So they won't be what they're cracked up to be?

From the Daily Bruin: Long-awaited sidewalk repairs are coming to Westwood this year, according to documents from the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering. The city will repair sidewalks in areas in Westwood, including parts of Veteran Avenue, Levering Avenue, Landfair Avenue and Gayley Avenue, according to a pending request document from the bureau.

The design period for the repairs ended in April after beginning in October 2025. Construction will last from October 2026 to October 2027, according to the repair program package...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/04/23/westwood-sidewalk-repairs-will-start-this-year-city-says.

Straws in the Wind - Part 327

From the Columbia Daily Spectator: Amid a national reckoning with grade inflation, Columbia’s undergraduate schools have been considering changing the way the University weighs A-pluses. It is unclear when these changes would take effect if approved. The Committee on Instruction, which governs the curriculum for Columbia College and the School of General Studies, has considered decreasing the weight of A-pluses for at least the past year, three COI members told Spectator. While the registrar currently weighs A-pluses as a 4.33 in its cumulative grade point average calculation, the COI proposed weighing A-pluses as a 4.0—the same as an A. Under this proposal, individual professors could still award A-pluses, which would continue to appear on students’ transcripts.

The proposal comes as peer institutions consider drastic efforts to curb grade inflation. This fall, a report issued by Harvard University found that over 60 percent of grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates were A’s. Harvard proposed capping the proportion of A’s awarded for each class at 20 percent, though it delayed voting for the proposal until fall 2027...

Full story at https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/04/21/columbia-proposes-reducing-weight-of-a-pluses-amid-national-reckoning-with-grade-inflation/.

As we have noted in the past, the problem with grade inflation - unlike price inflation - is that grade inflation is capped. With a cap, everyone ends up with the same grade. Lowering the cap as a "solution" is, quite frankly, a ridiculous idea. But de facto, that's what the proposal above amounts to.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge - Part 153

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard deliveries have been disrupted... as graduate student workers picket loading docks across campus — at times prompting drivers to turn away rather than cross the line. Some delivery drivers declined to complete drop-offs after speaking with picketers, while others attempted to reroute shipments through alternate routes. According to Evan R. Lemire, a HGSU executive board member, drivers from companies including UPS, USPS, Airgas, Taylor Oil, and Arrow Paper Corporation have been unable to access multiple docking sites in Cambridge since the strike began.

A UPS driver said packages scheduled for the Harvard Yard Mail Center at 1 Oxford St. were not delivered Wednesday because drivers were unwilling to cross the picket line. Instead, the packages are expected to be retrieved from a UPS facility by Harvard Transportation Services staff. UPS drivers are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose contracts allow workers to honor picket lines...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/delivery-delay-hgsu-strike/.

I'll just give you the links: Not an Endorsement - Just FYI

https://www.dailycal.org/news/state/uc-berkeley-professor-satish-rao-enters-california-gubernatorial-race/article_11e5028f-5c3a-44ab-a874-9d154c0b2044.html#disqus_thread

https://satish4guv.org/

https://satish4guv.org/course/lecture1

https://x.com/SatishForGuv

Food for Thought

From the Daily Bruin: UCLA’s Early Care and Education centers will raise tuition, pause hiring for vacant positions and stop providing food for children in response to university-wide budget cuts, its executive director announced to families [last] Thursday. UCLA ECE will discontinue financial support for formula and diapers, and it will not backfill vacant staff positions starting July 1, UCLA ECE’s Executive Director Tashon McKeithan said in a Thursday email to parents. McKeithan said in the email that UCLA ECE – which provides child care to UCLA students, faculty and staff – will increase tuition across all age groups, including infant, toddler and preschool levels, by 4% for the 2026-27 academic year.

Tuition for infants and toddlers will cost around $3,300 and $3,000, respectively, for UCLA affiliates, McKeithan said in the email. Monthly tuition for infants will cost around $3,800 for non-UCLA affiliates, and tuition for toddlers will cost around $3,200, she added. Campus administrators asked all university departments to reduce costs in response to UCLA’s ongoing budget deficit, McKeithan said in the email...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/04/21/ucla-child-care-centers-cut-food-for-children-raise-tuition-amid-budget-deficit.

Straws in the Wind - Part 326

From the Brown Daily Herald: Economics Professor Roberto Serrano normally holds in-person exams for his ECON 1170: “Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory” class, but this semester he decided to assign a take-home, closed-book exam for the first midterm to alleviate pressure for students after the Dec. 13 shooting. But after the class’s grade distributions indicated widespread cheating, Serrano has decided to return to in-person exams for all of his courses. The median for the exam was 98%, with 40 out of 86 students scoring 100%. Compared to previous data, the distribution for his first ECON 1170 midterm was “absolutely ridiculous,” especially since he had designed a more challenging exam for the take-home format, Serrano said in an interview with The Herald. “Historically, the average grade in the midterm exams ranged from 65 to 85,” Serrano said. After investigating the exam results, Serrano said he found signs of AI use and collaboration amongst students...

Pakzad-Hurson also suspects student AI use on homework assignments. “The biggest shift is just that students are seemingly a lot better at homework now,” Pakzad-Hurson said. He has noticed “perfect performance” on homeworks and “poor performance” on tests. Pakzad-Hurson lowered the weight of homeworks on students’ overall grades to reduce the incentive to submit AI work.

Economics Professor Rajiv Vohra noted that AI does not appear to be a problem with in-person exams, but may be an issue with homeworks or take-home exams. Teaching Professor of Economics Sylvia Kuo has also noticed potential AI usage on her homework assignments, even though they are graded based on effort. She said she has seen “weird answers” that still arrive at a solution, but use terminology that is inconsistent “with what was taught.”

In the last year, Kuo has also seen a decrease in exam scores, despite the fact that the content of exams has been “roughly” the same since she started teaching the course more than a decade ago. She said this suggests students are not using their “own brain” to do the “learning in order to perform well on exams.” ...

Full story at https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2026/04/after-ai-cheating-concerns-economics-professors-see-in-person-exams-as-a-path-forward.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 152

From the Harvard Crimson: Leaders of Harvard’s non-tenure-track faculty union quietly called off plans for a spring strike, overriding a membership vote after concluding the walkout risked failing to win approval from the United Auto Workers. At a... general membership meeting attended by roughly 150, workers represented by the Harvard Academic Workers-UAW voted to close an ongoing strike authorization vote on Friday and begin striking as early as next week, according to an attendee. But in an abrupt about-face, the union’s bargaining committee extended the voting timeline the following day — a move that rules out any strike this semester.

...The committee said the combination of low participation and a tight turnaround between the proposed vote closure and strike date created a “substantial” risk that UAW’s international leadership would not authorize its strike in time. Without that approval, workers would be ineligible for strike pay and other union support — and the authorization process would have to start over.

...The move strips HAW-UAW of a key source of leverage this semester as negotiations for its first contract with Harvard stretch into a second year. It also means that the non-tenure-track faculty will not picket alongside Harvard’s graduate student union, which previously began striking... 

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/haw-strike-vote-override/.