The debut of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in 2011 created high hopes. The cost-free, admissions-free courses defied administrative oversight and were expected to make education accessible to those least able to afford it. As thousands signed up for classes, course sizes swelled to tens, even hundreds times the size of their counterparts on campus. […]
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The Times and the Nation have both published articles on California’s “affirmative consent” bill, the litigator’s dream signed into law Sunday by Governor Jerry Brown. One piece was responsible journalism; the other was agitprop. Given that Richard Pérez-Peña co-authored the Times article, it’s not hard to guess which was agitprop. The new California law requires […]
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A few weeks ago, I commented on a recent report shepherded through by Benno Schmidt, chairman of the CUNY Board of Trustees, on the need for a heftier trustee role in university governance. (I co-signed the report and strongly endorse its conclusions.) The report covered considerable ground, but some of its most thought-provoking recommendations involved […]
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Government’s intrusion into our bedrooms continues apace. Yesterday California Governor Jerry Brown signed California’s “affirmative consent” bill, which requires “each person involved in the sexual activity” to obtain explicit agreement from his or her partner to engage in said activity. If colleges don’t adopt this policy, they’ll become ineligible for state student financial aid. Though […]
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By way of background for you outside-the-beltway rubes, the Washington Post’s weekly “Style Invitational” is a contest in which readers compete to submit the funniest entry. This week the winners were announced for the funniest (made up) course description from a college catalogue. First-place was awarded to: “PSYC 207: Welcome to Your College Nightmare. Participants […]
Read MoreThis illustration is part of an anti-discrimination training policy presented as a game or puzzle. All faculty and graduate assistants at Marquette, the Jesuit university in Milwaukee, must take the test. It gives the test-takers 50 seconds to spot eight objects that are harassing or potentially harassing. Not to keep you in suspense, (spoiler alert) […]
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Four undergraduates at North Carolina State University announced in August that they had developed a “date-rape nail polish” that would change color when its wearer dipped her finger into a drink doctored with “roofies” (Rohypnol) and other sedatives that can cause people to black out or otherwise be unable to defend themselves against unwanted sexual […]
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The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Federal student aid programs abound in examples that demonstrate a point economists often make: government policies almost always have undesirable consequences that weren’t anticipated, or if they were didn’t matter much to the politicians. At the time they were begun, during President Johnson’s “Great Society” years […]
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Marches and rallies against global warming once catered to broad middle-class concerns that cut across partisan lines. No longer. Peter Wood’s account of last Sunday’s climate march in New York City noted the signs that pointed to the dominance of the cause by extremists: “Capitalism Is a Crime,” “Capitalism = Ecocide” and “Turn Everything Off,” […]
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Conservatives and progressives don’t agree on many things, but neither much like the Common Core. The English and math standards, announced in 2010, have been rejected not only by professional critics of education reform and teachers unions, but also by Rush Limbaugh, groups associated with the Koch brothers, and well as by contributors to this […]
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For years, some colleges assigned new students roommates from different regions, races or classes. The idea, not very controversial, was to broaden the horizons of freshmen. Now a more intrusive version of that plan has turned up via the University of Denver, where the chancellor believes a bit of social engineering will push students toward […]
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About 400,000 people assembled yesterday along Central Park West and marched down though Columbus Circle, to Midtown, and then east to the United Nations. Billed as “The People’s Climate March,” the event was intended to focus the attention of national leaders in town for the United Nations Climate Summit, which starts on Tuesday. Some 50,000 […]
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Over at Legal Insurrection, William Jacobson draws our attention to a new petition protesting the academic boycott of Israel. The petition, which is directed towards academics, university staff, and trustees, argues that the BDS movement is at odds with crucial academic values. In particular, the petition draws attention to the fabrications of BDS movement and […]
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Doubling down on its ever expanding commitment to “diversity,” the University of Virginia Board of Visitors has just created a new standing “Committee on Diversity and Inclusion.” The new committee’s first meeting, held on September 12, considered the results of a study on the wages of female faculty, The study, by Economics Professor Sarah Turner, […]
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Is the tide turning against political efforts to stem campus assault? E. Everett Bartlett, the head of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), just sent out an email that quoted prominent liberals displeased with recent federal and state initiatives: Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sept. 7: “I do believe you do need, for the accused, you need to maintain due process rights. And then […]
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As Lauren Noble wrote two days ago here at Minding the Campus, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s speech at Yale on Monday night was a success, despite the discomfort felt by the Yale Muslim Students Association (MSA). I say “discomfort” because that is what the MSA itself emphasized in its September 10th letter to the Yale community […]
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In the fifth consecutive decision on behalf of due process rights for an accused student (joining Xavier, St. Joe’s, Duke, and Marlboro College), Judge William Lawrence, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a preliminary injunction preventing DePauw University from proceeding with a two-semester suspension for sexual assault meted out to a student named Ben King. Judge […]
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It’s definitely true, as Tom Friedman recently noted, that many graduates don’t possess the skills that today’s employers seek. Thankfully, some colleges have taken notice. They’re trying to address the skills gap either by boosting faculty-student mentorship programs or partnering with employers to better prepare students for the workforce. Fortunately, these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. […]
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke at Yale Monday to a packed auditorium of more than 300 people, with hundreds more turned away due to lack of space, and received many standing ovations. The speech’s success was especially heartening in light of the Yale Muslim Students Association’s (MSA) efforts to block it. When the William F. Buckley, […]
Read MoreSee the highly praised new documentary Ivory Tower in New York City Thursday, September 25, 7:30 p.m. at AMC Loews 34th Street theater, 312 West 34th St. Tickets are $12 for the screening, sponsored by the National Association of Scholars. To buy tickets, to watch the trailer for the film, or to donate to NAS, […]
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Goucher College is lowering its application standards even further. Having dispensed with the SAT requirement in 2007, it’s now making transcripts optional, too. Students can now apply to Goucher by sending in two assignments from high school, at least one of them graded, and a video, of no more than two minutes, explaining how the […]
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Cross-posted from Cognoscenti I’m a feminist, or so I have always thought, given my decades of advocacy for unqualified sexual equality and reproductive choice. But according to Gloria Steinem and sociologist Michael Kimmel, I am an “opponent of women’s equality and their right to make decisions about their own bodies.” Why? Because I oppose California’s […]
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A favorite trope of science fiction dystopias is a classroom of students wearing metallic skull caps wired to a blinking, monolithic computer, and staring vacantly into space while the propaganda and “facts” that pass for knowledge and education are downloaded directly into their brains. That scenario may be coming soon to a college campus near […]
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This has been a big year for sleep at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The Shapiro Undergraduate Library cleared away some dusty and disposable books on the first floor and six cots were installed, offering weary students “a safe place for brief spells of restorative sleep,” or “naps,” as they are known in campus […]
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At Ohio State University, to avoid being guilty of “sexual assault” or “sexual violence,” you and your partner now apparently have to agree on the reason WHY you are making out or having sex. It’s not enough to agree to DO it, you have to agree on WHY: there has to be agreement “regarding the […]
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The University of Virginia is boasting again about how well it does by its black students. This is an annual event and some of the boasting has merit. As the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education pointed out last June, U.Va. “consistently posts the highest black student graduation rate of any state-operated university in the […]
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The redoubtable Donna Shalala is retiring as president of the University of Miami, leaving behind a major record of service in higher education and government, as well as a mixed record on censorship and free speech. Before her tenure at Miami she served as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration; Chancellor […]
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For years, Bill Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, has avoided taking a position on the Common Core K-12 State Standards. But yesterday he declared himself in favor. His essay in The Wall Street Journal, under the headline “The Conservative Case for Common Core,” dwells on the idea that conservatives generally favor good books, shared […]
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The New York Times is late to the game of college rankings, but the paper of record has entered with a splash. Before we get to their system, it’s useful to think about the rankings in the abstract. Maybe it seems obvious but the way an institution or a magazine ranks colleges is an expression […]
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Well, the 2015 U. S. News & World Report rankings are out, and here are the elite Top 10 for “National Universities”: 1. Princeton 2. Harvard 3. Yale 4. Columbia 4. Stanford 4. University of Chicago 7. MIT 8. Duke 8. Penn 10. California Institute of Technology And here are the rankings of the Top […]
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