The future of higher education is in crisis. Between falling undergraduate enrollment, rising student debt, program elimination, and widespread faculty burnout, families across America are left wondering: Is college worth it? In "The Conversation on Higher Ed," editor Mary Churchill explores the complicated landscape of academic life in…

Right-wing populists have recurrently created moral panics internationally about the supposed need to 'protect free speech' in higher education (HE), and 'protect children' from progressive speech in schools. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of how such dynamics function with respect to race and faith equality in a national school…

The article concerns the issue of school regulations of students' appearance in the context of violating children's right to freedom of expression. The analysis of documents from 30 schools (18 schools in the United Kingdom and 12 schools in Poland) shows areas of control over students' appearance and bodies, which, in turn, is intended to lead to…

Existing academic literature on higher education in China tends to promote an argument that current norms of academic freedom and the broader intellectual-state relationship can be attributed primarily to Chinese political and cultural traditions, particularly Confucian political thought, creating a false dichotomy between 'Western' liberal…

Science plays an important, if not central role, in the profession's mission of enhancing human well-being. The benefits that flow from science do not emerge in a vacuum, but rather are contingent upon the existence of a specific value-based milieu. Included among these values are an academic discourse that: 1) supports the free expression of…

Historically, education for active citizenship has not been a high priority in Finnish schools. In this discursive study of Finnish social studies textbooks for grades 4-6, we investigate how students are encouraged to practice active citizenship, where the focus of active citizenship lies, and how active citizenship is limited in antidemocratic…

America's regional public universities (RPUs) serve a unique role as the portal through which so many students and the nation's future workforce gain the skills needed to face the economic challenges of the 21st century. RPU programs offer 4.9 million students, who are increasingly of color, low income, first generation, and working adults, the…