5 Jobs Powering the Modern College

Here’s a small selection of the people who perform higher ed’s less-heralded tasks.

The Cleanup Never Ends

For the modern residential university, image can be everything. These are the unseen, unacknowledged workers who keep a university’s campus clean.

When You Need That One and Only Book

The student and faculty projects universities tout are built on research. Interlibrary-loan managers help make sure that research is available.

Leadership

Napolitano Riffs on DeVos, Free Speech, and DACA

At lunch with reporters, the University of California system president said the new education secretary’s learning curve on higher ed is “quite vertical.”

Special Reports

Gen Z Changes the Debate About Devices in the Classroom

A new generation has arrived on campus and is reshaping the conversation about the academic value of phones and laptops.

The Ticker

Community-College Chief Will Step Down After Report Cites ‘Hostility, Intimidation, and Retaliation’

Months after the release of a “blistering” report criticizing the leadership of Nashville State Community College, its president has announced plans to retire.

The Ticker

Editorial Board of ‘Third World Quarterly’ Resigns Over Paper on Colonialism

A recent essay questioning the harmful effects of colonialism should never have been published, a letter of resignation says.

The Ticker

Laura Kipnis Says She Faced Another Title IX Investigation, This Time for Her Book

The Northwestern University professor had been investigated before, after a complaint was filed about an essay she wrote for The Chronicle, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe.”

The Ticker

David Boren Will Retire as U. of Oklahoma’s President

His long presidency was noted for the university’s many improvements, as well as for his blunt response to an ugly racial incident in 2015.

Advice

Academic Ethics: Is ‘Diversity’ the Best Reason for Affirmative Action?

There was, once upon a time, another compelling argument that had nothing to do with demographic markers.

The Chronicle Review

It’s Not TV. It’s the Syllabus.

Television has become our dominant narrative form. TV studies must change to keep up.

Lingua Franca

Unapplied Linguistics

Every day, software serves us messages that are morphologically, syntactically, and semantically aberrant, says Geoff Pullum. This means linguistics is not being applied in the single most important arena that needs it: artificial intelligence.