Jason Robinovitz
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The University of Michigan has a new plan for helping freshmen adjust to college: hide their first-semester grades from the outside world. Students will still get grades. They just won’t count toward GPA or appear as letter grades on external transcripts. Is that a thoughtful way to encourage exploration — or are we disconnecting the smoke alarm from the consequences? Plus this week: AI is pushing…
Two Black academics. Two record-setting careers. Two scandals. But when Jason Arday and Roland Fryer found themselves under fire, academia’s response could hardly have been more different. What explains the disparity? This week, I look at what these two cases say about viewpoint diversity, institutional loyalty, and the lessons students and young scholars are absorbing. Plus: AI beating university…
The college admissions essay may be disappearing—but not for the reason colleges want to admit. As universities quietly eliminate supplemental essays, they say they're reducing stress and making applications easier. I think something much bigger is happening: AI has fundamentally changed what these essays measure, and colleges are responding by throwing them out instead of rethinking them. This…
UC Regent Scott Galloway says his mission is accessibility. I agree with the mission — but not with where I think it's leading. This week I explain why bringing standardized testing back to the University of California may actually expand opportunity rather than limit it. Plus, I cover AI's surprising impact on jobs and education, Florida's latest higher education policy changes, Vanderbilt's…
This week’s newsletter starts with a question that’s become almost conventional wisdom: Are young adults really poorer than previous generations? I take a different view. Yes, housing, childcare, and tuition have become dramatically more expensive. But I also think we’ve stopped talking about expectations, financial habits, and the countless small decisions that compound over time. Sometimes the…
This week I take a look at one of the biggest shakeups in standardized testing in decades: ETS now owns the ACT. On paper, it looks like a corporate acquisition. In reality, it could reshape how millions of students test in the years ahead—and I’m not convinced that’s a good thing. I also cover new research on AI's impact on learning, wealthy families embracing AI-powered schools, the return of…
The price of college just crossed another psychological barrier — and it raises a much bigger question than whether families can afford it. What happens when some of the smartest people in finance decide the numbers simply don't make sense anymore? This week's newsletter also explores how AI is reshaping childhood and education, why cheating is becoming nearly impossible to detect, signs of…
AI detectors are becoming the latest educational security blanket—but what if they’re catching the wrong students while missing the actual cheaters? After spending several days at an AI-in-education conference, I came away convinced that schools are asking the wrong question. The real challenge isn't how to catch students using AI. It's how to teach students to think critically when AI confidently…
Everyone seems to have the same question right now: should students be racing toward AI and computer science, or running the other way? This week’s newsletter takes a closer look at what’s really happening beneath the headlines. The job market, the explosion of AI majors, the surprising value of strong writing skills, and why some of the people building the future of AI are making an unexpected…
What happens when some of the most elite lawyers in America stop reading the materials they put their names on? That question led me down a rabbit hole that connects AI, falling literacy rates, smartphones, parenting, and the future of learning. This week’s newsletter explores why reading may be becoming a lost skill—and why that could matter more than ever in an AI-driven world. Plus: new…
