The Higher Education Act is up for reauthorization this year, so this is an especially good time to talk about improvements to it. (We ought to consider repealing it instead, but almost nobody in Congress would support that.) One idea, recently advanced here by Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is to stop […]
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The University of Virginia prides itself on being “Mr. Jefferson’s university,” where unfettered free speech is both practiced and respected in the manner called for in his First Inaugural address when Mr. Jefferson (as locals still reverentially refer to him) fervently urged his fellow citizens to let misguided and even evil notions “stand undisturbed as […]
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The higher-education story of the week is about cost: colleges and universities are cutting prices. At least that’s the impression one gets from media coverage of the annual report from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). “Colleges Cut Prices by Providing More Financial Aid,” states the Wall Street Journal. “Private U.S. […]
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Here’s what happens when you send a book questioning anthropogenic global warming to the chairman of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University: The book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, was sent out by The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. Dr. Alison Bridges, chairman of the department, […]
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The University of Minnesota has a program of dual enrollment in which high schools create courses that match selected UM first-year courses in content and rigor and students earn UM credits. It’s called College in the Schools, and it offers 22 courses in the humanities and social sciences such as Calculus I, Intermediate French, and […]
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Not too long ago CBS MoneyWatch published a list titled “25 Schools with the Worst Professors,” using data which we at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) had gathered from evaluations published on ratemyprofessor.com (RMP). We strongly believe that this list of 25 schools is a complete misrepresentation of our work. While it […]
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Mr. Cheston, I disagree entirely. Let’s start with freedom of association. No, Trinity College is not a public university, so the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply (although some universities, such as Yale, have issued guarantees of free speech and association to their students that may have some legal weight). It may well be that in terms of legality, Trinity […]
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Once again, the youth vote–18-30-year-olds–provided Barack Obama a staunchly reliable bloc in the 2012 election. According to the Center for Information & Research on civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), the youth vote went 67 percent for Obama, 30 percent for Romney. If the youth vote were taken out of the population, Romney would have won […]
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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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Move over MOOCs, a different model is coming to town–blended learning. Deep within the New York Times’ article today on online courses, readers learned of the “striking” success of San Jose University’s pilot blended course. While MOOCs dominate conversations about the future of higher-ed, it’s the blended model, which combines face-to-face interaction with web based […]
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PETER WOOD: Samuel Goldman seeks to distinguish the small and marginal subset “conservative defenders of liberal education” from other kinds of conservatives. He places these poor folks “in a blind alley.” They are, he says, at odds both with “potential allies outside the conservative movement” and with the conservative movement itself, which finds its center of […]
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I found much to admire and little to disagree with in Sam Goldman’s defense of liberal education. Well, I was offended that he called my use of “cultural transmission” postmodern. I wasn’t offended for any good reason, of course. Putting the techno-phrase in quotes is, of course, a postmodern or cloyingly ironic “move.” It is a way […]
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What’s conservative about liberal education? On any serious consideration, the answer is: a lot. Students do pick up marketable skills when they take classes in literature, history, or philosophy. But the real purpose of studying languages, books, and arguments is to initiate them as members of a community of free men and women, the present […]
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Wednesday’s episode of “Law & Order, Special Victims Unit” dealt with fictionalized versions of recent campus rape cases. In the story, a fraternity produces a crude, misogynistic t-shirt (left). The real T-shirt it is based on (right) was far worse. It was produced and sold last year by an unauthorized frat at Amherst College. Jezebel and AVC have […]
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Time to end it, says the Economist: Universities that want to improve their selection procedures by identifying talented people (of any colour or creed) from disadvantaged backgrounds should be encouraged. But selection on the basis of race is neither a fair nor an efficient way of doing so. Affirmative action replaced old injustices with […]
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It’s clear that the return on the investment in a college education isn’t as promising as it once was. To that end, The Chronicle of Higher Education recently wondered how to “assess the real payoff of a college degree.” Answering this question necessitates defining higher education’s purpose. If one attends college simply hoping for an […]
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