Academe Today

News

Subscribers’ Most-Read Stories of 2017

Leadership dramas. Controversies big and small. Failing colleges. And the game of bingo. Those are just a few of the themes and stories that The Chronicle’s individual subscribers read the most this year.

Publishing

Use of Free Textbooks Is Rising, but Barriers Remain

A survey finds that the share of professors who have adopted open-licensed textbooks has risen to 9 percent from 5 percent in just two years.

Teaching

Sweet Briar Chooses a Core Curriculum

The small college’s decision makes it both an outlier and a model of recent trends in general education.

Research

What Motivated a Musicologist to Study the Motifs of Star Wars

A Tufts University professor created a catalog of the recurring themes in the space saga’s universe.

Students

The Fight Against ‘Toxic Masculinity’

New strategies prompt male students to question skewed notions of manhood.

Students

You’re Screwing Up. You Can Do Better.

A masculinity-studies approach can get those messages across to male students behaving badly.

Commentary

The Futile Search for Role Models

Maybe it’s time for the unsung heroes of everyday life to be our models — the ones who do what’s right simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Special Reports

Idea Lab: Colleges Solving Problems

A collection of nearly 50 explorations of the problems colleges face, and how they are solving them. The articles include news, analysis, data, advice, and opinion.

The Daily Briefing

The Daily Briefing tells individual subscribers everything they need to know about higher ed. Here’s a sample.

Moving Up

Stuck With Someone Else’s Mess

What’s the best way to respond when your dream job in administration quickly turns into a nightmare?

Lingua Franca

Utah: Talk Like a Native

Allan Metcalf instructs linguists on how they can sound like Utahns.