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      Stanford’s New President Is Jonathan Levin, Dean of Business School

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      Dr. Levin faces the challenge of guiding the university through politically fraught times.Stanford University’s next president will be Jonathan Levin, an economist who currently serves as dean of the graduate business school and whose association with the university dates back to his undergraduate days in the 1990s.Dr. Levin’s selection, announced on Thursday, was based partly on his deep understanding of the university’s culture, the school said.His appointment is also viewed as a stabilizing force, as Stanford faces turmoil stemming from protests over the Israel-Hamas war, as well as controversy over a predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who resigned as president last summer amid questions about the quality of scientific research that was conducted in labs he supervised.Jerry Yang, the technology entrepreneur who is the chair of Stanford’s board of trustees, said that the selection committee chose Dr. Levin, 51, as someone who could chart a course for the university during these politically fraught times.The trustees held dozens of listening sessions, Mr. Yang said. “People wanted someone with a very distinguished academic record, somebody who has a deep familiarity with Stanford, understanding our spirit and culture,” he said on Thursday. “And they wanted someone with deep integrity.”In choosing Dr. Levin, who serves on a White House advisory panel on science and technology, Stanford’s 20-member search committee also picked someone steeped in the world of academia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harvard Removes Binding of Human Skin From Book in Its Library

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      The decision to find a “respectful final disposition” for human remains used for a 19th-century book comes amid growing scrutiny of their presence in museum collections.Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University’s libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.For years, the volume — a 19th-century French treatise on the human soul — was brought out for show and tell, and sometimes, according to library lore, used to haze new employees. In 2014, the university drew jokey news coverage around the world with the announcement that it had used new technology to confirm that the binding was in fact human skin.But on Wednesday, after years of criticism and debate, the university announced that it had removed the binding and would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”“After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history,” the university said in a statement.Harvard also said that its own handling of the book, a copy of Arsène Houssaye’s “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls,” had failed to live up to the “ethical standards” of care, and had sometimes used an inappropriately “sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone” in publicizing it.The library apologized, saying that it had “further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Indiana Law Requires Professors to Promote ‘Intellectual Diversity’ or Face Penalties

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      Faculty members in public universities could be disciplined or fired, even those with tenure, if they are found to fall short of the new requirements.A new law in Indiana requires professors in public universities to foster a culture of “intellectual diversity” or face disciplinary actions, including termination for even those with tenure, the latest in an effort by Republicans to assert more control over what is taught in classrooms.The law connects the job status of faculty members, regardless of whether they are tenured, to whether, in the eyes of a university’s board of trustees, they promote “free inquiry” and “free expression.” State Senator Spencer Deery, who sponsored the bill, made clear in a statement that this would entail the inclusion of more conservative viewpoints on campus.The backlash to the legislation, which Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, signed March 13, has been substantial. Hundreds wrote letters or testified at hearings, and faculty senates at multiple institutions had urged the legislature to reject the bill, condemning it as government overreach and a blow to academic free speech.“The whole point of tenure is to protect academic freedom,” said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, who described the law as “thought policing.”Colleges nationwide have been buffeted by debates about academic freedom in recent years. Several states, including Florida, Texas and Nebraska, have proposed bills limiting tenure, some of which have passed. More broadly, Republican-led states have targeted diversity programs in universities; those bills, which have restricted or eliminated those programs, have had more success becoming law, with such measures in place in at least a half-dozen states.Under the Indiana law, which goes into effect in July, university trustees may not grant tenure or a promotion to faculty members who are deemed “unlikely” to promote “intellectual diversity” or to expose students to works from a range of political views. Trustees also may withhold tenure or promotion from those who are found “likely” to bring unrelated political views into the courses they are teaching.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Oakland University Upset Kentucky, Students Bask in the NCAA Spotlight

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      Supporters of the little-known college on Friday celebrated its moment of fame after a shocking first-round win.Before Thursday night, if you were not familiar with Oakland University, you were not alone. Not far from the campus, even locals at a Detroit bar, who were watching the team shock No. 3 seed Kentucky in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament, were asking if “that Oakland was in California” or the Michigan suburb of Rochester. (It’s the latter.)On Friday, after Oakland’s 80-76 upset victory as a No. 14 seed, students and graduates reveled in the university’s moment in the March Madness sun. They include John Hendley, class of 2005, who watched the game from Florida with his wife, Melissa, also a graduate.“If people didn’t know who the Oakland University Golden Grizzlies were before last night, they surely know now,” Mr. Hendley said.For all but perhaps close followers of the university, a brief introduction may be in order: It was created in 1957 through a donation to establish a satellite location for Michigan State University. At first, the campus was known as Michigan State University-Oakland, but in 1970, Oakland became an independent university.In 1997, Oakland University moved its athletic program from N.C.A.A. Division II to Division I. A year later, it changed its mascot from the Pioneers to Golden Grizzlies, according to the university’s website.The campus of Oakland University feels more like a sprawling corporate park, which makes sense. There are a lot of them nearby, like the world headquarters for Stellantis (formerly known as Chrysler) and other automotive suppliers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Top French University Faces Yet Another Crisis as Leader Resigns

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      Mathias Vicherat, the director of Sciences Po, and his former partner are expected to face trial over mutual accusations of violence. His resignation prolongs years of tumult in the school’s highest ranks.One of France’s most elite universities found itself without a leader for the second time in just three years on Wednesday after its director, Mathias Vicherat, resigned to face a court case over accusations of domestic violence.The university, Sciences Po in Paris, has produced five of France’s last eight presidents and over a dozen prime ministers, as well as top business leaders, well-known journalists and scores of high-ranking civil servants. It has been striving to grow even stronger by diversifying its student body and competing internationally for students.But the resignation of Mr. Vicherat, 45, who denied any wrongdoing and said he was stepping down to protect Sciences Po’s standing, was the latest in a series of episodes of internal turmoil that have tarnished the school’s reputation.Mr. Vicherat’s predecessor, Frédéric Mion, stepped down in 2021 after admitting that he had not taken action against a longtime professor and board member despite knowing of incest allegations against him; an investigation into the professor by prosecutors was later dropped because the statute of limitations had expired. The school’s previous director, Richard Descoings, was found dead in a Manhattan hotel room in 2012 — a death that was followed by an embarrassing government audit over the school’s use of public funds.Sciences Po said in a statement on Wednesday that it had “taken note” of Mr. Vicherat’s resignation “to safeguard the institution,” but did not comment on the unrest surrounding his departure.Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, who heads the National Foundation of Political Sciences, a private entity that oversees the university’s budget and governing strategy, said in a message to faculty members and students that a provisional administration would be appointed in the coming days.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U. of Texas at Austin Will Return to Standardized Test Requirement

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      The university said SAT and ACT scores help it place students in programs that fit them best.The University of Texas at Austin said Monday that it would again require standardized tests for admissions, becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores that were abandoned during the pandemic.A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began to move away from requiring test scores, at least temporarily, amid concerns they helped fuel inequality. But a growing number of those schools have reversed those policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown and Purdue, with several announcing the changes in recent months. U.T. Austin, which admits a cross-section of high-achieving Texas students under a plan designed to increase opportunity in the state, cited a slightly different reason than the other schools in returning to test requirements. Without requiring test scores, officials said, they were hampered in placing the admitted students in programs they would be most suited for and in determining which ones needed extra help. After making test scores optional the past few years, the university will now require applicants to submit either SAT or ACT scores beginning Aug. 1, with applications for fall 2025 admissions.In an interview, Jay Hartzell, the U.T. president, said that the decision followed an analysis of students who did not submit scores. “We looked at our students and found that, in many ways, they weren’t faring as well,” Dr. Hartzell said. Those against testing requirements have long said that standardized tests are unfair because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores. But recent data has raised questions about the contention. In reinstating test requirements, some universities have said that making scores optional had the unintended effect of harming prospective students from low-income families.Brown, for example, said that some students from less-advantaged backgrounds had chosen not to submit scores under the test-optional policy, even when submitting them could have actually increased their chances of being admitted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Would Paying Student Athletes Look Like?

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      A college team’s vote to unionize adds pressure on the N.C.A.A. to abandon rules that forbid paying student athletes like employees.“Unions are tricky for college sports,” Jay Bilas, the ESPN college basketball analyst, said over the phone the other day, “because you’ve got public and private institutions and different state laws.”“It’s not impossible to have a union of college athletes,” he said, “but it would be difficult.”Bilas, who is a vocal critic of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, was referring, of course, to the news on Tuesday that the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team had voted 13 to 2 to form a union. He was skeptical that this latest shot across the N.C.A.A.’s bow would lead anywhere. Still, it was the latest example of the pressure the association is under to finally abandon “amateurism” — the N.C.A.A.’s long-held dogma that prevents college athletes from being paid. Of course over the past few years, many athletes have been able to put money in their pockets, thanks to so-called NIL payments (NIL stands for name, image and likeness). But that’s an ad hoc system, organized largely by supporters of the athletic department, that allows some athletes to bring in millions while others make nothing. It’s not the same as universities paying athletes they employ.Bilas said it was clear that schools would soon have to pay their athletes in sports that bring in a lot of money, like football and men’s basketball. And he’s not the only one. Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer who won the big antitrust case against the N.C.A.A. before a unanimous Supreme Court in 2021, has another case against the organization that is scheduled to go to trial in January. The suit alleges that college athletes have been illegally deprived of any payment for having their names, images and likenesses used in promotional broadcasting that have earned millions for big athletic conferences like the Big Ten. If he were to win that case — and the odds are in his favor — the N.C.A.A. and the conferences could be liable for up to $4 billion.Although the N.C.A.A. remains stubbornly resistant to settling the antitrust cases against it, the prospect of paying billions in damages might finally bring the organization to the table. Either through a court victory or a settlement, the litigation could, Kessler said, lead to “the complete transformation of the current structure so that the athletes who generate all the revenue can receive fair compensation for what they are contributing.”But if a new structure arose to compensate players, what would it look like? Andy Schwarz, an economist deeply involved in the fight to transform the N.C.A.A., told me that he could very well see unions playing a part — but it would be a different kind of union from what the Dartmouth players were trying to do. “You would have conference-level unions to negotiate the terms of employment and to enshrine in contracts the rights and duties of an athlete,” he wrote in an email. “In my view, the schools would provide the education and the conferences would be employing the athletes to be participants on a television program.” In other words, each conference would agree to a kind of collective bargaining agreement with a players’ association, just like professional sports.Which still leaves the question of how individual players are paid under the umbrella of the collective bargaining agreement. Bilas told me that whenever he had been asked that question, he replied: “This is really simple. Just have a contract between the athlete and the school. Just like the rest of American business does.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Fix the Crisis of Trust in Higher Education

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      Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been keeping track of every report I see about major budget shortfalls at universities. The general trend seems to be that the schools facing these shortfalls have declining enrollments, and state and federal funding is not meeting the financial gaps left by fewer students. Every week it seems there’s fresh bad news. Here’s a sampling:“SUNY Warns of Future $1B Deficit Without Higher Tuition or More Aid” — The Times Union, Jan. 2.“As Covid-19 relief funding runs out, UConn is expecting a $70 million deficit in fiscal year 2025, which begins in July” — The Connecticut Mirror, Jan. 23.“Penn State Plans Nearly $100M in Cuts for FY26 Budget” — Higher Ed Dive, Jan. 24.“As U. of Arizona Confronts Budget Cuts, Workers and Students Brace for the Worst” — The New York Times, Feb. 21.And those are all public universities. There are several private colleges, less-selective schools in particular, that are in dire shape — including schools in the New York metro area that are selling off some of their real estate in order to make ends meet, according to reporting from The Times’s Sharon Otterman. Josh Moody at Inside Higher Ed clocked 14 four-year nonprofit institutions that closed their doors in 2023, and those schools “largely fit the same profile: mostly small, private, tuition-dependent institutions with meager endowments that have seen enrollment slipping for years and have been unable to recover from those sustained losses.”A few long-term trends have combined to create this growing crisis. One is the declining birthrate since the Great Recession, which is causing an “enrollment cliff” based on the numbers of potential students turning 18 over the next decade. The other is the decline in Americans’ confidence in higher education. According to Gallup, in terms of party identification, that decline is sharpest among Republicans. Still, all of the demographic groups that Gallup assessed registered a significant decline in confidence since 2015.This matters for the future of work in America, not just for the young people who may be missing out on the wage premium attached to a college education. In his 2018 book, “Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education,” Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College, writes, “Analysts estimate we would need to increase degree production by approximately 40 percent to meet work force needs in coming years.” But it’s not just our national economic need that’s at stake. We need an educated population to meet the civic and intellectual challenges of the 21st century — challenges that seem to be moving ever faster as technology continues its rudderless and frequently inhumane progress.I called Grawe, who is also the author of the 2021 book “The Agile College: How Institutions Successfully Navigate Demographic Changes,” to ask how colleges and universities can help address the issues of fewer students and declining confidence. (As a side note: The most selective institutions will be just fine — for all the concern lately about their reputations, they are in no danger of enrollment declines or budget shortfalls.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More