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College Matters from The Chronicle
Higher education is at the center of the biggest stories in the country today, and College Matters is here to make sense of it all. This podcast is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation's leading independent newsroom covering colleges.
Episodes
College Matters from The ChronicleA Blue Wave Won’t Wash Higher Ed Clean
After a decisive electoral victory on Tuesday, Democrats will assume majorities in the U.S House and Senate, placing a partisan check on a presidential…
College Matters from The ChronicleListen to Our New Podcast: Open Questions
Listen to the first episode of The Chronicle's new podcast, Open Questions. The Chronicle Review is where academe comes to argue with itself. On Open…
College Matters from The ChronicleStudents Sound Off on Reading and AI
Young college students are getting a bad rap lately. To hear it from professors, many are struggling to read, they’re glued to their phones, and they’ve become…
College Matters from The ChronicleBudget Crunch
Colleges across the country are cutting programs and slashing budgets on a grand scale. What began as a slow trickle from some seemingly unlikely places, like…
College Matters from The ChronicleHigher Ed’s Third Rails
For weeks, the world has been reeling over allegations that multiple Cornell University students raped a woman at a fraternity house. The lurid case has…
College Matters from The ChronicleRape, Frats and Rage at Cornell
The details of a lawsuit filed last month by a former Cornell University student, who says she was raped two years ago by multiple men at the Chi Phi…
College Matters from The ChronicleHere Come the AI Police
Nearly four years after the introduction of ChatGPT, colleges and universities have propagated plenty of rules related to students’ use of AI. But what about…
College Matters from The ChronicleRace-Baiting and Football Collide in Texas
University of Texas at Austin football fans have good reason to be happy right now. After narrowly defeating the Ohio State University Buckeyes earlier this…
College Matters from The ChronicleJodi Kantor on Harassment, Hope, and Higher Ed
Jodi Kantor, whose reporting for The New York Times helped expose years of sexual-misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein, has been thinking a lot…
College Matters from The Chronicle‘Grit’ Guru Angela Duckworth: Willpower is Overrated
Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, burst onto the scene more than a decade ago with a seemingly simple theory about…
College Matters from The ChronicleCollege Matters Returns
Is the student reading crisis real? Is AI panic justified? What’s next for the partisan battles over higher education? Each week, The Chronicle of Higher…
College Matters from The ChronicleReading 'Stoner'
More than 60 years after its publication, John Williams’s novel Stoner remains a revelatory portrait of higher education and the professoriate. Spanning much…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe Endlessly Divisive SAT
The pandemic prompted many universities to drop standardized-testing requirements for applicants, and a lot of institutions remain test-optional today. But…
College Matters from The ChronicleHigher Ed and America
As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, the nation’s colleges and universities are experiencing some growing pains. Older than the country itself…
College Matters from The ChronicleAnother U. of Florida Search Goes Sideways
The leadership carousel at the University of Florida has turned swiftly of late. Now on its second interim president in as many years, and fresh off of a…
College Matters from The ChronicleIs Michigan State’s Board Broken?
College Matters listeners, we want to hear from you. Please help us to improve our show by completing a brief audience survey at chronicle.com/podcastsurvey…
College Matters from The ChronicleDan Ariely and the Epstein Files
College Matters listeners, we want to hear from you. Please help us to improve our show by completing a brief audience survey at chronicle.com/podcastsurvey…
College Matters from The ChronicleWhat the Canvas Hack Revealed
College Matters listeners, we want to hear from you. Please help us to improve our show by completing a brief audience survey at chronicle.com/podcastsurvey…
College Matters from The ChronicleKen Burns Names the 'Greatest Danger' Facing Higher Ed
Ken Burns, who has helped to tell the story of the nation's history through celebrated documentaries, attributes much of his success to the education he…
College Matters from The ChronicleEverybody Wants to Rule the University
In recent months, politicians from both sides of the aisle have been busy exerting influence on state universities. In Virginia, a newly elected Democratic…
College Matters from The ChronicleDespair Isn’t On Frank Bruni’s Syllabus
Frank Bruni’s classroom has gotten a bit bleak lately. As a professor of the practice of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the longtime New York…
College Matters from The ChronicleA Gender-Studies Icon Strikes Back
In states across the country, conservative lawmakers and university governing boards are purging what they describe as gender ideology from college campuses…
College Matters from The ChronicleAre the Kids Alright? We Asked Ian Bogost.
As a professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, Ian Bogost spends a lot of time trying to connect with his Gen Z…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe College Leaders Bashing Higher Ed
As public attitudes toward higher education sour, many college presidents are either staying mum or defending their institutions. But a handful of high-profile…
College Matters from The ChronicleHigher Ed’s Bad Vibes
After about a year of battling with the Trump administration, higher-education leaders and analysts are collectively catching their breath. But this doesn’t…
College Matters from The ChroniclePresidential Affairs
Ted Carter’s resignation this month as president of Ohio State University carries the hallmarks of a tabloid scandal. Announcing his departure, the university…
College Matters from The ChronicleTexas A&M’s Censorship Machine
What began as a controversy last September over a lesson on gender identity in a children’s-literature class at Texas A&M University has morphed into something…
College Matters from The ChronicleScott Galloway Unloads on Higher Ed
Scott Galloway, a prolific podcaster and marketing professor at New York University, has had enough. For anyone who knows Galloway’s schtick, that’s not too…
College Matters from The ChronicleInside the Epstein Files
The Justice Department’s recent release of millions of pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe Higher Ed Group Fighting Trump
As president of the American Council on Education, Ted Mitchell is at the tip of the spear. A year ago, when the Trump administration moved to slash federal…
College Matters from The ChronicleTenure’s Endless Numbered Days
In its long and often tortured history, the faculty-job-protection status known as tenure has been defended as an essential safeguard for academic freedom…
College Matters from The ChronicleIs Trump’s Higher-Ed Attack Legal?
Outcome-driven investigations. Threats of dizzying fines. Broad claims of rampant, unchecked antisemitism. The Trump administration’s playbook against higher…
College Matters from The ChronicleMinneapolis on the Brink
The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, who was killed on Saturday during an encounter with federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, has further escalated…
College Matters from The ChronicleCollege Matters Returns
Politics. Culture. Affordability. The biggest issues facing the country are playing out in higher education, and College Matters from The Chronicle is here to…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe Quarter-Century Project
As 2025 comes to a close, higher education is at an inflection point. Political pressure, rising costs, and the dizzying pace of technological change are…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe Year in Teaching Was …
It’s been a pivotal year for higher education, and that’s particularly true for college professors. The ubiquity of artificial intelligence, the enormity of…
College Matters from The ChronicleUsing AI Without (Really) Cheating
Nearly three years after ChatGPT first came on the scene, college students are using generative AI to help with myriad tasks. Outlining and brainstorming are a…
College Matters from The ChronicleVirginia Is a Battlefield
One university president has resigned. Another is on the ropes. A new governor is heading into office, flipping party control to the Democrats. It’s all…
College Matters from The ChronicleHas Harvard Gone Soft?
One of the nation’s most selective institutions is sounding the alarm about grade inflation. According to a new report, A’s account for about 60 percent of all…
College Matters from The ChronicleIs ‘Intellectual Diversity’ a Trap?
Lately, calls for “intellectual diversity” are all the rage. From President Trump, to right-wing think tanks, to college presidents, arguments abound for…
College Matters from The ChroniclePolicing Antisemitism
The pro-Palestinian protests that erupted on many college campuses in the spring of 2024 gave rise to a surge of complaints about antisemitism at colleges…
College Matters from The ChronicleObama to Colleges: WTF
Barack Obama wants university leaders to stick to their guns. Appearing on the final episode of Marc Maron’s long-running WTF podcast, the former U.S…
College Matters from The ChronicleTrump’s ‘Compact’ Is Freaking People Out
After months of skirmishes with colleges, the Trump administration has proposed a treaty of sorts with nine high-profile institutions. By signing the “Compact…
College Matters from The ChroniclePrinceton President Talks Kirk, Trump, ‘Civic Crisis’
As president of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber is among the highest-profile college leaders to publicly criticize the Trump administration for its…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe Research Trump Hates
The Trump administration is hitting universities where it hurts, terminating thousands of research grants in areas it deems wasteful or ideologically driven…
College Matters from The ChronicleChris Rufo Floats Calling in ‘Troops’
Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist, is on what he might call a winning streak. Long before it was fashionable to do so, Rufo, a senior fellow at the…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe Meaning of Charlie Kirk
The fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, whose political movement targeted liberal faculty and pushed the boundaries of free speech, immediately took on powerful…
College Matters from The ChronicleCollege Matters Is Back
Higher education is at the center of the biggest stories in the country today, and College Matters is back to make sense of it all. Tune in for new weekly…
College Matters from The ChronicleCourse Catalog: Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision
For decades, Bruce Springsteen’s songs about fast cars, working-class dreamers, and loves lost and found have helped to define a quintessentially American…
College Matters from The ChronicleCourse Catalog: Do Dogs Go to Heaven?
After the loss of a pet, many people wonder whether they'll ever see their beloved companions again. In her course, "Do All Dogs Go to Heaven?", Chelsea Jordan…
College Matters from The ChronicleCourse Catalog: Food for Thought — Literally
Food shapes our daily lives in profound ways, yet it's often taken for granted or misunderstood. In the course "Sociology of Food" at Texas Christian…
College Matters from The ChronicleCourse Catalog: Decoding — and Fighting — Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy theories have played a role in American culture and politics for decades. In the course "Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics, and Pop Culture" at…
College Matters from The ChronicleMr. Varsity Blues Claps Back
After 16 months in a federal prison camp, William (Rick) Singer has had time to reflect on his role as the architect of a college-admissions bribery scheme…
College Matters from The ChronicleA Crunchy College Goes Conservative
More than two years after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a slate of conservative members to its governing board, New College of Florida has seen…
College Matters from The ChronicleWhy Faculty Hate Teaching Evaluations
On paper, student teaching evaluations make a lot of sense. Who is better positioned to say whether a professor did a good job than the students who took the…
College Matters from The ChronicleFuture U: Making Sense of the First 100 Days
In this special episode, recorded live at the ASU+GSV Summit, Future U. hosts Jeff Selingo and Michael Horn dive into the rapidly evolving higher ed landscape…
College Matters from The ChronicleThis Prof Wants to Win Back the GOP Bros
Nothing animates conservative college students today quite like Turning Point USA. Founded by Charlie Kirk, the right-wing provocateur, the group thrives on an…
College Matters from The ChronicleInside the Education Dept. Purge
Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, an agency that Republicans say is too wasteful and too woke. Through a…
College Matters from The ChronicleStudent Visa War ‘Should Shock and Terrify’
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport student protesters. In recent weeks, the president has delivered on that pledge. The Trump…
College Matters from The ChronicleThe GOP Loves Western Civ
Over the past decade, centers and institutes devoted to the study of Western civilization and American civics have popped up on numerous public university…