With COVID-19 vaccinations rolling out across the country, there's hope that more schools in the U.S. will soon go back to in-person learning. But there is also a sense of added urgency. But new strains of the coronavirus are emerging, bring a new sense of concern. Asaf Bitton, a physician, public health researcher, and executive director of Ariadne Labs, talks about how soon he sees a chance for kids to have "just a regular boring school day" again.

Teachers are becoming stars these days on TikTok, that social media platform for sharing short videos. Some of them say the platform serves as a kind of virtual teaching lounge during COVID. But is it a good thing for the teaching profession that classroom instructors are part of a site known for dance crazes, jokes and other irreverent content?

Last semester was historic: the first full term under the shadow of COVID-19, and nobody really knew what to expect or how well various teaching adaptations would work. So what are some lessons from the fall semester? We talked with the professors and students who participated in our Pandemic Campus Diaries podcast series in the fall for their takeaways.

This week we talk with a history professor who thinks that not only can colleges do more to encourage civic education that could prevent future crises like the mob storming the U.S. Capitol last week, but that higher education is partly to blame for last week’s events.

On this episode we’re going to revisit some of the most memorable moments from our podcast in 2020 -- and some bonus material that we wanted to get on but just didn’t quite fit.

The disruptions in the job market caused by COVID-19 mean colleges and employers will need to rethink the relationship between the workplace and the classroom. That’s according to Michelle Weise, who makes the case in her new book, Long Life Learning.

Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. That's one of the surprising truths about how the brain works in the new book "Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn." We talk with the book's co-author, Sanjay Sarma, a professor and the vice president for open learning at MIT.

Some colleges were committed to doing as much in-person teaching and activities as possible this semester, even during this health crisis. While other colleges decided early on to focus attention online and pretty much shutter campus for now. For our series finale of the Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we ask: which decision was the right one for students and professors?

How can educators make their teaching more inclusive? For perspective and advice, we recently talked with José Vilson, co-founder and executive director of #EduColor, a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to issues of race and social justice in education and author of “This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education."

This week's guest, John Warner, has just released a timely book with fresh arguments on how to frame this larger question of who should pay for higher education -- and even how we should think about college’s place in American life. The book is called “Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education.”