It’s been a pivotal year for higher education, and that’s particularly true for college professors. The ubiquity of artificial intelligence, the enormity of political pressure, and the severity of financial constraints on many college campuses have conspired to create learning environments of profound unease and uncertainty. At the same time, many faculty members look at 2025 as a year when the promise of new technologies became more clear, and the strength of collegial communities became more crucial. Can a year like this be summed up in a single word? We’ll find out.  

Related Reading: 

• Sign up to receive The Chronicle’s Teaching newsletter

• AI Has Joined the Faculty (The Chronicle) 

• How to Restore Joy in the Classroom (The Chronicle)  

• Grading is Broken (The Chronicle) 

Guest: 

• Beth McMurtrie, senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Beckie Supiano, senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education 

For more on today’s episode, visit chronicle.com/collegematters. We aim to make transcripts available within a day of an episode’s publication.