The Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education releases its first report, using data to lay out a broad picture of students at today's two- and four-year colleges.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences and TIAA Institute today released three videos focused on the national priorities set forth by the Academy’s Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education: quality, completion, and affordability.

On December 4, 2015, at the Georgetown University Law Center, the Academy hosted a panel discussion on “The Crisis in Legal Education” with Louis Michael Seidman, Robert A. Katzmann, Philip G. Schrag, Robin L. West, and Patricia D. White.

National commission from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences delivers key takeaways from its data-driven examination of opportunities and challenges for U.S. higher education students.

In a series of recent reports, leaders in the sciences, humanities, and higher education have called for additional data on the career outcomes of recipients of graduate degrees. Drawing on national surveys of college graduates, the American Academy’s Humanities Indicators offers a fresh perspective on the outcomes of recipients of advanced degrees, providing a snapshot of their earnings, occupations, and job satisfaction.

The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of Chicago on the benefits and risks of nuclear, biological, and information technologies. The speakers included Robert Rosner, James M. Acton, Elisa D. Harris, and Herbert Lin.

Higher education continues to be one of the most important avenues of opportunity in American society. But the education landscape is changing rapidly: there are more options for how and when Americans receive some form of higher education.

Despite the many challenges to higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by every field except the humanities increased through the end of the 2021 academic year.

How the English department at Washington University at St. Louis reversed its enrollment slide and reinvigorated graduate training.

Projects in the Education and the Development of Knowledge program area inform policy and practice in support of high-quality, lifetime educational opportunities for all Americans. The program area continues the Academy’s enduring focus on the vital role education and knowledge development play in our nation and in our world. From advancing equitable educational outcomes to leveraging new developments in the learning sciences and digital technologies to questioning how domestic and international scholarly work may be affected by advances in machine learning, the Education and the Development of Knowledge program area–through commissions, projects, convenings, and publications–draws upon scholars and practitioners from various fields and disciplines to explore the conditions that foster the creation, transfer, and preservation of knowledge in a global context.

A study being released today by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences -- based on data from the U.S. Census and other government sources, plus Gallup polling of workers nationwide -- challenges the myth of the underemployed, unhappy humanities graduate.

One of the recurring questions the Humanities Indicators receives concerns the extent to which students are engaging with the humanities as undergraduates—a subject for which there is precious little data. The best available information comes from an occasional survey of college graduates, which includes a painstaking review of the college transcripts of a nationally representative sample of college graduates.

In recent months, the media has been filled with reports of colleges and universities nationwide cutting humanities programs, at institutions ranging from large state flagships (such as West Virginia University) to smaller liberal arts colleges (such as Simmons and Lasell Universities). To clarify some of the choices involved in these decisions, the Academy’s Humanities Indicators project is releasing a series of reports on the state of the humanities in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. These reports demonstrate the depth of the challenges facing the humanities (with the numbers of humanities degrees declining in all but three states), but they also provide resources to counter some of the prevailing narratives about career outcomes for graduates in the humanities.

What do students learn in college? When do professors learn how to teach? How can we ensure students are truly being educated for the future? The answers to these questions are determined in part by the quality of instruction students receive, yet public policy discussions about higher education rarely focus on teaching. Michael S. McPherson and Sandy Baum explored the importance of improving teaching and strengthening the college learning experience in the Fall 2019 issue of Dædalus.

Close to half of U.S. humanities graduates feel that their undergraduate institution did not prepare them for life and regret their choice of major. The problem – amid a general mood of satisfaction – may trace to unrealistic expectations.

Projects in Education and the Development of Knowledge examine the vital role that education plays in our nation and the world. Work in this area seeks to inform policy and practice in support of high-quality educational opportunities for all Americans. From advancing equitable educational outcomes to leveraging new developments in the learning sciences and digital technologies to understanding the vital role that public universities play as engines of economic growth, innovation, social mobility, and citizenship, projects in this area draw on scholars and practitioners from diverse fields to provide leadership and actionable solutions to policy-makers, higher education leaders, and philanthropists.

Applying threat-reduction lessons from cyber technology, biological science, and biotechnology to nuclear technology

On February 13, 2019, Anthony Abraham Jack (Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) spoke at a gathering of Academy Members and guests about his new book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students. The program, which served as the 2078th Stated Meeting of the Academy, included a welcome from David W. Oxtoby (President of the Academy) and an introduction from Bridget Terry Long (Dean of the Faculty of Education and Saris Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education). Danielle Allen (James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics) participated in a conversation with Anthony Jack following his opening remarks. An edited version of his remarks and of his conversation with Danielle Allen appears below.

Data from the latest release by the Humanities Indicators project of the American Academy indicate the earnings of older humanities majors never ‘catch up’ to those of their peers in other disciplines.