A photo of a beagle sitting in front of a red, flowering bush.

From an 🌎 Day walk with my main gal.

When Religion Enters the Curriculum Texas curriculum debates and the constitutional problem of religious neutrality

Reading about Texas adding Bible teachings to public school curriculum brought back an old memory & a question: what’s the line between teaching about religion & teaching religion? SCOTUS is making that harder to answer. bradknight.substack.com/p/when-relig...

placemaking and the academic writer I’ve just read a paper about epistemic placemaking. Epistemic placemaking is equipping and arranging places for knowledge work. The paper suggests that students might actively co-design t…

This week patter has been reading about knowledge production as place making patthomson.net/2026/04/20/p...

Opinion | You Can’t Game Your Way to a Real Education

You Can’t Game Your Way to a Real Education www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o...

In Defense of Dumb Dogs

In Defense of Dumb Dogs www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/s...

The Class of What Comes Next What a college education can still offer in a changing world

My latest on why I find reason to be optimistic about the next generation of college students. bradknight.substack.com/p/the-class-...

What’s Stopping the 4-Day Workweek? If the four-day workweek creates happier employees without a loss in productivity, why isn’t it more common in the United States? To answer this question, we asked our audience about what holds their ...

Q&A with Jared Lindzon and Joe O’Connor authors of the new book, Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek hbr.org/2026/04/what...

Mastery Exams A timed test of proof and logic without (as much) anxiety

David Clark works through one critique I offer about in-class testing, "Timed proof-writing is also inauthentic: Mathematicians just plain don’t do math in that way. Math takes time and requires a lot of thought..." Worthwhile to read what he came up with: gradingforgrowth.com/p/mastery-ex...

Richard Feynman's Notes For Self-Education "…I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and there are many things I don’t know anything about."

Loved this quote from Richard Feynman in Jillian Hess's recent post: "You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong." jillianhess.substack.com/p/richard-fe...

Dorothy Lynch is a color not found in nature. It’s a salad dressing eaten on virtually every other food. Some Nebraskans love it. Other Nebraskans love to hate it. No one else has ever heard of it.

The history and ongoing legacy of Dorothy Lynch, by J.J. Harder.

Read more 🔗 buff.ly/oCNLJWk

Cutting Work-Study Cuts More Than Costs What’s lost when FWS disappears from the campus ecosystem

In a recent federal budget proposal, Federal Work-Study funding is set at $123 million, down from $1.23 billion. I wrote a short piece on what that shift could mean in practice. bradknight.substack.com/p/cutting-wo...

Admissions Got Easier—Enrollment Got Harder Tracing the fault lines in today’s enrollment landscape

We’re seeing record application numbers, but also missed targets, shifting student behavior, & increasing pressure on institutions just below the most selective tier. When admissions struggles, everyone feels it. bradknight.substack.com/p/admissions...

The Boundaries of the “Whole Self” Why restraint, not just authenticity, shapes healthy teams

On showing up fully, not indiscriminately. What this moment is teaching me about work, identity, and leadership. open.substack.com/pub/bradknig...

Withdrawal, Signals, and What We Owe Students When one deadline reflects an entire ecosystem of academic values

Withdrawal policies are entangled with everything else. Pass fail deadlines. Add drop periods. Grade forgiveness. Financial aid rules. Visa requirements. Student-athlete eligibility. Change one piece and others shift with it. Read my latest: bradknight.substack.com/p/withdrawal...

Opinion | There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate

There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/o...

It Sounds "Aligned." It Isn’t. On jargon, hierarchy, and the distance it creates inside universities

Not all jargon is bad.

But when the language of leadership starts to sound like it belongs to a different institution than the one people actually work in…that’s a problem. open.substack.com/pub/bradknig...

Who Protects Students in Higher Education? — Part One A Map of the Accountability Architecture and What It Actually Does

"What this architecture produces, in aggregate, is a system that is reasonably effective at monitoring stable institutions and poorly designed for managing institutional distress." seanseepersad.substack.com/p/who-protec...

"[S]ervice should have a both-and emphasis, sharing one’s identity, capacity, and efficacy with both the institution and the broader field. I agree with my colleagues, and it’s a tall order." developments.myacpa.org/private7J9pR...

Three Good Things A small practice with outsized potential for student well-being

A recommendation to help students remember "three good things" to boost well-being.
open.substack.com/pub/bradknig...

On the Decline of Membership Organizations What we’ve lost, what has replaced it, and what that means for students now

What if the deeper challenge to student engagement is that the social structures that once made belonging routine—Rotary, Kiwanis, etc.—are fading?

Thoughts on what it means for “students in the middle” who aren’t struggling, but aren’t fully anchored either. bradknight.substack.com/p/on-the-dec...

Why Public Records Laws Are Failing Average Americans Until serious initiatives are implemented by the government and civil society, federal and state public record laws will fail to reach their promised potential.

“Educators should integrate public records education in K-12 curriculum and university general education, as basic civics.” www.civilbeat.org/2026/03/the-...

Upholding Liberal Education Love of the world, not meaningless tests, must be the heart of liberal education.

“The indispensability of a liberal education is the freedom from being tied to the zeitgeist of one’s age or situation to love what is true, good, and beautiful, and to be initiated into the world while cultivating a love for it.” www.liberalcurrents.com/upholding-li...

Own your model: Why small, residential colleges must reclaim control of the undergraduate experience Small colleges don’t need to abandon their core model in order to survive.

"If your cabinet or board assumes the core undergraduate model will never be financially sustainable, what decisions does that belief force you to make? And just as importantly, what options might you be eliminating by treating that assumption as settled fact?" www.highereddive.com/spons/own-yo...

How does a college generate $25 million more a year by enrolling 800 more students?

I explore how California campuses are in an enrollment doom loop and how they plan to get out of it.

This story relies on records requests + 13 interviews

📸 @zinchiang.bsky.social

calmatters.org/education/hi...

She Came Out of the Bathroom Naked, Employee Says Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded. Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce, uneasy about peering into the most intimate parts of other people’...

I wonder how universities plan to address AI glasses given concerns raised by investigations like this one. Faculty/students were already worried about classroom recordings. www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/met...

What We Mean When We Say “Shared Governance” (opinion) Faculty and administrators often have very different ideas of the rights and responsibilities involved, Lee Bebout and Jeff Crane write.

"Administrators would do well to recognize when they...have engaged in what we call 'governance theater.' [...] And faculty should also recognize their responsibility to step forward and govern (that is, to lead and administrate)." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

Developing a dynamic model of teacher productivity and presenting evidence that teacher effectiveness can change when teachers transfer across very different school contexts, from @matthewakraft.bsky.social, John P. Papay, Jessalynn K. James, and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum www.nber.org/papers/w34845

Coherence by Design​ - TNTP Explore how districts can build instructional coherence—aligning Tier I, intervention, and systems—to accelerate learning and close gaps.

"Schools and systems do not set out to create incoherent experiences for students. [...] Over time, however, these well-intentioned efforts can accumulate into a complex web of mandates, policies, and resources that are not designed to work together." tntp.org/publication/...

Legislating the University, Line by Line When Reform Becomes Operational Micromanagement

What is the best use of a university board?

Strategic oversight? Financial stewardship? Or reviewing Gen Ed courses for compliance?

I’ve been thinking about the specificity of some reforms & whether these achieve what policymakers say they want. open.substack.com/pub/bradknig...

Continuing the Conversation on Coercion Reading the Preliminary Injunction in AAUP v. Trump Alongside My Comment

ICYMI, I went back & wrote about Judge Lin's preliminary injunction against the Trump administration & what the Spending Clause has to say about efforts to terminate federal funding to the University of California system. bradknight.substack.com/p/continuing...