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in Higher Ed

This week’s must-read: Dartmouth’s president has a diagnosis for higher ed, and a cure. Her own campus is sharply divided about both.

Sian Beilock’s Star Turn

By Eric Kelderman

Sian L. Beilock seems to be everywhere.

You’ll find Dartmouth College’s president in the pages of The Atlantic, sharing her plan for “Saving the Idea of the University.” And in The Wall Street Journal, asking whether a four-year degree is worth it.

There she is on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, making the case for institutional neutrality. And on the All-In Summit podcast, an event for venture-capital and technology entrepreneurs, assessing “the college crisis.”

In New York, at the Times’s DealBook Summit, she’s joining a “task force” of college presidents to discuss work-force preparation and AI. And at Davos, for the World Economic Forum, she’s “debating education” with a group including Harvard University’s Larry Summers. (This was before the former Harvard president and the institution he once led parted ways.)

Beilock has chosen ubiquity at a moment when most of her peers, both inside and outside the Ivy League, have sought to avoid the limelight, lest they become targets for the Trump administration or other right-wing activists who might seek to get another university president dismissed.

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