The coronavirus crisis will bust up and reshape higher education — for better or for worse

Higher education is fixated on distance learning at the moment. And Richard Arum, the dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, understands that. … Now he is engaged in an ambitious, wide-ranging effort to measure the student experience like never before. His Next Generation Undergraduate Success Measurement Project is tracking 1,000 students at UC Irvine. They’re taking specially designed assessments on critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, and propensity for confirmation bias, which is the tendency to value information based on how neatly it fits preconceived notions.