Education, teaching, academics

A new paper co-authored by Prof. Anna Stansbury examines how socioeconomic differences can impact first-generation college students after graduation, writes Noam Scheiber for The New York Times. Stansbury and her colleagues found that having a parent with a graduate degree reflected a “generalized socioeconomic advantage.” Growing up affluent often “helps you learn how to read between the lines in certain situations, because you’ve been in similar kinds of situations,” Stansbury explains. 

The MIT Sloan School of Management’s MBA program is ranked No. 1 in Quacquarelli Symonds’ 2027 list of Global MBA offerings, write reporters Louie Brand and Mustafa Mitashar. “U.S. business schools dominate the very top of the table,” note Brand and Mitashar. MIT Sloan “also leads employability with [a score of] 98.6.”  

Members of MassLive’s “25 Most Influential Innovators of 2026” list, which includes President Sally Kornbluth and a number of other MIT faculty and alumni, gathered at the MIT Museum to “discuss the forces shaping the future of innovation in Massachusetts,” writes reporter Tréa Lavery. “MIT Provost Anantha Chandrakasan said about half of undergraduate students at the school are studying some form of computing, and enrollment in those courses has gone up in recent years, prompting professors and administrators to rethink how they incorporate AI into their teaching,” writes Lavery.  

Members of the MIT community speak to Boston 25 News reporter Lisa Gresci about how they use AI, and their concerns with regulating the technology. Developers should consider, “how AI can help communities so [they are] not just building things, but are also deploying it [with purpose] out in the world,” says graduate student Anku Rani.  

President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif joins Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman to discuss how new policies regarding student visas, coupled with cuts to federal funding for universities, are severely disrupting America’s innovation economy. “The whole innovation ecosystem we have in America has been the best since World War II and has created this tremendous economy for the country. A great deal of that economy has to do with federal funding of research, doing it in a nonpoliticized way, and having the best people come from other countries to America to study with us, and to learn with us,” says Reif. “All of that ecosystem is being affected, and that makes it very uncomfortable for the experts who came here, to be here, to study here, and to stay here.” 

MIT ranks No. 1 in Forbes’ list of America’s top colleges. “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is known for its innovative discoveries in science, research and technology,” writes Forbes. “Just 7% of MIT’s students take out any federal loans, due in part to the university’s generous financial aid,” which allows students from families with income below $200,00 to attend tuition-free. “MIT also ranks at the top of Forbes’ alumni earnings ranking.”  

In a video short, The Boston Globe’s Daniel Kool spotlights “The Living Bucentaur,” a parade of 250 people dressed in repurposed sail cloth to celebrate the opening of the School of Architecture and Plannings’ new home in the Metropolitan Warehouse. “In 1916, when MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge, they built this elaborate barge called Bucentaur. It was white and it had this beautiful decoration with angels and stucco and everyone was wearing costumes and waving tea squares,” says Prof. Azra Aksamija. “This project is in a way a reenactment.”  

MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) Dean Hashim Sarkis speaks to WBZ News Radio’s Emma Friedman about “The Living Bucentaur,” the Sept. 8 procession made up of 250 people, to SA+P’s new home in the redesigned Metropolitan Warehouse. “This is really a very conscious reenactment of the moment that MIT decided to move to Cambridge from Boston,” says Sarkis. “After all, moving into this building is an act of renewal.” 

MIT Media Lab researchers found that using large language models for writing assistance was associated with weaker recall and lower ownership of the work produced, writes Forbes’ Glenn Llopis. “Notice the pattern: when AI does too much, the person may retain too little,” writes Llopis.  

Inside Higher Ed’s Emma Whitford spotlights a new report by MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training that offers recommendations for how AI should be used in education. “Learning works when it’s both challenging and social; knowledge is built through cognitive friction, whether that’s disentangling the steps of a mathematical proof with your study group, adjusting an experiment over and over until it works, or having a spirited argument with a peer (rather than getting ‘the’ answer from AI),” the committee writes.  

A study by researchers from the MIT Media Lab found up to 55% lower neural connectivity in participants who used AI for writing assistance, and flagged children as especially vulnerable, writes Forbes’ Dana Williams. “83% of participants who used a chatbot could not quote a single sentence from an essay they had finished minutes earlier, versus roughly 11% of those who wrote unaided,” Williams notes. “The words were produced, but they never entered a mind.”  

MassLive’s Juliet Schulman-Hall covers a new report from the MIT Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning and Research Training about AI and education at MIT. “It’s rare that a successful institution has to take a fresh look at many aspects of its mission,” said President Sally Kornbluth in a letter to the community. “But I’m convinced that the opportunities and risks generative AI poses for our model of education and research now constitute such a watershed for MIT — and for all of higher education.” 

MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training has released a report on AI and education and recommendations for the Institute moving forward, writes Forbes’ Ron Schmelzer. “President Sally Kornbluth describes the moment as a ‘watershed’ for MIT and higher education,” writes Schmelzer. “The recommendations include redesigned assessments, renewed attention to hands-on learning, explicit AI rules for courses and new communities of practice for faculty.”

In a message to campus, President Sally Kornbluth shared a new report by MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use that found that “even as AI accelerates and expands discoveries,  it is also driving dramatic changes in campus culture, upending foundational experiences such as study groups, office hours and undergraduate research,” writes the Washington Post’s Susan Svrluga. “For the sake of our students, for the future of MIT and for the shape of our sector and our society,” says Kornbluth, “it’s imperative that we get this right.” 

In conversation with The Boston Globe’s Hilary Burns, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif discusses his views on the value of US research universities and why saying so publicly matters. It's “tough times for universities, and that means a non-ending decline for the US,” warns Reif. “There is something unique about a university that companies do not have and national labs do not have, which is students. If we believe that science is important, we have to have a place where we create the scientists of the future.”