Photo: Seth Wenig/AP
Photo: Seth Wenig/AP
Ideas
How to Think, Not What to Think
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.