The story of a bizarre—and bizarrely effective—smear campaign.

"I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges' ass cracks... among other abuses."

A gay freshman at Rutgers, a spying roommate, and the trial that followed.

Update 3/16/12: The roommate, Dharun Ravi, has been found guilty of hate crimes.

What happens when top universities focus on careers rather than minds.

How American higher education became a summer camp doubling as a debt factory.

Hartwick College didn’t really mean to annihilate the U.S. economy. A small liberal-arts school in the Catskills, Hartwick is the kind of sleepy institution that local worthies were in the habit of founding back in the 1790s; it counts a former ambassador to Belize among its more prominent alumni, and placidly reclines in its berth as the number-174-ranked liberal-arts college in the country. But along with charming buildings and a spring-fed lake, the college once possessed a rather more unusual feature: a slumbering giant of compound interest.

Inside the lives of students at an elite Beijing high school in the months leading up to gaokao, literally “high test,” the national university admittance exam.

What becomes of Asian-American overachievers after the test-taking ends?

With fewer and fewer students having the income necessary to pay back loans (except through the use of more consumer debt), a massive default looks closer to inevitable.

On the emerging student loan bubble.

The story of the 2010 NCAA championship game between Duke and Butler, and what would have been greatest shot in college basketball history.

On being the lone male student at a women’s college.

How the culture of academia helped Amy Bishop, a University of Alabama scientist who murdered colleagues during a faculty meeting, fall apart.

On a Duke student’s now infamous Powerpoint presentation of her sexual history; binge-drinking, post-feminism, and Mario Kart.

From the 1940s through the early 70s, incoming freshman at Harvard, Yale, Vassar, Wellesley, and several other top schools were photographed nude in the name of science–bogus science, as it turned out. Most of the photos were destroyed, but not all.

A 2006 profile of Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook opened from a college-only site to a public social network.

Across the country, little-known schools are accepting almost everyone who applies, cashing a lot of checks, and offering so little support that only the most determined students leave with a degree.

Tony Judt on sex, the academy, and dating a graduate student while chairing NYU’s History Department.

When the Internet made plagiarism harder, Jordan Kavoosi saw a burgeoning market for original essays. But in his empire of fake papers, it’s the writers, not the students, who get the shaft.

For the members of UCLA’s undocumented immigrant club, going to school means fighting for an education most students take for granted.

After a racial hazing incident, the first black head of South Africa’s University of Free State confronts the myths of the reconciliation era.

In 1920, Harvard University officials suspected that some students were gay. So they kicked them all out.

The not-so-underground culture of neuroenhancing drug use, and where it’s headed.