In analyzing the backlash against the American Studies Association’s demand for a boycott against all Israeli colleges and universities, two numbers are important: 81 and 4. No fewer than eighty-one college or university presidents have personally denounced the boycott (as helpfully compiled by Avi Mayer); the number is likely higher. But only four colleges or […]
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Just three days after the American Studies Association announced its boycott of Israeli academic institutions, I was able to report here that Brandeis University and Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg would cancel their institutional memberships in the ASA. I predicted that more colleges and universities would join those two after the break. But some are not waiting. […]
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Several years ago, my Emory University hosted former Black Panther Elaine Brown for a couple of days of lecture, discussion, conversation, and meals. I attended one event and don’t remember what Brown said, but caught firmly the demeanor and cadence of the delivery. It was hip, knowing, coy, and canny, not an argument or a […]
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The friends of “disruption” in higher education typically cite grade inflation as proof that liberal education is substance-free. They are correct to assert, as Thomas Lindsay recently did on this site, that grade inflation is a real problem. But the disrupters haven’t identified the real problem with grade inflation: It makes liberal education seem to be worth […]
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The membership of the American Studies Association (ASA) on December 15 voted by a two-thirds majority to endorse a boycott of Israeli universities. Minding the Campus has provided good coverage of both the events leading up to this vote and its immediate aftermath. David Bernstein at George Mason and Jonathan Marks at Ursinus College have kept a close watch on the […]
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On December 16th, as I reported on this site, the American Studies Association voted to boycott Israel universities. Two days later, Brandeis University and Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg announced that they would cancel their institutional memberships in the American Studies Association. Professor William Jacobson of Cornell University and Legal Insurrection has a list of affiliated institutions […]
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While Richard Pérez-Peña and the New York Times continue to ignore the issue, Bloomberg‘s John Lauerman penned a lengthy article on the wave of Title IX lawsuits filed by male students victimized by biased college sexual assault procedures. Unlike the Times‘ coverage of the Title IX/sexual assault procedures, Lauerman offered a balanced perspective, combining several […]
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A recent Harvard Crimson piece has raised eyebrows. From “Substantiating Fears of Grade Inflation, Dean Says Median Grade at Harvard College Is A-,” we learn that the estimable Harvard has done for grades what the Weimar Republic did for the mark. At Harvard, we read, the “most common grade is A.” But anyone surprised at Harvard’s hyperinflation hasn’t been paying […]
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If low-cost Internet-based learning totally transforms higher education, we can thank Charles “Chuck” Vest, long-time president of M.I.T. Chuck, who died last week of cancer, was a great man in many ways, but his crowning achievement, the OpenCourseWare program at M.I.T., spurred huge changes whose full implications are only beginning to be understood. In 2002, […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education has kindly validated our complaints about higher-education excess. According to the Chronicle’s analysis, 42 private college presidents received over one million dollars in total compensation in 2011, while the median compensation was $410,523. Though many of the top earners preside over some of the largest and most prestigious institutions–Chicago, Penn, […]
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The results are in. The American Studies Association has voted to boycott Israel, becoming the second notable academic association, after the Association for Asian American Studies, to vote on the boycott. What does this move mean? It will be touted as a sign of strength of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. And to be fair, a […]
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As Judah mentioned on Thursday, graduate students at NYU have voted 620-10 in favor of unionization. This is not the first time that grad students at NYU have voted to do so. In 2002, grad students there became the first graduate student union to negotiate a contract with a private university, before the National Labor […]
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Now that college hearings on rape and sexual assault are much in the news, particularly for their arbitrary procedures and unjust results, there’s a basic question to answer: why are colleges doing this at all? Why do they need to develop their own investigative and punishment procedures to duplicate a process that already exists in […]
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In Texas, academic disputes often are Texas-sized: protracted, bitter brawls where civilized rules of conduct are often ignored. Another chapter in a long a drawn out soap opera has played out in Austin, with UT President Bill Powers retaining his job after a Board of Regents meeting regarding his fate. Powers will soon finish his eighth […]
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As the higher-ed bubble bursts, the biggest losers are graduate students, who train for years for a profession with rapidly dwindling employment prospects. As enrollments decrease, tenure-track jobs vanish, and universities hire more administrators than faculty, these students want to protect their investment in higher-ed. So many push for unionization. Grad students achieved a significant victory yesterday, when the NYU administration recognized NYU and NYU-Poly’s graduate student union. NYU withdrew recognition […]
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The term “rape culture,” invented in the 1970s by radical feminists, seemed confined for decades to women’s studies programs and free-lance extremists. Now, as Cathy Young’s article today on this site shows, the term and the ideology behind it have been going mainstream, even at such prominent campuses as the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Wikipedia […]
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As David Bernstein has reported on this site, the American Studies Association’s National Council voted last month to endorse an academic boycott of Israel. At the same time the Council put the resolution to a vote of the membership, which is being conducted online and concludes on December 11. Eight former presidents of the American […]
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Much has been said about the campus “war on rape” and the way it imperils students’ due process rights, but there is another casualty as well: the free exchange of ideas on college campuses when it comes to the subject of sexual offenses. A particularly revealing recent example comes from the University of Wisconsin at […]
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Last week, James Taranto penned an extraordinary exposé of the continuing war on due process in college sexual assault tribunals. (“This is the kind of story I became a journalist to write,” he tweeted.) Taranto told the story of Joshua Strange, an Auburn student expelled for sexual assault, based on thin, arguably non-existent, evidence, and […]
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A story in the Harvard Crimson last week reported on a meeting at the university that produced an exchange that should surprise nobody. Professor Harvey Mansfield rose in the midst of a session with faculty and administrators to pose a discomfiting question: “A little bird has told me that the most frequently given grade at […]
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The wolf at the door of American higher education is online instruction. Traditional residential colleges hear it snuffling at the threshold. They know they are vulnerable. They cannot compete on price. Online is intrinsically cheaper. They compete awkwardly on utility. Online instruction is a more efficient way to convey knowledge and skills in a lot […]
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Posted by Jared Meyer and Franziska Kamm Cross posted from E21. As student loan debt has almost tripled since 2004, start-up companies such as Upstart and Pave offer a solution. These firms allow those with excess money to invest in people and their careers. Graduate students from competitive universities are especially attractive targets for investors. As their […]
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From the bowels of academia comes news that the National Council of the American Studies Association has voted in favor of boycotting Israeli institutions. The boycott resolution goes to the full membership for an up or down vote. The National Council’s vote has been hailed as a huge victory for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions […]
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The disappointing early performance of MOOCs has tempered predictions of academia’s wholesale collapse. So where will these behemoths find their place in the landscape of higher-ed? Well-financed by investors, relatively popular among administrators, and attractive to millions of course registrants, MOOCs are not likely to face extinction. Their future probably lies somewhere between adapting to […]
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The most common mark given at Harvard College these days is an A, and the median grade is A-. This information, from Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris, came out in response to a question from Professor Harvey Mansfield at the monthly meeting yesterday of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Mansfield is […]
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Here, in a nutshell, is the human toll of the student-loan mess: it is forcing many recent grads to defer marriage and having children; it is hobbling many prospective entrepreneurs that our economy badly needs and may well delay the retirement of new grads by 11 or 12 years. The total student-loan debt hit $1 trillion dollars […]
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Michelle Obama would like more students to attend college. In a speech on November 12, which was immediately recognized by the media as a major shift in policy emphasis, Mrs. Obama told students at a Washington, D.C. high school that the administration would work hard to increase the number of low-income students who pursue college […]
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Most parents, college graduates, or even legislators could be excused for lacking a detailed sense of the state of affairs on college campuses today, since higher education policy issues rarely emerge in the mainstream media. This pattern makes the one-sided coverage in the one newspaper–the New York Times–that regularly covers higher-ed issues especially objectionable. A […]
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Like compulsive Las Vegas gamblers, many university presidents like to make big bets hoping for large payoffs. And like most gamblers, they usually lose. But they have a big advantage over those going to Vegas: they are gambling with other people’s money. The most famous form of higher education gambling involves football and basketball, where […]
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Is a MOOC more like an ATM or an American Express Centurian card? The former provides a service to everyone with a bank account. The latter serves a smaller niche of the prosperous few. Like an ATM, MOOCs are automated dispensers providing accessible, on-demand service to thousands of users. They faithfully output course material, input […]
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