Dylan Hembrough, editor in chief of the student newspaper at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, contacted the school's communications office to protest a policy requiring a communications staff member to sit in on interviews between student reporters and university staff. As a result, university officials reported Hembrough to campus police for harassment. Police looked into the report, decided his comments did not constitute harassment, and recommended dropping the case. In a statement, the communications office defended the policy and said the real problem is that the student paper has printed inaccurate information and refused to retract it.
The post Brickbat: Listening In appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Is a college educations worth the hassle and expense? Amid concerns over soaring tuition costs and campus political intolerance, a growing share of Americans aren't convinced that higher education is worthwhile. Academics themselves—the honest ones, anyway—acknowledge that they've squandered a lot of goodwill over the years. Fortunately, it's still possible to get an education that justifies the time and money—though the path doesn't necessarily go through college.
"Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is 'very important,' four percentage points below last year's reading, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978," the polling firm reported earlier this month. "As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important." Gallup adds that "the percentage of U.S. adults who say a college education is 'not too important' has risen from 6% in 2013 to 29% today, while the percentage saying it is 'fairly important' has increased from 23% to 39%."
Higher education plummeted in public esteem for more than one reason. For years, Americans have voiced concern about rising costs and political intolerance on campuses. Last year, even as a Vanderbilt University poll found a slight rebound in favorability toward colleges and universities, the authors noted that "Americans across the political spectrum still are deeply concerned about the affordability of higher education" and "many Americans see political bias in higher education as a serious problem."
The problem was underlined this year when some colleges broke the $100,000 mark in annual costs. "Today, a bachelor's degree at some of America's top schools can cost upward of nearly half a million dollars over four years," reported Business Insider. "And the trend doesn't seem to be slowing down."
Almost at the same time, Vanderbilt released a report warning "there are several worrying tendencies in contemporary academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, all of which reflect, to varying degrees, a distinctive form of politicization in which the scholarly enterprise is taken to be subordinate to, or in the service of, political (social or moral) goals beyond the advancement of knowledge and understanding." The goals of this politicization, the study added, "are generally though not exclusively associated with the progressive left."
Unsurprisingly, many Americans balk at paying through the nose so they (or their kids) can spend four years at woke camp. That trepidation undoubtedly contributes to declining college applications at a time when the applicant pool is already shrinking. Many students who do apply to college are applying very modern filters to the schools they'll consider.
"The median student is willing to pay up to $2,617 (12.5%) more to attend a college where the share of students with opposing political views is 10 percentage points lower, suggesting that political identity plays a meaningful role in the college choice process," found a 2025 study from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University which documented "a steady increase in political sorting across American colleges."
This month, a survey from Art & Science Group, a higher education consultancy, found that among college applicants, "the share ruling out colleges solely because of politics in a state rose from 24% in 2023 to 31% in winter 2026 and 34% in summer 2026."
Employers haven't stopped hiring from prestigious colleges and universities. But the definition of "elite" has changed, with some firms leery of traditional Ivy Leagues and preferring southern schools where costs are lower and ideological tolerance still has a place.
Higher education can still be worthwhile for students who apply due diligence to their selection of schools and fields of study. College offers a good return on the investment of time and money for those who choose wisely.
According to the Education Data Initiative, "an average bachelor's degree has a 560.53% lifetime return on investment with a median lifetime return up to 1,040.14%." But not all degrees are equal. "The most cost-efficient bachelor's degree is in management information systems and statistics, with a lifetime ROI of 1,758.59%," while "a Bachelor of Psychology offers the lowest lifetime ROI at -122.78%, representing a $54,188 loss in degree-based earnings (compared to median earnings with a high school diploma)."
The 10 bachelor's degrees with the highest lifetime earnings are an assortment of engineering disciplines, management information systems and statistics, accounting, finance, economics, mathematics, and the like. But return on investment also depends heavily on the cost of the degree; it's more difficult to get your money's worth when you pay top dollar.
Importantly, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are also the academic disciplines with the least lopsided political balance among professors.
But college is not the only choice for young Americans planning their futures. According to a 2025 Harris survey for the American Staffing Association, more Americans now recommend that graduating high school seniors go to trade school (33 percent) than recommend college (28 percent).
Trade schools cost a fraction of what four-year colleges cost. And they satisfy a growing demand for skilled workers.
"Of the 124 skilled trades occupations, 86 are projected to grow or hold steady, and more than 600,000 net new positions are projected through 2035," the Alliance for Skilled Trades, a coalition of companies that depend on trades people, notes in a recent report. "Employers will need to fill about 1.7 million openings each year."
Note that new positions are opening even as the population of job-market entrants shrinks.
And employers increasingly value experience and in-house training over college degrees of dubious value. Last year, a quarter of employers reported that they were eliminating requirements for bachelor's degrees among new hires.
Higher education still has a role to play. But "education" doesn't have to mean four years of high tuition. It can be a certification program or trade school that launches graduates into a productive life.
After decades of being the default path for many Americans, colleges and universities have alienated people with high prices and intolerant ideological environments. They still have a lot to offer, but now they have to compete with alternatives for the time and money of a skeptical public.
The post College Still Has a Future, but It's No Longer the Default Choice appeared first on Reason Magazine.
On 9 September, the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) released its new statement, Governing Neuro-AI: Towards an Infrastructure Approach.
Neurotechnology and artificial intelligence are increasingly converging as neurodata can be collected, combined and reused to develop AI models and applications across different contexts. This creates opportunities for healthcare, rehabilitation and scientific research, but also raises important questions for fundamental rights, democratic accountability and the public interest.
In this context, the EGE calls for a systemic and anticipatory approach to governing neuro-AI. The Statement shifts the focus from individual devices and neurodata privacy to the wider impacts of the infrastructures through which neurodata are collected, processed and reused. It also addresses questions of European technological sovereignty and public-interest infrastructures.
The EGE recommends:
Neuro-AI Infrastructures are interconnected systems through which neurodata are collected, processed and reused to create, deploy and manage AI-powered neurotechnology applications.
The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) is an independent, multi-disciplinary body of experts providing ethical advice, and its secretariat within the EC.
It is part of the Ethics Advice Mechanism (EthAM), which provides the European Commission (EC) with high quality, independent advice on all aspects of EU legislation and policies, where ethical, societal and fundamental rights issues intersect with the development of science and new technologies.
Statement: Governing Neuro-AI: Towards an Infrastructure Approach
In this essay at Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, writer and professor Samuel Autman reflects on tourism and privilege, especially in a time of xenophobia; traveling as a Black queer American; and the idea of not fully belonging wherever he goes. The sections in Autman’s piece are organized as terms and conditions in a legal agreement, reminding us that when we cross borders, we navigate different cultural and social scenarios, written and unwritten rules, and people who view us as foreign—no matter how at home we might feel.
I found myself asking harder questions about the young men around him, about the relationships, the patronage and the blurred line between generosity and dependency. Mark had paid for many of them to study law, medicine or business. He had even helped one man living in the United States without legal status by paying for him to attend a Spanish-language school.
None of it suggested scandal or anything obviously illegal. But parts of it no longer sat comfortably with me.
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