The New York Times today has a front-page story headlined – brace yourself – “In California, Early Push for College Diversity.” But wait! The take-away from this story is that the sky did not fall when racial preferences in university admissions were abolished in California. Not only did skin-color diversity “rebound” but – more importantly […]
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James Jones, president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., has announced his decision to step down from his post as of June 2014, a year before his contract ends. Jones’s surprise decision, announced by an e-mail from Jones on May 7, included the equally surprising announcement that decision by the chairman of Trinity’s board of […]
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The End of Sex is a frustrating book. Author Donna Freitas, a self-described feminist, has written a thoughtful and richly-researched study of how the sexual culture on contemporary campuses shortchanges many college students. She draws from a rich data base, namely, a multi-year survey of students at different colleges supplemented by the author’s own experience […]
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Spring is always a riveting time for observers of American higher education. Indeed, the end of the school year portends two time-honored rituals for our colleges: the announcement of embarrassing information they hope students will forget over the summer and commencement. The latter is especially exciting because it lends higher education an imprimatur that has […]
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The New York Times reports a relatively small proportion of young Americans work by international standards, and suggests it may be because we are lagging in educating college students, since college graduates have low unemployment rates (3.9 percent in April for all college grads). There are several problems with this conclusion. First, while the Bureau of […]
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Well, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the big news that philosophy professors at San Jose State have refused to adopt a pilot program centered on the legendary Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on justice. Here are my reflections on their stand: Watching the Sandel MOOC doesn’t add anything of value […]
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In the highly competitive free market economy that propelled the United States into our planet’s richest nation, business enterprises making mistakes pay huge and sometimes fatal consequences. Indeed it is what Joseph Schumpeter aptly called “creative destruction” that forces firms to be productive, efficient, innovative, and willing to take risks. Contrast this to higher education. […]
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At Occidental, a student can be found guilty of sexual assault even if his partner said “yes” to sexual intercourse. And yet the school has been targeted by opponents of due process on campus–ranging from celebrity attorney Gloria Allred to Occidental professor Danielle Dirks to Richard Pérez-Peña’s slanted coverage in the New York Times–for not […]
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Why are phony “hate crimes” so common, particularly on campus? James Taranto took a stab at answering this perennial question yesterday in his popular “Best of the Web” column. The occasion was the latest hoax: a women’s studies student at the University of Wyoming sent an aggressive and vile sexual message to herself, denounced it […]
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Cross-posted from Big Think So Peter Sacks, author of the excellent Generation X Goes to College, explains what’s really wrong with the likely MOOCification of higher education. Studies show that learning through MOOCS and related online delivery systems isn’t worse than that through the more traditional or personal ways of teaching, at least according to allegedly reliable […]
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In my 1996 book Generation X Goes to College, I predicted that virtually anyone with a computer and a modem would have access to the storehouse of human knowledge. As a result, higher education as we know would become an anachronism, if not obsolete. The university’s status would diminish because it would lose its competitive […]
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Gallup reports today that most Americans understand the higher-ed crisis at least partially. Indeed, a new survey shows that 59% “strongly agree” that colleges and universities should “reduce tuition and fees.” While they’d be crazy not to think this, it’s reassuring that a large percentage of the population recognizes that higher-ed institutions are mostly to […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that a new study by the American Council on Education discovered the “stark lack of representation” of Asian-Americans among leaders of higher education. “Despite leadership inroads made by other racial minority groups,” ACE announced, “only 1.5 percent of college and university presidents are Asian Pacific Islander Americans.” […]
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Charles and David Koch are reportedly interested in buying the Tribune Company’s eight newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun. According to The New York Times, this is less about making a profit than acquiring a platform to extol the brothers’ laissez-faire ideas. Current estimates put the price tag […]
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The New York Times recently published a fascinating piece that exposed the fraudulent research of one Diederik Stapel, a professor of social psychology at Tilburg University in The Netherlands. What we learn from the piece is applicable to America, where the incentives for producing worthless research are no different. Stapel had become an academic star […]
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