On August 14th, UC Berkeley students received an email from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost that provided an all-access service for Google’s AI large-language model (LLM), Gemini. Vice Chancellor Hermalin and his colleagues crafted an email that consists of two main parts: the first section of the email outlines the services […]
Tag: college
Will Backlash Over Pro-Palestine Protests Spark Change on College Campuses?
Immediately after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—starting a regional war that continues today—college campuses across the US erupted in protest. Massive demonstrations were held at Columbia, UCLA, American University, and many other colleges. Most were in support of Palestine, calling for the US to stop giving aid to Israel […]
Free Speech is Under Attack
The Problem: Censorship in higher education In March 2023, Kyle Duncan, a conservative federal judge, was invited to speak at Stanford Law School. He was met by hundreds of student protestors, who gathered outside the classroom where his talk was scheduled to brandish signs and hurl insults at Duncan. One student shouted: “We hope your […]
A Case Against Higher Education
It is no secret that attainment of a four-year college degree is associated with an increase in earnings over the course of a lifetime; recent college graduates earn, on average, about $52,000, while high school degree holders have average earnings of $30,000 in the United States. This discrepancy is the cause of massive economic inequality […]
Why Student Debt Forgiveness Isn’t a Solution
President Biden’s student loan forgiveness announcement is top of mind right now. The motion promises to erase $10,000 for borrowers of federal and private loans, and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. As college students, we’re expected to celebrate this policy as a win for many who, like some of us, are struggling to pay off […]
Standardized Testing Isn’t What’s Wrong with College Admissions
“Standardized testing is a form of eugenics,” declared a classmate in my legal studies class. We had been discussing the legacies of eugenics in the United States and how these harmful, pseudoscientific beliefs permeate our lives today. In response to the statement, other students began pointing to popular criticisms of standardized tests like the SAT […]
University Accountability and the Alternative to Free Tuition
The 2020 Democratic primaries have made universal higher education a mainstream talking point for progressive politicians. Of the remaining seven candidates, six support some form of tuition-free college according to the candidates’ campaign websites; Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren support four-year tuition-free college, and Klobuchar, Biden, and Bloomberg support two years of tuition-free college. Regardless of […]
Chinese Censorship Comes Stateside
The general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team, Daryl Morey, triggered a firestorm in China when he tweeted: “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” His actions saw Chinese businesses cutting ties with him, the Rockets and the NBA. Morey even saw criticism from the Chinese government itself. Ultimately, the tweet was deleted and […]
Rewriting Title IX: A New Chapter in California’s Schools
In 1972 Congress passed Title IX, a sweeping policy of the Education Amendments that protects students from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. Title IX was, and still is, monumental legislation for the protection of women on college campuses: it mandates, among other things, the creation and […]
Dear Mr. Sanders: Tuition-Free Education is a Handout to the Rich
As an eye-catching, sloganeering, vote-winning policy, tuition-free public university is certainly a crowd pleaser. It was for Bernie Sanders, and his left-wing doppelganger in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, is discovering the same thing. It’s the kind of policy that sounds big, bold, and revolutionary — especially to their young, usually middle-class college student supporters. However, as […]