I agree that sustainability is crucial, and universities have a good opportunity to use best practices when it comes to sustainability, since students are often very passionate about these issues. When I was in undergrad, the students were always trying to push the administration to become more sustainable and I think a lot of concrete progress was made! By the time I left, students had to specifically ask to get to-go containers from dining halls (rather than have them be freely available), and an on-campus community garden was thriving.

I’ve been thinking about this as well after hearing our classmates discuss admissions criteria in their countries. Maybe I’m biased (I’m from the US), but I think it’s better to look at a student’s whole record than simply base admissions off of one exam. I’m generally not a fan of high-stakes exams because someone could work really hard, do well in school and learn a lot, but not be a good test taker and that becomes the only thing that matters.

Of course, the US system is also far from perfect and subject to some of the same faults- high-income families can afford to live in towns with great schools or send their kids to private schools, and those kids will likely have an advantage in college admissions. Plus, in the US, higher ed. is so expensive that many can’t afford it anyway! So I suppose that I, too, can’t really judge how other countries choose to handle admissions (and at least they mostly seem to offer free or highly subsidized higher education).

I agree that MOOCs can be good complements to more traditional university. Online courses and content (like Khan Academy videos) have helped me review concepts that I had previously learned in in-person classes. For some things, I actually think online formats might work better- I would rather watch a video lecture than an in-person lecture generally, because I can pause and rewind it and watch it at a time that’s convenient for me. Of course, on the flip side, you can’t ask questions to a video. I think that some sort of hybrid class, where there is an online component and an in-person component, could work really well for some subjects.