Campus talks: Are we facing a crisis in critical thinking in higher education?

17 snips

Aug 7, 2025

Guest

Tony Wagner

Guest

Olivier Sibony

Olivier Sibony, an affiliate professor at HEC Paris and decision-making expert, joins Tony Wagner, a senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, to discuss critical thinking in higher education. They explore how universities may fail to equip students with essential skills like empathy and self-reflection. The guests delve into the impact of AI and social media on trust and decision-making, advocating for innovative teaching methods like Socratic dialogue to foster critical analysis. Their insights challenge educational norms and call for a revamp in teaching strategies.

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INSIGHT

Critical Thinking's Triple Components

Critical thinking includes analytical skills, a mindset of open-mindedness, and persuasive communication with empathy.
Effective critical thinking means understanding opposing views without dismissing dissenters as stupid or evil.

INSIGHT

Self-Critical Thinking Deficiency

Students have strong analytical skills but often lack the disposition to critically examine their own thinking.
Many students struggle to recall recent examples of changing their mind, highlighting a challenge in open-mindedness.

INSIGHT

Critical Thinking Without Self-Reflection

Strong critical thinking skills, without self-questioning, may lead to effective conspiracy theorizing.
True critical thinking demands empathy and self-reflection, not just argumentative ability.

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Critical thinking is one of the most lauded graduate skillsets, praised by academics, sought after by employers and upheld as a solution to many contemporary challenges from AI to polarisation.

But are universities equipping students with the capabilities and mindset needed to properly question information and assumptions, to self-reflect, overcome biases, analyse, empathise and reason? And if not, what could higher education do differently?

To find out, in this podcast episode we speak to two experts in education and strategic decision-making:

Olivier Sibony is an affiliate professor at the business school HEC Paris and a specialist in strategic decision making and the role that heuristics and biases play in this. Olivier spent 24 years as a management consultant with McKinsey and Company in New York, Paris and Brussels and has produced hit books including You're About to Make a Terrible Mistake in 2020 and Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment in 2021, which he co-wrote with Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahnemen and Cass R Sunstein.

Tony Wagner is a senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute. Prior to this, Tony worked at Harvard University for more than twenty years, as expert in residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab and the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has also worked as a high school teacher, a K-8 principal, university professor and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility. And he is the author of eight books with his next, Mastery: Why Deeper Learning is Essential in an Age of Distraction, published in September.

In these interviews, we break critical thinking down into its component parts, discuss its role in decision making, why it can be so challenging and why contemporary education systems need a rethink if they are to truly equip students to think independently amidst the flood of digital information with which they are bombarded daily.

For more practical insight and advice on teaching and practicing critical thinking in higher education, go to our latest spotlight guide: Critical thinking in teaching and research.