College campuses abound in silly sentiments and enthusiasm for actions that make zealous students, professors, and administrators to feel good about themselves, but accomplish nothing. The current push to compel colleges and universities to divest their stock holdings in companies that produce fossil fuels — discussed in this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education […]
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The impulse to impose Sarbanes-Oxley on universities is tempting. Indeed, formal legal mandates on conflicts of interest and the other attributes of good governance might be even more appropriate for universities than for public corporations, as universities lack many of the safeguards of good governance, such as the ability to measure performance through profitability and […]
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San Jose State University in California is teaming up with Udacity, the for-profit pioneer of massive open online courses (MOOCs), to start a pilot program that will create three introductory mathematics courses online that can be taken for credit from San Jose State if the enrollee chooses. The courses sound like a godsend to high-school […]
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Harvey Silverglate and Greg Lukianoff are speaking at a Manhattan Institute book forum on January 23. If you’re interested in attending, please call Debbie Ezzard at (646)839-3370.
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Here’s a statistic that should make every college teacher cringe. From 1976 to 2010, the rate of high school students graduating with an “A” grade–point average doubled. They didn’t increase their work load, and their test scores didn’t rise correspondingly, but their teachers gave them the highest grade possible again and again. The impact of […]
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As a staffer with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the early 1970’s, would-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. penned his historic, if awkwardly titled, memo, “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” In that August 1971 “confidential memorandum,” to the Chamber’s board of directors, Powell called for an unprecedented effort on behalf of […]
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Need any further evidence of the insularity and obtuseness of the academic left – of its stubborn and unreflecting conviction of its own virtue and superiority, its breathtaking incomprehension of and condescension toward those who don’t share its ideology? Me neither. Nonetheless, a new book entitled Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives (Princeton University […]
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A pop quiz: Where might a student most likely research the following topic: “The Perversion of the American Dream: Deconstructing Media Portrayals of Sex Workers through Analysis and Real Narratives”? At Smith, perhaps? Possibly Brown? Actually, Phillips Andover, one of the country’s oldest and most august prep schools, recently sponsored a student project in this […]
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From the National Association of Scholars One of the distinguishing features of America from the founding throughout our history has been classlessness. In recent years, especially since 2009, there has been a relentless assault by the progressive left on what it considers the unfair income distribution between the rich and others, propounded particularly in academia […]
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Kudos to NAS, for a thoroughly-researched–and deeply troubling–report regarding instruction of U.S. history at Texas’ two flagship public universities, the University of Texas and Texas A&M. The overall finding: U.S. history faculty members at both institutions, and especially at the University of Texas, are dominated by advocates of race, class, and gender. As a result, […]
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Over the past several weeks, I’ve penned several posts examining the transformation of how U.S. history is taught, and studied, in higher education. The two clear patterns: (1) a decline in U.S. historians who study topics deemed “traditional”; and (2) a “re-visioning” of many of those who continue to study “traditional” topics to make their […]
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The Book of Genesis alludes to seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years of want. For American higher education, the last forty years (roughly) have been years of plenty, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that many lean years lie ahead. Perhaps there won’t be any more fat years. The latest piece of […]
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Ron Unz’s cover story in the December American Conservative — “The Myth of American Meritocracy” — has generated an extraordinary level of commentary in popular magazines, op-ed pages and Internet blogs. The article deals with the many non-meritocratic practices in the admissions policies of America’s most elite universities, especially the eight Ivy League institutions. The […]
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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an excellent article by Father John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, entitled “Persuasion as the Cure for Incivility.” In it, he argues that Americans need to get out of the terrible habit of “arguing” with people who disagree with them by demonizing and vilifying them. He’s […]
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Just when you thought it safe to read about higher education without encountering more toxic fallout from the University of Virginia Board of Visitors’ firing and forced rehiring of President Teresa Sullivan last June, there is now more such fallout. In early December, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), dissatisfied […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a faculty grievance committee at the University of Southern California has called for the reconsideration of a recent decision to deny tenure to Mai’a K. Davis Cross, an assistant professor of international relations whom the Chronicle states “is of Native Hawaiian and Asian ancestry.” She claims her denial […]
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Since the early years of the 20th century, America has boasted the world’s finest universities, but that rosy picture is fading. The lower quality of American college graduates, the shift of foreign students to Asian and European schools and the slippage in the global rankings of American universities signal a serious decline — this at […]
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As 2012 wound down, one piece of higher-ed news drew attention to a subject that matters to many college students: unpaid internships. On December 20, Charlie Rose’s production team agreed to pay a maximum of $250,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by former interns. Led by Wesleyan alumna Lucy Bickerton, the group claimed that Rose […]
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In the January 2013 issue of First Things, Professor Patrick Deneen contends that the decline in the study of great books is to be found in the very arguments within the great books themselves. While these arguments do exist, their role and the extent of their influence, is difficult to assess. Admittedly the reflexive use of […]
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Almost every day you’ll find new evidence that the United States has vastly oversold higher education. The evidence du jour is in the Wall Street Journal of January 3, a piece by a young lawyer named Chris Fletcher. In it, Fletcher points out that, according to an estimate by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the […]
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The Modern Language Association reports a depressing statistic: the estimated number of jobs offered this year for professors of English will drop 3.6 percent from last year. The main issue here is that for the first time in 20 years foreign language openings will exceed those in English, but the actual decline of English jobs is […]
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In July, relying on the findings of the university’s own report penned by former FBI director Louis Freeh, the NCAA imposed sanctions against Penn State, citing senior administrators’ mishandling of the allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and the football culture that caused these administrators to look the other way. At the time, […]
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The Common Core has many flaws, but its writing standards stand out as an intellectual impossibility for average middle grade students. Their architects didn’t link them to appropriate reading benchmarks. Last November I saw the results of NYC teachers’ attempts to address these writing standards. Their students had clearly tried to figure out how to […]
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As American higher education begins its 378th year, we can rejoice that our universities have several strengths, but lament their growing number of weaknesses. The beginning of a new year is a good time to reassess the system. Let us begin with the strengths: A large portion of adult Americans have had higher education experiences, giving the […]
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Members of the academy usually display their anti-American sentiment by promoting multiculturalism. Rarely, however, does their critique involve the Constitution itself. To be sure, one can reasonably argue that Supreme Court justices have overstepped their authority or mistaken various clauses. However, Georgetown University professor Louis Michael Seidman wonders whether we should obey the Constitution at […]
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