Author: Reporter

A little over a year ago, in February 2025, I worked with colleagues to launch an initiative to support fired federal workers and others impacted by wide-ranging federal cuts and policy changes. It started with a conversation with my colleague Aurora Cruz-Torres, immediately after the Trump administration started firing people at the United States Agency for International Development, about how we could use our skills in career advising to help. And then, as federal firings expanded and grants were cut across the nonprofit and research ecosystems, it grew. Ultimately, the program involved more than 100 volunteers and offered support to…

Amer­i­cans of a cer­tain age may well remem­ber grow­ing up with an Apple II in the class­room, and the per­pet­u­al temp­ta­tion it held out to play The Ore­gon Trail, Num­ber Munch­ers, or per­haps Lode Run­ner. More than a few recess gamers went on to com­put­er-ori­ent­ed careers, but only the most curi­ous sought an answer to the ques­tion implied in the machine’s name: was there an Apple I? Half a cen­tu­ry after the foun­da­tion of Apple, Inc., then known as Apple Com­put­er, the prod­uct that launched what’s now one of the world’s most valu­able com­pa­nies remains very much an obscu­ri­ty. Unless you fre­quent…

Chiasson & Spenner, Harvard Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said he was “disappointed” by the widespread ignorance of Harvard students who expressed strong opinions on the Israel-Palestine…

The University of Arizona won’t need to pay millions of dollars to the federal government, according to a letter from the Education Department to university leadership. wellesenterprises/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus The U.S. Department of Education has pulled back a demand for payment from the University of Arizona to cover $72 million in loan debt canceled for students who claimed they were defrauded by Ashford University, The Arizona Daily Star reported. The University of Arizona purchased Ashford, a for-profit online institution, in 2020, and turned it into University of Arizona Global Campus. The department began seeking to recoup funds in August 2023…

Listen to the article 6 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Dive Brief: Texas A&M University broke ground on a $226 million semiconductor research and development facility in Bryan, Texas, on April 9, according to a press release from Gov. Greg Abbott. The building, dubbed the Texas A&M Semiconductor Institute, will have about 80,000 square feet of space for research, training and collaboration, TAMU System Regent Jay Graham said at the groundbreaking ceremony.  The site will also have a sealed and enclosed clean room in one location for full-scale production, and labs for advanced…

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter When it comes to tech and kids, America has made serious mistakes. For years, children have been allowed unsupervised access to social media apps in school and at home that were not designed with their safety in mind. This has contributed to an unprecedented rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, cyberbullying and suicide. Americans have every reason to be concerned — and every reason to act.   Responsible legislation could limit the dangers by requiring age verification before kids can sign up for social media accounts, making…

You may have noticed that the term “diversity” has vanished from corporate home pages and university mission statements, replaced by the less controversial language of “belonging” and “culture.” This vanishing act is, in part, a response to the fear of investigation, litigation or the withdrawal of federal grants, but it’s more fundamental than that. It reflects an uncomfortable tension that had been brewing well before President Trump took office a second time—a growing concern about how common actions that institutions take to increase diversity affect their ability to uphold a meritocracy, wherein the “best” candidates are selected.  A colleague serving on a strategic planning…

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter In 1977, Karen Hawley Miles’ family left Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for Washington, D.C. She was a junior in high school, a particularly rough time to be uprooted from her friends and neighborhood.  Still, she appreciated the reason the Carter administration summoned her father to the nation’s capital. Willis Hawley, a prominent researcher who focused on school integration, was part of a team tasked with creating a new cabinet-level education agency.  The goal was to bring all of the various education programs scattered across multiple…

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. Seventh-grade math teacher Dylan Kane decided to conduct an experiment in his classes by going cold turkey on ed-tech. Kane, like just about every other teacher in the country, has seen the use of screens proliferate in his classroom — its own sort of accidental experiment. Then, last December, Kane read “The Digital Delusion,” a harsh critique of ed-tech. Although he was not entirely convinced by its arguments, the book made him pause. “I had kept some of my technology routines the same for a bunch…

Listen to the article 3 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Most clicked story of the week: Hampshire College, in Massachusetts, will shutter after the fall semester as it “no longer has the resources to sustain full operations and meet our regulatory responsibilities,” according to President Jenn Chrisler. The pending closure brings an end to the private liberal arts institution’s yearslong quest to balance its budget and reach financial sustainability. Number of the week: 175 The number of faculty to whom Syracuse University has offered early retirement packages, as the private New York…