Brandeis University is hiring a full-time administrator to deal with sexual violence on campus. This might imply that an upsurge of sexual assault is under way on this very quiet, very liberal campus. But that is not the case. Brandeis has the usual elaborate safeguards against such offenses– conditioning at freshman orientation, a strong and […]
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The Boston Globe reports that at least one college, Dartmouth, is making real progress against binge-drinking on campus. Freshmen are banned from fraternity parties for their first six weeks at school. Student-led “Green Teams” circulate at campus parties in groups of four, sober, to watch out for and steady partygoers who may be on the brink of […]
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Here’s an idea much in the news recently: the best way to finance higher education is through post-graduation payments by students based on their income.. Oregon made a splash with legislation calling for a pilot program along these lines; students would pay no tuition or fees while in school, but would repay the state a […]
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How do you end the current disaster where thousands of intellectually mediocre and unprepared kids who should not attend college nevertheless enroll and learn little of value while building crushing debt? And, for good measure, how can we discourage colleges from offering intellectual fluff, e.g., Gender Studies. In other words, return higher education to reasonably […]
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The vultures in academia are out to get Mitch Daniels Jr., the president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that in e-mails he sent out while Governor, Daniels tried to get Indiana universities to stop using the best-selling A People’s History of the United States, written by […]
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The ratings season has begun. Forbes has just released its Best College list (full disclosure: the Center of College Affordability and Productivity, which I direct, does the rankings for Forbes). The Forbes list, more than that of US News & World Report, emphasizes student concerns -quality of instruction, vocational success of graduates, the amount of […]
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Stony Brook University has received a substantial grant from the MacArthur Foundation to promote – under the direction of sociologist Michael Kimmel – an earnest effort to study “masculinities.” Not men or males, mind you, but masculinities, as if there were an array of mysterious subspecies of human males waiting to be studied. This suggests […]
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I first heard of Trayvon Martin via a posted comment on an article I had written for the Chronicle of Higher Education in early March 2012. In retrospect that seems significant. The comment from some anonymous academic came a few days after the shooting and a month before President Obama observed in a Rose Garden […]
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The OCR is back in action, investigating new claims that college procedures dealing with sexual assault do not support accusers enough and so have violated Title IX. The Los Angeles Times reports that a complaint was filed against USC–by a student who had brought her allegations to police, only to have the DA’s office conclude […]
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A long-time university insider told me she could not remember any prior appointment of a new president of the University of California made in such an unhappy atmosphere. Since joining the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 1966, I’ve seen eight new presidents, and I too have never seen such gloom over any of the previous […]
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Colleges and universities have learned a lot from the late, great bank robber Willie Sutton, who, when asked why he robbed banks, answered “that is where the money is.” In an extension of the Sutton Hypothesis, colleges have learned that an awful lot of the largess that keeps them flush with funds comes from 51 […]
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The Duke lacrosse case represented an almost textbook example of how key elements of the media (notably the New York Times) should not cover sexual assault cases. Uncritical acceptance of Mike Nifong’s version of events, undisguised sympathy toward accuser Crystal Mangum, an utter lack of skepticism about key procedural issues presented by Mangum’s defenders. Yet […]
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Using state open-records laws, the Associated Press has gained access to some embarrassing emails sent by Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue, when he was governor of Indiana. Daniels is shown asking that the work of far-left historian Howard Zinn be banned from state schools. We share Daniels’s opinion of Zinn’s work, which, in our opinion, […]
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What would we do without educational research, and how did we manage when there was less of it? A new study I discussed on Monday, for example, informed us that organized students who master advanced subjects in high school do better in college than disorganized students who don’t. The authors of today’s new study, to […]
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Janet Napolitano’s appointment as president of the University of California is among the oddest choices ever for chief executive of a major university. Napolitano has no discernible qualification to serve as president of the nation’s premier public university. This is not to say that she lacks attainments. Before she was appointed Secretary of Homeland Security […]
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A wide array of public interest groups (ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy to the Student Press Law Center) and scholars (including me) have signed onto an open letter from FIRE urging the Education and Justice Departments to retract their Montana “blueprint,” which if applied would impose […]
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A few weeks ago, the Regents of the University of Colorado voted to commission a “political climate” survey of the Boulder campus to determine whether ideological discrimination exists there. Not long after, the AAUP issued a letter in response, warning against the threat to academic freedom that the survey poses. The letter is a prime example […]
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Summer is not considered prime time for student takeovers of college presidents’ offices, but at New York’s Cooper Union, one such takeover, launched May 13, lasted 65 days, until this past Friday. The issue was a decision by the Board of Trustees to charge tuition at the school for the first time in a century. […]
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As a long-time refugee from higher education, I tend to forget — and hence am continually shocked when I rediscover — that denizens of that strange land are often impressed by research findings that those of us who live in more pedestrian territories assume everyone (even college administrators) already knew, without the need of research. […]
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about my quest to track down a shocking “fact” from an acclaimed gender-studies textbook, The Gendered Society by Stony Brook University sociologist Michael Kimmel–that American teenage boys typically say they’d rather kill themselves than be a girl–and my discovery that not only was this claim based on a misreading […]
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I previously wrote about the federal lawsuit filed against St. Joseph’s University (and accuser Lindsay Horst) by former St. Joe’s student Brian Harris. (You can read the complaint here.) Here are three reasons why the lawsuit could be significant. Burden of Proof. Critics of the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter have focused on the OCR’s mandate […]
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The report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences about the sorry state of the humanities was utterly forgettable, and Andrew Sullivan focused sharply on what’s wrong with it. But I think a bit more should be said in the service of my conservative defense of liberal education, part of which is the defense […]
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An interesting Title IX case was filed earlier this week in Pennsylvania. (You can read the complaint here.) Brian Harris, a former student at St. Joseph’s University, was expelled from the school after he was determined to have committed sexual misconduct. Harris has sued St. Joe’s, alleging gender discrimination on grounds that the judicial procedure […]
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Both Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education have just reported on a new finger-wagging “report card” that scolds college athletic programs for “racial hiring practices” resulting in insufficiently “diverse” staffs. The card, issued by TIDES, the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, is aghast that only 18.8 […]
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Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, gave voice to what is now a standard appeal for diversity in American institutions of higher learning on the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 5, 2013). Challenging Justice Clarence Thomas’ claim that there is “no principled distinction between the University’s assertion that diversity yields educational […]
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The state of Oregon has announced a new pilot program for funding higher education. Per the Wall Street Journal: As lawmakers in Washington remain at loggerheads over the student-debt crisis, Oregon’s legislature is moving ahead with a plan to enable students to attend state schools with no money down. In return, under one proposal, the […]
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On his blog, Via Meadia, Walter Russell Mead commented on my June 26 post on this site and presented a very thoughtful analysis of the MOOC phenomenon and its likely impact on higher education. Mead likened MOOCs to Craigslist which siphoned off the bulk of the classified advertising that had formerly been a major source […]
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In settling a dispute at the University of Montana, the federal government decided to impose a “blueprint” that envisioned speech codes at virtually all American universities. An outcry arose from all ideological quarters. George Will criticized the arrangement–but so too did the liberal editorial page of the Los Angeles Times and such usual defenders of […]
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At many large universities with an undergraduate college of education, the education school is regarded by students and faculty alike as the weak link, sometimes something of an embarrassment. None of the top dozen or so universities in rankings compiled by magazines like US News or Forbes typically even has an undergraduate ed school, in contrast […]
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When I began by academic career in 1965 as a graduate student in political science, the social sciences seemed on the verge of curing the world’s problems. We were scientists; we had statistics and computers, every student studied scientific methodology, and the National Science Foundation funded our endeavors. Alas, a half century later, pessimism prevails. […]
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