Interesting Reads This Week

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I’m writing to you from the road this week as I make a quick swing through a few Nordic countries and London. But what did I read on the plane?

What is education for?

We got some good news this week from the Lumina Foundation–Gallup 2025 State of Higher Education Study, which found that interest in higher education remains strong. This is a welcome change from the steady drumbeat of negative opinion about higher education. I find myself agreeing with Frederick Hess that, in many ways, higher education has become the new big oil, we’ve alienated many people, lost their trust, and increasingly find ourselves under attack from all sides.

But while this is good news, the survey raises more questions for me than it answers. It found that interest in pursuing bachelor’s and associate degrees is up, while interest in certificates and industry certifications has softened slightly.

This is certainly interesting, but perhaps it reflects my glass-half-empty outlook that the data left me wondering about several things.

• Are people interested in degrees because of what they represent—achievement, knowledge, personal growth, or because of their practical value in advancing a career or securing a livelihood?

• Are they more interested in the degrees themselves or in the skills those degrees signify? And do they even think about it in terms of skills?

• To what extent do people associate degrees with traditional higher education institutions? How open would they be to earning credentials from non-traditional providers? In other words, is their interest rooted in higher education as an institution, or solely in the degrees it confers?

These are critical questions we need to answer if we’re serious about improving higher education and rebuilding the trust that has been lost.

Is it tutoring or is it hemlock?

I’ve been doing some research on AI-powered tutoring tools, and I find the topic by turns both fascinating and frustrating.

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