Education

The story of University of Pennsylvania student Mackenzie Fierceton, who lost a prestigious Rhodes scholarship for allegedly faking details about her background in her application, went viral this week.

During my decade as dean of Harvard Business School, I spent hundreds of hours talking with our alumni. To enliven these conversations, I relied on a favorite question: “What was the most important thing you learned from your time in our MBA program?”

Dear Prudence is online weekly to chat live with readers. Here’s an edited transcript of this week’s chat. Jenée Desmond-Harris: Happy Monday.

Want to learn faster, retain more information, and improve your memory? You're not alone: While success sometimes can be the result of whom you know, long-term success is almost always based on what you know. That's why most successful people are constant learners.

A couple of years ago, five faculty members at Harvard University published an intriguing study. They had run an experiment in an introductory undergraduate physics course to figure out why active learning, a form of teaching that has had measurable success, often dies a slow death in the classroom.

I'm a long-time vocal proponent of higher education. For me, it's personal. I was raised in a poor family with parents who had briefly attended college, but never with any real gusto. (I'm not sure my father had a plan. My mother studied home economics. Not kidding.)

In my quest to understand the nuts-and-bolts process of how we learn complex, valuable skills, I’ve read quite a few books on learning, teaching and skill acquisition. This batch of books challenged my thinking and changed my mind on quite a few things.

With every new college semester, students are faced with multiple syllabuses outlining the subjects in their classes.

After a year of nationwide panic over what’s taught in publicly funded schools, the Supreme Court’s upcoming argument in Carson v. Makin deserves more attention.

Learning is a lifelong endeavor. But it is not the same endeavor all your life long. Your brain changes over the course of time, and so does your social and physical environment.

A teacher interacts with students virtually while sitting in an empty classroom during a period of Non-Traditional Instruction at Hazelwood Elementary School on January 11, 2022 in Louisville, Kentucky. Jefferson County Public Schools, along with many other school districts in the U.S.

Erica Cope admits it wasn’t a great lesson. In the fall of 2020, Cope, like faculty members across the country, was teaching virtually, from her kitchen table. None of her students — all freshmen at Buffalo State College — seemed particularly engaged in the introductory writing course.

Jessie Greengrass on the intersection of muse and routine.

Much of the debate about student loans is framed in terms of financial statistics. We hear that we have $1.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. In addition to our traditional advice, every Thursday we feature an assortment of teachers from across the country answering your education questions. Have a question for our teachers? Email askateacher@slate.