Education Links, 1/30/2026
Kathleen deLaski on college today; Austin Scholar on cognitive load; Kenneth L. Marcus on Carnegie-Mellon; Sian Leah Beilock on Dartmouth
colleges really owe students a new learning contract as we prepare for the agentic age.
In my view, it has three basic promises to deliver to students by graduation:
1. Technical Skills Agility
2. Visible Human Advantage
3. Career Experience (before they leave college)
I credit UATX with attempting all of these. Compared with legacy institutions, it is particularly strong on (3), by providing internships for freshman and sophomores. I think that for (2) it has an advantage in teaching traditional liberal arts rather than grievance studies. For (1), it encourages students to undertake projects to make things.
Here’s what researchers have found speeds up kids’ learning process:
When students study worked examples (problems that are already solved with every step shown), they learn way more than when they just try to solve problems themselves.
When you remove specific goals from problems and just ask kids to explore, they build better understanding than when they’re grinding toward a single answer.
When you break information into smaller chunks with breaks in between, schemas (mental models) actually form.
When foundational skills are automated (times tables, basic grammar rules, common vocabulary), working memory slots free up for higher-order thinking.
I think that this schema could be applied to teaching microeconomics.
On Jan. 6, a federal district court in Pennsylvania unsealed a court order in Yael Canaan’s suit against Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. Ms. Canaan alleges that the university harbors a culture of antisemitism and discrimination—in part due to the influence of more than $1 billion from Qatar and its affiliates. Carnegie Mellon denies Ms. Canaan’s allegations, including that it is influenced by Qatar, which hosts its Doha campus. But based on eye-opening university documents, the court on Dec. 5 rejected the school’s argument and ordered CMU to produce many of the documents Ms. Canaan requested.
…Ms. Canaan alleges that the DEI office did nothing when she reported antisemitic harassment by Mary-Lou Arscott, a Carnegie Mellon professor. (The school denies both the harassment and its failure to respond.) …
At least three other DEI-related officials at Carnegie Mellon involved in Ms. Canaan’s complaints of antisemitism had work-related visits to Qatar, according to the December court order. These included Wanda Heading-Grant, the chief diversity officer, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when she was asked about Ms. Canaan’s complaint. Ms. Arscott also worked in Qatar for a time and received funding from Qatar.
At Dartmouth, we’re moving toward a guarantee: a paid internship or comparable experiential opportunity for any student who wants one, supported by four-year career- and life-planning programs that begin during freshman year. Other schools have different models. The University of Tulsa commits to making sure that students who participate in a career-development program either land a job or get accepted into graduate school. Curry College takes responsibility for its students’ loans for up to 12 months or provides a paid internship or free graduate-school credits if graduates aren’t employed. Colleges and universities should all embrace the same principle: We own the return on investment, not only the tuition bill.
She makes Dartmouth sound almost as well grounded as UATX.
substacks referenced above: @
Dartmouth's Beilock appears to be the best and only president of the Ivies and near Ivies in moving in the right direction. When the campus Left attempted disruption using Palestine she immediately called in the police and had faculty and students arrested and charged. While later the charges were dismissed, apparently some understanding was reached, because there have been no further serious disruptions of the academic environment. At other institutions, the leaders simply try to mollify the disruptors by giving them concessions, and in some cases even seem to be collaborating with the culprits in pursuit of an imagined revolutionary future. Somehow the Dartmouth trustees picked a person like Beilock and backed her up against the faculty grievance studies nuts, and it has had good results. Maybe trustees elsewhere will develop a spine, and instead of treating their appointment as a purchased social ornament, apply their often considerable skills to reform by picking better leaders like Beilock.
The emphasis on internships indicates (a) that students learn career skills on the job rather than in the classroom and (b) that employers don't trust academic credentials to identify new hires. Employers trust references from internship managers and especially prefer to hire applicants who have had internships within the firm.
Will entrepreneurs figure out ways to match talented youths to internships/apprenticeships in firms as a substitute for study at selective colleges?
And might entrepreneurs figure out ways to enable the mass of youths who attend non-selective colleges to get workplace training in firms instead?
Perhaps the "value added" of attendance at a selective college is intensive interaction with a smart peer group and the formation of peer networks. But the trade-offs are delay of adulthood (and family-formation); diminished interaction with adults; high cost; and curricular irrelevance to the workplace.