If you still think the diversity ideology isn’t corrupting the universities, consider these two items from Canada: – Carleton University in Ottawa is dropping cystic fibrosis as the beneficiary of its annual fundraiser because the disease isn’t diverse enough—most of the people who suffer from it are believed to be white males. – Queens University […]
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Roger Kimball, editor of Encounter Books and co-editor of The New Criterion, delivered these remarks at a Manhattan Institute luncheon in New York City on November 19th. The occasion marked publication of the second revised edition of his influential 1990 book Tenured Radicals. *** Joining so many old friends from the extended Manhattan Institute family […]
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Lawrence Summers will be heading the National Economic Council, overcoming risible feminist accusations that his actual interest is in destroying both women and the economy. There’s one blow for good sense.
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Fellow co-believers frequently ask me how I, a “notorious” conservative professor, have survived decades surrounded by loony lefties. My answer—it is not nearly as bad as it appears—usually causes surprise. Appearances are deceiving, I say, and even in the social sciences and the humanities, the left’s stronghold, the batty left’s domination is incomplete—the tip of […]
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Yes, there are cases of student councils refusing to translate progressive imperatives into University policy (less so, it seems than administrations) even, as we see today, at Brown. The Brown Undergraduate Council of Students voted against a resolution expressing support for the abrogation of Columbus Day as a University holiday by a a 21-15 margin. […]
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Listen to our podcast of John Leo and Roger Kimball discussing the new edition of Kimball’s Tenured Radicals and the state of the modern university. – Sensationalist lure: one solution involves tanks.
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The Center for College Affordability offers a great chart of the week, displaying the growth in the number of staff per student. At both public and private universities, the faculty numbers grew modestly, but were dwarfed by the change (1976 to 2006) in the increase in the number of “other professional” positions. Interestingly, private universities […]
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As author of a major college guide, I try to approach college admissions issues from the point of view of what’s best for college-bound high school students and their parents. I speak with lots of such students and their parents every year, and the one topic that is guaranteed to come up is: What should […]
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On Forbes.com today, Harvey Silverglate responds to a New York Times blogpost by Stanley Fish on Lawrence Summers, who may be president-elect Obama’s choice for secretary of the treasury. (We asked Silverglate to write it for us, but Forbes beat us by half an hour.) Silverglate did not much like Fish’s article, and we found […]
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Peter Salins’s October 15 essay here , “Does the SAT Predict College Success?,” attracted attention from many quarters, including the New York Times. Today the Times’s op-ed page published a fresh version of the Salins piece, which reported that at the State University of New York (SUNY), the colleges that decided to require higher SAT […]
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A just-released study from the University of California-Berkeley’s law school points out that the Law School Admissions Test, a sort of SAT for applicants to law school, focuses lopsidedly on takers’ cognitive skills while overlooking key non-cognitive traits possessed by successful lawyers. And no, that doesn’t mean an aptitude for ambulance-chasing or filing phony class-action […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual survey of executive compensation in Higher Education was released today, and, as usual, remarkable for its upper reaches. Median salaries at public universities increased by 7.6% in the past year, delivering such plum earnings as Ohio University’s $1,346,225 Presidential compensation, or the University of Michigan’s $760,196. Not so bad […]
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Alexander McPherson, a Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of California: Irvine, is posing a test to the power of the University of California over its faculty members. They mandated that he attend a class on sexual harassment-prevention. He refused to attend. Six weeks ago, the University withdrew both his supervision of […]
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The University of California raised no objection in 2004 when the California Assembly passed a law, AB1825, mandating that every employer of more than 50 persons provide sexual harassment training for all of its employees. Since then, I was occassionally advised that I was not in compliance with the law. I was warned that my […]
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Of the many problems besetting higher education today, perhaps the most intractable is the incentives problem. On hundreds of campuses across the United States, thousands of college professors are being dragged away from their root educational mission. They serve as stewards of knowledge and trainers of citizens to come, but a binding demand makes them […]
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I just noticed a recent Washington Post feature on study abroad in college. Several of the recollections are certainly worth a look. Of course, study abroad is not-at-all-trivially a money-making racket for U.S. colleges (if you haven’t heard, check out Peter Wood’s piece from last year) but several of the Post pieces offer eloquent testimony […]
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Lawrence Summers will never escape his past. In 2007, when he was disinvited from a meeting of the University of California Board of Regents due to faculty protest, opponents identified him as a “speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia..” You won’t believe what they’re saying now that he might […]
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Ivygate makes sport of the demise of the Harvard-philic 01238 magazine, and its soon-to-be-former list of top 100 graduates with a “best of the rest” list of grads. Where else to find Ted Kaczynski, Isoroku Yamamato, and Alger Hiss in the same number sequence?
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Who are the smartest graduate students? You’ve probably already guessed that one: physicists. Second down in the brains ranking are mathematicians, then computer scientists, then economists and practically any sort of engineer. Such are the results of an analysis made in 2004 by Christian Roessler, a lecturer in economics at the University of Queensland, in […]
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Apart from Barack Obama’s call for students who perform national service to receive a college tuition credit, issues related to higher education received scant attention in the 2008 campaign. Yet for those interested in meaningful reform on the nation’s college campuses, the election provides some intriguing possibilities—provided that Republicans move beyond the perspectives offered in […]
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Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities, published in September to little fanfare, has caught on amid its intended audience: those who believe indoctrination of students is a figment of the conservative imagination and not really a factor on our campuses. The New York Times, calling indoctrination “an article of faith” among conservative critics […]
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– After being offered and then denied an honorary degree by Northwestern University, Jeremiah Wright returned to speak at that institution on Friday, in a speech closed to media. The Daily Northwestern was there, and, while Wright’s remarks don’t seem to be particularly interesting, the opinions of students present clearly were. One attendee, echoing opinion […]
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“Colorado First State Not To Reject Affirmative Action”
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Brown Daily Herald: “Poll: Brunonians Think Highly Of Themselves.” Of course they do.
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The ban is now behind by about 14,000, with 90% of precincts reporting. We’ll see if the remaining 10% can change anything.
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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (no subscription required). They provide an additional list of state referenda related to higher education. Several reveal a surprising new direction for education-financing: lotteries and taxes from casino gambling. That’s one way to do it, I guess.
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Former Commissioner of Education Statistics Mark Schneider has caused a bit of a stir with a paper in which he argues that colleges are getting a free pass on a huge problem – a very high drop-out rate. Our colleges are failure factories for literally millions of students, Schneider says, and I agree. To be […]
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Nebraska voters have approved a ballot initiative banning affirmative action, and Coloradans may do the same. As of 7:40 AM, CNN has the ban ahead 983,546 to 970,067, with 87% of precincts reporting). There’s victory for Ward Connerly, and hopefully soon two.
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A Columbia Spectator editorial recently criticized the allocation of resources and publicity for the school’s Queer Awareness Month activities. Here’s the nub of their editorial: ..the organization largely focused on promoting events that emphasized sex over awareness. The Genderf**k party—where attendees donned only underwear—bore more of a resemblance to a raucous First Friday Dance than […]
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