An essential guide to dialogue in the college classroom and beyond

Try to Love the Questions gives college students a framework for understanding and practicing dialogue across difference in and out of the classroom. This invaluable guide explores the challenges facing students as they prepare to listen, speak, and learn in a college community and encourages students and faculty alike to consider inclusive, respectful communication as a skill--not as a limitation on freedom.

Among the most common challenges on college campuses today is figuring out how to navigate our politically charged culture and engage productively with opposing viewpoints. Lara Schwartz introduces the fundamental principles of free expression, academic freedom, and academic dialogue, showing how open expression is the engine of social progress, scholarship, and inclusion. She sheds light on the rules and norms that govern campus discourse--such as the First Amendment, campus expression policies, and academic standards--and encourages students to adopt a mindset of inquiry that embraces uncertainty and a love of questions.

Empowering students, scholars, and instructors to listen generously, explore questions with integrity, and communicate to be understood, Try to Love the Questions includes writing exercises and discussion questions in every chapter, making it an indispensable resource for anyone interested in practicing good-faith dialogue.

Proven Admissions Strategies from Successful Students

In How They Got into Harvard, fifty successful applicants to Harvard University share their tips and tactics for succeeding in the college admissions process. The students profiled in this book were not all class valedictorians, star athletes, or Harvard legacies. In fact, many were simply strong all-around applicants who beat the odds and got into one of the country's most selective institutions. Through each concise account of a single student's résumé and admissions story, you'll learn lessons and strategies that you can use on your own applications.

In all, eight key admissions strategies are addressed, including:
-How to identify and present a key talent
-How to make your well-roundedness an asset, not a weakness
-How to forge connections and use them to your advantage

Each student profile also includes all their vital information, including:
-Test scores and GPA
-Extracurricular activities and awards
-Family background and hometown

How AI is revolutionizing the future of learning and how educators can adapt to this new era of human thinking.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way we learn, work, and think. Its integration into classrooms and workplaces is already underway, impacting and challenging ideas about creativity, authorship, and education. In this groundbreaking and practical guide, teachers will discover how to harness and manage AI as a powerful teaching tool. José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson present emerging and powerful research on the seismic changes AI is already creating in schools and the workplace, providing invaluable insights into what AI can accomplish in the classroom and beyond.

By learning how to use new AI tools and resources, educators will gain the confidence to navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by AI. From interactive learning techniques to advanced assignment and assessment strategies, this comprehensive guide offers practical suggestions for integrating AI effectively into teaching and learning environments. Bowen and Watson tackle crucial questions related to academic integrity, cheating, and other emerging issues.

In the age of AI, critical thinking skills, information literacy, and a liberal arts education are more important than ever. As AI continues to reshape the nature of work and human thinking, educators can equip students with the skills they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving world. This book serves as a compass, guiding educators through the uncharted territory of AI-powered education and the future of teaching and learning.

A revealing account of the entrenched inequities that harm our most vulnerable students and what colleges can do to help them excel

Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out what to do with the diversity they so fervently recruited. And disadvantaged students suffered. Class Dismissed exposes how woefully unprepared colleges were to support these students and shares their stories of how they were left to weather the storm alone and unprotected.

Drawing on the firsthand experiences of students from all walks of life at elite colleges, Anthony Abraham Jack reveals the hidden and unequal worlds students navigated before and during the pandemic closures and upon their return to campus. He shows how COVID-19 exacerbated the very inequalities that universities ignored or failed to address long before campus closures. Jack examines how students dealt with the disruptions caused by the pandemic, how they navigated social unrest, and how they grappled with problems of race both on campus and off.

A provocative and much-needed book, Class Dismissed paints an intimate and unflinchingly candid portrait of the challenges of undergraduate life for disadvantaged students even in elite schools that invest millions to diversify their student body. Moreover, Jack offers guidance on how to make students' path to graduation less treacherous--guidance colleges would be wise to follow.

An invigorating work that identifies obstructions to transformative change in higher education and offers paths to break through.

In Whatever It Is, I'm Against It, president emeritus of Macalester College Brian Rosenberg draws on decades of higher education experience to expose the entrenched structures, practices, and cultures that inhibit meaningful postsecondary reform, even as institutions face serious challenges to their financial and educational models. A lively insider's account, the book pinpoints factors that hinder the ability of U.S. colleges and universities to be creative and entrepreneurial amid calls to improve affordability, access, and equity for students.

Through pithy personal stories of divisive town hall meetings, multiyear college governance battles, and attempts at curricular reform, Rosenberg illustrates internal and external dynamics that impede institutional evolution. Pressures such as declining enrollment, escalating costs, and an oversupply of PhDs in academia have long signaled a grave need for reform within a profession that, as Rosenberg ruefully acknowledges, lacks organizational flexibility, depends greatly on reputation and ranking, and retains traditions, from the academic calendar to grading systems, that have remained essentially the same for decades.

Rosenberg looks outside the U.S. system to find possible antidotes in innovative higher education models such as student-centered and experiential learning approaches. This thought-provoking work offers ample evidence for presidents, chancellors, deans, provosts, and faculty to consider as they plan their missions to achieve institutional transformation.

Following up on her acclaimed Teach Students How to Learn that describes teaching strategies to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success, Saundra McGuire here presents these secrets direct to students.

Her message is that Any student can use simple, straightforward strategies to start making A's in their courses and enjoy a lifetime of deep, effective learning.

Beginning with explaining how expectations about learning, and the study efforts required, differ between college and secondary school, the author introduces her readers, through the concept of metacognition, to the importance and powerful consequences of understanding themselves as learners. This framework and the recommended strategies that support it are useful for anyone moving on to a more advanced stage of education, so this book also has an intended audience of students preparing to go to high school, graduate school, or professional school.

In a conversational tone, and liberally illustrated by anecdotes of past students, the author combines introducing readers to concepts like Bloom's Taxonomy (to illuminate the difference between studying and learning), fixed and growth mindsets, as well as to what brain science has to tell us about rest, nutrition and exercise, together with such highly specific learning strategies as how to read a textbook, manage their time and take tests.

With engaging exercises and thought-provoking reflections, this book is an ideal motivational and practical text for study skills and first year experience courses.

A valuable reassessment of America's educational system. --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

What if you didn't have to go to college?

You may have heard that a college degree is the only path to success. But many college graduates end up mired in debt and underemployed, working jobs that don't even require a degree. The good news? There are many promising career options for those who don't want to or can't attend college.

In Rethinking College, award-winning journalist Karin Klein sets out a new path for our country's students and their families. Klein examines why the traditional college-for-all model has been overhyped and is growing less relevant, then shares practical advice and real-world examples of exactly how others have succeeded without a four-year degree.

Discover an abundance of alternative paths, including white-collar apprenticeships, certificate programs, entrepreneurship, creative careers, residential public-service work, and more.

Klein will guide you step-by-step toward a broad range of fulfilling and well-paid careers that don't require a degree--ranging from pilots, costume designers, influencers, writers, computer programmers, corporate headhunters, film editors, and so many more. The breadth of possibilities is wider than you think!

Rethinking College is perfect for:

• Those who are unsure of their next education or career steps.
• Those looking to make a job pivot.
• Parents seeking guidance for their child.
• School counselors who want to offer their students more and better options.

Don't just go to college because everyone says you have to--find the path that's right for you. It's out there.

An essential handbook to the unwritten and often unspoken knowledge and skills you need to succeed in grad school

Some of the most important things you need to know in order to succeed in graduate school--like how to choose a good advisor, how to get funding for your work, and whether to celebrate or cry when a journal tells you to revise and resubmit an article--won't be covered in any class. They are part of a hidden curriculum that you are just expected to know or somehow learn on your own--or else. In this comprehensive survival guide for grad school, Jessica McCrory Calarco walks you through the secret knowledge and skills that are essential for navigating every critical stage of the postgraduate experience, from deciding whether to go to grad school in the first place to finishing your degree and landing a job. An invaluable resource for every prospective and current grad student in any discipline, A Field Guide to Grad School will save you grief--and help you thrive--in school and beyond.

Provides invaluable advice about how to:

• Choose and apply to a graduate program
• Stay on track in your program
• Publish and promote your work
• Get the most out of conferences
• Navigate the job market
• Balance teaching, research, service, and life

Did you know that no one cares about your grades in graduate school because everyone gets As? Did you know that all students are doing extra activities to pad their CVs and resumes? Do you wonder how you are supposed to stand out among your peers and get access to special projects, training opportunities, or internship placements? Do you know the common faculty annoyances that may spoil your chances at these opportunities?

A truly professional demeanor will give you access to a competitive edge, yet there are many unwritten expectations that-if you are not aware of them-can jeopardize your reputation. The Unwritten Rules of Professional Etiquette gives you an honest account of the ways faculty silently judge students without pulling any punches. With this straightforward advice you can sidestep the hidden graduate school pitfalls and emerge at the top of your class. Covering topics such as excelling in interviews, responding to constructive feedback, and dealing with difficult faculty, this compendium is an essential resource for navigating the complex world of academic relationships. While this is an indispensable handbook for graduate students, undergrads practicing this advice will be truly outstanding.

Is Grad School for Me? is a calling card and a corrective to the lack of clear guidance for historically excluded students navigating the onerous undertaking of graduate school--starting with asking if grad school is even a good fit. This essential resource offers step-by-step instructions on how to maneuver the admissions process before, during, and after applying.

Unlike other guides, Is Grad School for Me? takes an approach that is both culturally relevant and community based. The book is packed with relatable scenarios, memorable tips, common myths and mistakes, sample essays, and templates to engage a variety of learners. With a strong focus on demystifying higher education and revealing the hidden curriculum, this guide aims to diversify a wide range of professions in academia, nonprofits, government, industry, entrepreneurship, and beyond.

Some programmes are well on their way to running Zionists out of their unit. That will put an end to complaints of antisemitism. --Cary Nelson

After October 7, the university - an institution dedicated to the search for truth, knowledge and freedom - became overrun by a toxic and dangerous fervour. Civil discourse was abandoned as campuses became the epicentre of hate speech, conspiracy theories and antisemitism. Yet, as Cary Nelson reveals, this betrayal of the university's ideals was decades in the making.

In this groundbreaking essay, Nelson, an academic and writer whose years of involvement in university organisations has made him a leading expert on higher education, explains the causes of the institutional failure that has been evident on campuses worldwide. Mindless shows how universities came to abandon a commitment to shared intellectual principles and fractured into disciplines that - unconstrained and unchecked - slid towards conformity and indoctrination.

How college faculty and staff can help students hack their college experience through a proactive, personalized approach to success.

College is a complex, high-stakes game, according to authors Ned Scott Laff and Scott Carlson, but students can learn how to win it. Hacking College offers college advisors, faculty, and staff in student and academic affairs a groundbreaking guide to rethinking higher education so that students can succeed in an increasingly complex world. Drawing from extensive research and real student experiences, this essential book exposes the hidden challenges and bureaucratic traps that undermine student success, from convoluted transfer processes to a single-minded emphasis on majors.

Each chapter provides actionable strategies to help advisors lead students to tailor their education to their aspirations. Through vivid case studies, Laff and Carlson advocate for a proactive approach to education--encouraging students to hack their college experience by crafting a personalized field of study. This method challenges the traditional focus on declaring a major and empowers students to link their personal interests with academic pursuits so that their education aligns with future career and life goals.

Enriched with insights on how to find underutilized institutional resources and foster meaningful mentor relationships, Hacking College encourages students, educators, and institutions to transform passive educational experiences into dynamic journeys of discovery and self-fulfillment.

The Gullah people of St. Helena Island still relate that their people wanted to catch the learning after northern abolitionists founded Penn School in 1862, less than six months after the Union army captured the South Carolina sea islands. In this broad history Orville Vernon Burton and Wilbur Cross range across the past 150 years to reacquaint us with the far-reaching impact of a place where many daring and innovative social justice endeavors had their beginnings.

Penn Center's earliest incarnation was as a refuge where escaped and liberated enslaved people could obtain formal liberal arts schooling, even as the Civil War raged on sometimes just miles away. Penn Center then earned a place in the history of education by providing agricultural and industrial arts training for African Americans after Reconstruction and through the Jim Crow era, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Later, during the civil rights movement, Penn Center made history as a safe meeting place for organizations like Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Peace Corps. Today, Penn Center continues to build on its long tradition of leadership in progressive causes. As a social services hub for local residents and as a museum, conference, and education complex, Penn Center is a showcase for activism in such areas as cultural, material, and environmental preservation; economic sustainability; and access to health care and early learning.

Here is all of Penn Center's rich past and present, as told through the experiences of its longtime Gullah inhabitants and countless visitors. Including forty-two extraordinary photographs that show Penn as it was and is now, this book recounts Penn Center's many achievements and its many challenges, reflected in the momentous events it both experienced and helped to shape.

Over the last few decades, Americans have turned college admissions into a terrifying and occasionally devastating process, preceded by test prep, tutors, all sorts of stratagems, all kinds of rankings, and a conviction among too many young people that their futures will be determined and their worth established by which schools say yes and which say no.

In Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be, Frank Bruni explains why this mindset is wrong, giving students and their parents a new perspective on this brutal, deeply flawed competition and a path out of the anxiety that it provokes.

Bruni, a bestselling author and a columnist for the New York Times, shows that the Ivy League has no monopoly on corner offices, governors' mansions, or the most prestigious academic and scientific grants. Through statistics, surveys, and the stories of hugely successful people, he demonstrates that many kinds of colleges serve as ideal springboards. And he illuminates how to make the most of them. What matters in the end are students' efforts in and out of the classroom, not the name on their diploma.

Where you go isn't who you'll be. Americans need to hear that--and this indispensable manifesto says it with eloquence and respect for the real promise of higher education.

Spanning over 40 years of contested history through to today, The Right to Learn speaks out fearlessly against the far right's decades-long war against intellectual freedom. This essential anthology outlines and contextualizes the culture wars' demonization of critical race theory, Ron DeSantis's Don't Say Gay law, and other hot-button issues.

With an introduction that places the current crisis within the broader context of the ongoing attacks on American democracy, The Right to Learn features the testimony and analysis of activists, scholars, and attorneys with firsthand experience in the struggle against well-funded conservative groups' assaults on academic freedom.

An impassioned, inspired resource for those fighting on the ground for the right to learn, this anthology is structured in 3 parts designed to equip educators with the necessary tools to understand the battle--and to fight back.

• PART 1 explores educational gag laws, featuring, among others, PEN America staff members Jonathan Friedman, Jeremy C. Young, and James Tager.
• PART 2 offers perspectives on key issues from those on the front lines: activists, educators, and attorneys like Dennis Parker, director of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.
• PART 3 investigates the implications of undermining academic freedom, with insight from experts such as Sharon D. Austin, one of the professors barred by the University of Florida from testifying against a restrictive voting rights law and a plaintiff in the main legal case against Ron DeSantis's Stop WOKE Act.

The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooling. In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative.