substitute is ADP data? New analysis explores: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Pursuant to the piece I posted earlier about Nebraska, the Faculty Senate is now considering a no-confidence vote in Rodney Bennett.