Ideas

How to Think, Not What to Think

College is not just about transmitting knowledge—it’s also about learning and practicing the skills that connect us to one another.

First published in The Atlantic on September 19, 2025.

by Sian Leah Beilock, The Atlantic
October 2, 2025 | reading time: 5 Min.

Across the country, people are questioning the value and role of higher education, and institutions—particularly the elite ones—are experiencing a crisis in public trust. On top of that, tech titans are convinced that AI will break higher education, while many observers lament its corrupting influence and ask whether the “mind-expanding purpose and qualities of a university,” as one historian of education put it recently, are gone forever.

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