Author: Kelsey Myers

Nearly 400 educators, researchers, and policy advocates from all over the world convened for the 76th World Assembly of OMEP—the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, an NGO founded in 1948 that currently operates in more than 60 countries—in a conference hall at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok during the sweltering Thai summer of July 2024. In the US, the incident did not make the front pages. It most likely ought to have. A formal declaration advocating for a United Nations Decade for Early Childhood Care and Education was the assembly’s main product. The concept is fairly simple: a persistent, ten-year…

The staffing picture is essentially the same in practically every nursery or preschool in the English-speaking world. Mostly women. If there are any male practitioners, they are usually noticeable just by virtue of their presence. Men make up one to four percent of early childhood educators in many Western nations. For preschool and kindergarten in particular, that number is approximately 2.5% in the US. In the past, Denmark and Spain have performed marginally better, approaching eight percent by the mid-1990s. However, the general pattern is consistent. The discussion of why early childhood education is still one of the most gender-biased…

In Tillamook, Oregon, there is a two-story structure with ivory trim and grass-green siding. It doesn’t appear to be the focal point of anything significant. It appears to be a place where young children nap and finger paint, which is, of course, exactly what it is. However, facilities like that one, which are dispersed throughout Oregon’s 36 counties, many of which are understaffed, many of which are operating below capacity, and some of which have wait lists that go back a year and a half, are quietly at the heart of one of the state’s most persistent and underreported labor…

When they saw the name near the top of the 2026 PGA Championship leaderboard at Aronimink Golf Club, the majority of viewers most likely had to take another look. Smalley, Alex. 29 years of age. There are no PGA Tour victories. 42 is the current world ranking. And yet there he was, at one of the most difficult Major setups in recent memory, with a two-shot lead after 54 holes. It didn’t seem like an anomaly. It had the feel of something that had been developing for a very long time—quietly, methodically, in a manner that is practically out of…

The oldest area of Michigan State University’s campus feels almost purposefully slow when you stand on the north bank of the Red Cedar River on a chilly Michigan morning. Instead of being straight, the roads curve. The area feels like a forest that at some point decided to allow buildings among its roots due to the thickness of the trees. Beaumont Tower, a clock tower that marks the location of the first classroom building that no longer exists, rises above the site of the original College Hall. Despite its inability to preserve the tangible proof, the campus appears conscious of…

Ryan Lochte’s life appears to have taken a different turn in a parking lot somewhere in Gainesville, Florida. That’s where the story of his transition into college coaching actually started, according to reports from earlier this month. A former Olympic legend agreed to take an assistant coaching position at Missouri State for thirty-four dollars an hour after having a casual conversation and making a connection. When compared to twelve Olympic medals and a career that once brought in over a million dollars annually from endorsements, it’s a startling figure. But you have to go back to the University of Florida…

It’s ironic that Reese Witherspoon, who barely completed one year of college, is best known for portraying Elle Woods, a woman who storms the halls of Harvard Law School with a pink laptop and an iron will. Hollywood, as it usually does, got in the way after she enrolled and showed up. Nashville, Tennessee, where Witherspoon was raised, is a city that moves slowly but produces people who are eager to get somewhere. By most accounts, she was the type of student who took everything seriously at Harpeth Hall, an all-girls school from which she graduated in 1994. She characterized…

The fact that one of the more genuinely brilliant engineering concepts of recent years began with a garage and a rejection letter is almost poetic. William Freeman, an electrical engineer at Polaroid at the time and a professor at MIT today, saw an advertisement in Scientific American back in 1985. Up to $10,000 was available for creative textile and apparel concepts through the Innovative Design Fund. Freeman provided a zipper with three sides. The kind that could turn a chair or tent from soft to solid like flipping a switch, but not the kind that closes a jacket. The plan…

The scene outside Harvard-Westlake’s Upper School campus in Studio City is predictably chaotic if you drive north on Coldwater Canyon Avenue on any weekday morning. Cars are parked along the narrow street, and students are moving between buildings on 22 acres nestled into the hillside. It’s the kind of controlled bustle that suggests a place that takes itself seriously without having to make an announcement. At first, the campus served as a country club. In some way, that detail seems appropriate. Despite what the name suggests, Harvard-Westlake School is not connected to Harvard University. The Harvard School for Boys, established…

Someone is staring at an increasingly difficult-to-explain number somewhere in Cambridge, inside the modest offices of Harvard Management Company. As of 2025, Harvard’s unfunded commitments to private equity funds totaled $7.9 billion. The same amount was $4.6 billion eight years ago. The difference between those two figures reveals information about timing, ambition, and what happens when the deal-making industry slows down more quickly than anyone anticipated. On the surface, Harvard Management Company’s entry into private markets wasn’t careless. The endowment was perceived as underperforming in comparison to peers like Yale and MIT when NP “Narv” Narvekar took over as CEO…