Author: Jerry Leger

Something about Dumfries is noteworthy. It’s not a big city. It lacks Glasgow’s cultural bustle and Edinburgh’s skyline. Nonetheless, a further education college situated on Scotland’s southern border on the Crichton Estate has been accomplishing things that organizations three times its size would be secretly jealous of. This year marks Dumfries and Galloway College’s 65th anniversary, but the college doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of its advanced age. Since its founding in 1961, the college has steadily expanded as more education was seen as a practical rather than a prestigious option. When you look at what DGC has created,…

As soon as you exit the elevator and reach the fourth floor of 500 8th Avenue, you notice that the music isn’t waiting for you. Before you’ve even located the studio entrance, it’s already there, rolling down the corridor. Heels are striking a Marley floor somewhere inside in a rhythm that is both perfectly alive and disciplined. Since October 2000, Piel Canela Dance School has been producing that sound. The school is tucked away in a structure that most Midtown commuters pass by without giving it a second look, two blocks north of Madison Square Garden. It’s interesting in part…

It is somewhat ironic that a university that was founded on practical, working-class education is now at odds with its own employees. Robert Gordon University, which is almost universally referred to as RGU in Aberdeen, was founded on a tradition of evening classes and technical instruction, providing common people with the means to make a respectable living. And yet, in the spring of 2025, after two rounds of widespread layoffs that have left employees irate, perplexed, and, by many accounts, caught off guard, the university is witnessing its own lecturers vote for strike action. The university is located in Garthdee,…

Most people in Worcester, Massachusetts, drive by a hill without giving it much thought. The outline of stone structures perched above the city, partially obscured by ancient trees, can be seen from the road. It doesn’t make an announcement. It is not required to. For almost 200 years, the College of the Holy Cross has been working quietly, and its accomplishments speak louder than most brochures. Holy Cross was established in 1843 by Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick, but it was the result of obstinacy and a small amount of resentment rather than careful planning. Fenwick had attempted to open a…

Creating a world so plausible that people begin looking for it on Google Maps has a subtly brilliant quality. In what seems like record time, Amazon Prime Video’s Off Campus has succeeded in doing just that. Even self-assured streaming executives probably didn’t fully predict the show’s success. It is a romantic drama about elite college hockey players and the complex lives surrounding them. Millions of viewers are now inquiring about the precise location of Briar University. In a nutshell, it doesn’t exist. The fictional private college Briar University is situated in an equally made-up town in Massachusetts. It was written…

When the term “not acceptable” appears multiple times in an Ofsted report, there’s a subtle unease. It doesn’t have a bureaucratic tone. It seems to be a warning. And that warning carried a lot of weight in May 2026 for the 1,576 students enrolled at Bridgwater College Academy, some of whom were as young as three. The academy is located in Bridgwater, a Somerset market town with aspirations that go beyond its modest size. Bridgwater was the first town in the South West to be chosen for the UK government’s Building Schools for the Future initiative more than ten years…

There’s a moment in Ralph James’s story that stays with you. A retired municipal judge, now in his seventies, sitting at a restored school desk in rural South Carolina — the same desk, more or less, where he learned to read in a segregated classroom nearly seven decades ago. He recalls the Christmas pageant, the tall windows, and the bell. He’s spent the last ten years raising over two million dollars to restore the building. The school is now known as a Rosenwald School, a name that most Americans are still unfamiliar with. Julius Rosenwald was born in Springfield, Illinois…

Certain spaces, such as conference rooms in Manhattan law firms, the quiet corridors of Washington consulting offices, or the dinner tables at Davos, exude a certain quiet confidence. After enough time spent exploring, a pattern begins to take shape. One thing that a disproportionate number of individuals occupying those spaces have in common is a diploma from a very select group of educational institutions. Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Penn. The clarity of the numbers supporting this observation is nearly ridiculous. Less than 5% of the nation’s undergraduate population is made up of students from Ivy League universities and a few other…

Even though Wendy Wyman doesn’t discuss it much, there is a moment that she most likely remembers clearly. Standing over 10,000 feet above sea level in Leadville, Colorado, a wind-battered old mining town, and witnessing a school district so on the verge of collapse that state sanctions seemed almost certain. bleeding from enrollment. The level of community trust is below zero. Test results that garnered unwarranted attention. In that kind of silence, it’s difficult not to wonder what keeps someone upright. Eight years have passed since then. When other struggling rural districts wonder where to start, Colorado education officials now…

On a Tuesday afternoon in September, you can find the same scene in almost every high school weight room in America: coaches with clipboards, linemen running through drills, and a stack of helmets waiting to be fitted somewhere close to the equipment room. They still have the same appearance as they did fifteen years ago. They are far more expensive. Since a multibillion-dollar industry has spent years promising parents otherwise, it is surprisingly uncomfortable to ask whether they actually accomplish more. The statistics supporting the high school concussion epidemic in America are truly concerning. Over the past ten years, football…