College Matters from The Chronicle

College Matters from The Chronicle

Higher education is at the center of the biggest stories in the country today, and College Matters is here to make sense of it all. This podcast is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation's leading independent newsroom covering colleges.

Episodes

The Research Trump Hates

September 24, 2025 • 35 mins
The Trump administration is hitting universities where it hurts, terminating thousands of research grants in areas it deems wasteful or ideologically driven. Many scientists who study vaccine hesitancy, gender identity, and climate change, have either lost grant money or been put on notice that their federal funding could soon disappear. What does this mean for the U.S. academic-research enterprise, which seeks to cure diseases, un...
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Chris Rufo Floats Calling in ‘Troops’

September 17, 2025 • 58 mins
Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist, is on what he might call a winning streak. Long before it was fashionable to do so, Rufo, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, was leading the charge against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on college campuses. Now, many universities — by law or by choice — are ditching DEI programs as fast as they can. Beyond that, Rufo has waged numerous online pressure ...
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The Meaning of Charlie Kirk

September 11, 2025 • 26 mins
The fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, whose political movement targeted liberal faculty and pushed the boundaries of free speech, immediately took on powerful symbolic resonance as a pivotal event in higher education’s long-running culture wars. Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, a provocative right-leaning group popular on college campuses, was killed on Wednesday during a campus speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. His ...
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College Matters Is Back

September 3, 2025 • 1 min
Higher education is at the center of the biggest stories in the country today, and College Matters is back to make sense of it all. Tune in for new weekly episodes starting on September 11. Catch up on previous popular episodes: Is Reading Over for Gen Z Students? Why Faculty Hate Teaching Evaluations Mr. Varsity Blues Claps Back For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters.
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Course Catalog: Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision

August 5, 2025 • 31 mins
For decades, Bruce Springsteen’s songs about fast cars, working-class dreamers, and loves lost and found have helped to define a quintessentially American notion of freedom and rebellion. But do the music and lyrics of “The Boss” speak to the college students of Gen Z? Louis P. Masur, a distinguished professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University, thinks they do. After years of teaching a course titled “Springsteen...
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Course Catalog: Do Dogs Go to Heaven?

July 22, 2025 • 30 mins
After the loss of a pet, many people wonder whether they'll ever see their beloved companions again. In her course, "Do All Dogs Go to Heaven?", Chelsea Jordan King, an assistant professor of Catholic studies at Sacred Heart University, presses her students to answers that provocative question. To do so, King encourages students — believers and nonbelievers alike — to use critical thinking and research to articulate and defend thei...
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Course Catalog: Food for Thought — Literally

July 8, 2025 • 27 mins
Food shapes our daily lives in profound ways, yet it's often taken for granted or misunderstood. In the course "Sociology of Food" at Texas Christian University, students learn how food functions as sustenance, commodity, and a sociocultural force. The course covers food from its starting point to its end — tracing its path as an agricultural product and a commodity to be traded, marketed, shopped for, prepared, and finally consume...
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Course Catalog: Decoding — and Fighting — Conspiracy Theories

June 24, 2025 • 31 mins
Conspiracy theories have played a role in American culture and politics for decades. In the course "Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics, and Pop Culture" at Bates College, students closely examine what propels those theories. Stephanie Kelley-Romano, a professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies, says many students begin her course with a basic understanding of conspiratorial thinking. Often, she said, those students seek to u...
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Mr. Varsity Blues Claps Back

May 27, 2025 • 46 mins
After 16 months in a federal prison camp, William (Rick) Singer has had time to reflect on his role as the architect of a college-admissions bribery scheme that became known as Varsity Blues. The college consultant has apologized for concocting a plot that helped wealthy families, including some Hollywood celebrities, secure admission for their children to prestigious universities. But he isn’t slinking into the shadows. Singer say...
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A Crunchy College Goes Conservative

May 20, 2025 • 44 mins
More than two years after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a slate of conservative members to its governing board, New College of Florida has seen transformations large and small. In some of the first shots of what became a wider war on “woke” education, New College’s trustees ditched gender studies, endorsed a curriculum focused on the Western canon, and made the Sarasota, Fla. campus inhospitable to some faculty and student...
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Why Faculty Hate Teaching Evaluations

May 13, 2025 • 38 mins
On paper, student teaching evaluations make a lot of sense. Who is better positioned to say whether a professor did a good job than the students who took the course? But dig a little deeper, and there’s good reason to question whether colleges should be relying on teaching evaluations to inform big decisions about an instructor’s promotion, pay, or even continued employment. So what’s wrong with this system? And why do colleges sti...
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Future U: Making Sense of the First 100 Days

May 8, 2025 • 52 mins
In this special episode, recorded live at the ASU+GSV Summit, Future U. hosts Jeff Selingo and Michael Horn dive into the rapidly evolving higher ed landscape in President Trump’s second term. They discuss massive cuts at the U.S. Department of Education, mounting challenges around international student enrollment, and looming threats to federal research funding. They examine the broader, longer-term implications of these shifts fo...
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This Prof Wants to Win Back the GOP Bros

May 6, 2025 • 41 mins
Nothing animates conservative college students today quite like Turning Point USA. Founded by Charlie Kirk, the right-wing provocateur, the group thrives on an “owning the libs” mentality that is often trained on left-leaning professors. But this brand of conservatism, while big on bellicose taunts, is short on the foundational ideas that have made conservatism such a lasting intellectual tradition. At least that’s the view of Jon ...
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Inside the Education Dept. Purge

April 29, 2025 • 33 mins
Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, an agency that Republicans say is too wasteful and too woke. Through a series of layoffs and buyouts, the Trump administration has reduced the agency’s work force by roughly half. The broader goal, administration officials say, is to return more power to the states and to cut down on government waste. But the cuts have left many people concerned ab...
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Student Visa War ‘Should Shock and Terrify’

April 22, 2025 • 43 mins
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport student protesters. In recent weeks, the president has delivered on that pledge. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international students' visas across the country, spreading fear on college campuses and inviting constitutional challenges from lawyers and activists. Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer, says the administration’s actions are unconstitutional. One of hi...
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The GOP Loves Western Civ

April 15, 2025 • 56 mins
Over the past decade, centers and institutes devoted to the study of Western civilization and American civics have popped up on numerous public university campuses. Typically backed by conservative lawmakers, versions of this concept have taken root at universities in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee. In Texas, an entirely new private university, the University of Austin, now offers students a curriculum steepe...
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Why Parking Drives Us Mad

April 8, 2025 • 44 mins
Buckle up, and get ready to lay on your horn. We’re taking a drive through the enraging, labyrinthine, and often misunderstood world of college-campus parking. Along the way, we’ll meet a college instructor who complained about parking fees, only to pay more than he’d ever imagined; a parking administrator who promises she’s not evil; and a writer who may have unmasked the real villain in higher ed’s tortured parking story. Relate...
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Faculty vs. Administration

April 1, 2025 • 38 mins
We’re hearing a lot lately about a war on higher education, as the Trump administration targets colleges on multiple fronts. On a lot of campuses, though, the biggest battle is an endless feud between faculty and administrators. Professors and presidents seem to be at loggerheads over everything, including curriculum debates, online education, and academic freedom. How did we get here? And is it really as bad as it looks? Related ...
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Higher Ed Controversy Draft

March 25, 2025 • 73 mins
If you follow higher education like we do, you know that the sector is ripe for controversy. From misused money, to smoking-gun emails, to the occasional sex scandal, colleges and universities routinely make news for all the wrong reasons. But what makes for a delicious higher-ed controversy? And what can be learned from the embarrassing failures of otherwise respectable institutions? To dig into those questions, Chronicle staffers...
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A War on ‘Woke’ Classes

March 18, 2025 • 36 mins
Public colleges and universities across Florida have scrambled to comply with a new law that supporters see as a bulwark against the liberal indoctrination of students. The law prohibits core general-education courses that teach “identity politics” or those “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” The law has forced colleges to scrutinize hund...
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