College is when we first get drunk. Euripides’ The Bacchae can help us learn how to do it right.

On the way to a reading, an academic stumbles into a mysterious infrastructure.

"For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on he was feeling happy. Naturally it had been a relief to come in out of the rain—though this particular brand of happiness seemed unrelated to anything as simple as relief. No, there was something about being in the tunnel that was making him feel very happy, almost ecstatically so. Against the wall just inside the door someone had arranged cleaning implements—several brooms, a bucket with a mop in it, a pile of rags—but other than that the tunnel was empty. The walls at this end had been painted with the green, glossy paint beloved of institutions the world over, the paint having been applied in what seemed like a spirit of gay abandon. The smooth concrete floor was splashed with it, and it depended in hardened drips from a series of thin pipes running lengthwise along the ceiling."

A brutal assault and the struggle for justice at the University of Virginia.

Note 12/5/14: Rolling Stone has stated that they now doubt details of the facts reported in "A Rape on Campus."

More information is available in T. Rees Shapiro's "U-Va. Fraternity to Rebut Claims of Gang Rape in Rolling Stone" from The Washington Post.

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“My Vassar College Faculty ID affords me free smoothies, free printing paper, paid leave, and access to one of the most beautiful libraries on Earth. It guarantees that I have really good health care and more disposable income than anyone in my Mississippi family. But way more than I want to admit, I’m wondering what price we pay for these kinds of ID’s, and what that price has to do with the extrajudicial disciplining and killing of young black human beings.”

On Leon Botstein and the future of Bard College, which he has run for four decades.

The survivors who “have built the most effective, organized anti-rape movement since the late ’70s.”

Sex, lies and fraud alleged at West Virginia University.

Tony Ma will bet you as much as $600,000 to train your student for college acceptance. If the student gets into their top choice school, Ma takes the cash. Rejected? He gets nothing.

A group of female lovers take on a singular identity.

"We live in the most coveted spot on campus: the first in a row of bungalows at the top of a wooded hill. The yard is pine needles and dirt. The walls are red brick and thick like Collins’ skull. Between us, we’ve read Wuthering Heights 23 times. But we are sure Collins lied about her number. Watching Veronica Mars with sub-titles is the most reading we’ve ever seen her do."

Rich students complete their college degrees; working-class students usually don’t. How one school is trying to intervene.

An investigtion into higher education’s treatment, and often punishment, of mentally ill students.

Inside the White Student Union of Towson University.

The possibilities and pitfalls of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

How social psychologist Diederik Stapel committed and rationalized an audacious academic fraud, and what his lies reveal about the culture of scientific research.

An overachiever on what he did and didn’t learn at Princeton.

On the Adderall days of college.

Amidst the football-obsessed culture of small-town Christian colleges in Kansas, a player is killed at a party.

On Cecilia Chang, the St. John’s fundraiser who committed suicide after being convicted of fraud, and the university administrators who benefited from her crime.

The story of three friends from Texas and the obstacles they face trying to get a college degree in an age of economic inequality.

A week in the author’s life when it became impossible to control the course of events.

Memories of a college courtship.

A college president on the bizarre experience of being informed by NBC News that he had hired a war criminal to teach French.

A Yale student on why nearly a quarter of her classmates will end up working for Wall Street.

On the enduring political influence and entrenched racism of the Greek system at the University of Alabama.