Author: Jerry Leger

In British academia, there is a specific type of announcement that is delivered with deliberate, measured language, such as “alignment,” “synergy,” and “national resilience.” As you read them, you get the impression that something more significant is going on beneath the surface. One of those occasions is the proposed union of Cranfield University and King’s College London. It appears to be administrative neatness at first glance. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be an admission that British higher education is quietly in crisis and that some institutions have made the decision to give up waiting for help. If all goes…

In October, practically every British home has a small bottle on the kitchen counter. D vitamin. The winter supplement. It’s something that medical professionals have been suggesting for years—almost as casually as telling people to drink more water. The majority of people take whatever is on the shelf; D2 and D3 sound alike. It isn’t. Researchers have long suspected that vitamin D deficiency causes more than just aches and pains, and a recent study from the University of Surrey is giving this theory significant weight. People are sent to the hospital by it. Additionally, the type of supplement you’re taking…

There’s a building tension in American higher education right now, a quiet but unmistakable feeling that the traditional model — lecture halls, standardized curricula, credentials handed out to those who memorize enough — is starting to show its age. Into that gap, institutions like Harvest Christian University have stepped with something that feels less like an alternative and more like a genuine challenge to the norm. Harvest Christian University is a private, nonprofit institution rooted in Christian values, but calling it a Bible school would be an oversimplification that misses most of the story. The programs range from diplomas in…

The same little choreography can be seen in practically every middle school hallway between bells. Heads inclined downward. The half-conscious, practiced movement of the thumbs. A child watching something flicker on a cracked screen while leaning against a locker with earbuds in. Instructors avoid them. They have consistently done so. However, more of those educators are now looking up and posing a question that would have sounded almost charming ten years ago: what would happen if we simply took away the phones? It is no longer a hypothetical question. Approximately 77% of American schools had made the decision to forbid…

When you strolled across Morgan State’s lawn on a Tuesday afternoon a few years ago, the campus seemed crowded but not crowded. Admissions officers discussed growth the way most higher education did at the time, cautiously, keeping one eye on the demographic cliff everyone was constantly warning about. Students moved between buildings with little urgency. The atmosphere has shifted. Enrollment at Morgan State has increased by about 27% since 2018, and the school is publicly aiming for 10,000 students by 2030. There’s a different energy in the air when you walk around campus these days, the kind that indicates something…

When budget cuts have quietly hollowed out a classroom, the first thing you notice isn’t dramatic. No window is broken, and there isn’t a sign on an empty shelf. It’s not as big as that. A teacher pauses a bit too long before responding to a question because the number of students in front of her has increased from twenty-two to forty-one. Once open three days a week, the counselor’s door is now open one day. One Monday, a reading specialist who had been pulling a struggling third-grader for twenty minutes each morning just stopped. Children start to vanish at…

As you stroll through Los Altos, the first thing you notice is how unremarkable it appears for a place perched atop such wealth. Oak trees, a Peet’s, a CVS, and low ranch houses. These are the public schools that parents quietly relocate to in order to attend. And last fall, on a weekday afternoon in one of those buildings, a group of teenagers got together to write the guidelines for how artificial intelligence should be used in classrooms. This is something that the majority of school districts across the nation have been struggling mightily to accomplish on their own. When…

Around the third stack of essays in October, she became aware of it. She had taught The Great Gatsby for nineteen years, and there was something strange about the papers that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The sentences were well-structured. The changes were successful. Suddenly, half of her sophomores had grown fond of the semicolon, even the ones who typically submitted single-paragraph drafts written in the hallway. Here, her name is irrelevant, and she requested that her district—somewhere in the suburbs outside of Columbus—be kept anonymous. At a public high school with roughly 1,400 pupils, she teaches English…

When Ronnie realized that the people recruiting him were not actually recruiting him at all, he was sixteen years old and sitting in a coach’s office on a Saturday morning. They were occupying slots. He had repeatedly been informed that he was being considered as a defensive lineman, the role around which he had centered his entire high school identity. Then, the topic of conversation changed during an official visit. On the offensive line, there was a gap. The situation was urgent. He later described the sensation that something had subtly changed without anyone noticing. This kind of change occurs…

A thirteen-year-old walks off with a tray of pizza after pressing her thumb against a tiny grey scanner somewhere between the morning bell and the lunch line. She doesn’t consider it. The child behind her and the one after her don’t either. The line continues to move, the machine blinks green, and the account is debited. This is the current state of cafeteria efficiency in an increasing number of middle schools, and it also subtly represents mass biometric enrollment. On its face, the vendor’s pitch is difficult to refute. Lunch cards are lost. Children on free meal programs who wish…