French social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville described what I call the Tyranny of Benevolence in Book IV of his brilliant analysis of America’s society and government. Tocqueville published Democracy in America fifty years after Thomas Jefferson and James Madison launched their party revolution (1790–1796) and forty years after Jefferson won his so-called Revolution of 1800. […]
Read More
As I have written elsewhere Jimmy Carter had many redeeming personal qualities often lacking in today’s American political leadership. But his policies also did a good deal of harm, most notably in higher education. Two developments of the Carter years have had lasting harmful effects. First, under Carter, the federal student loan programs began to […]
Read More
Federal agencies pay for research at colleges and universities. Those institutions also charge overhead—called Facilities and Administrative (F&A) or indirect costs—by billing the agency at a fixed rate applied to the direct costs. Arizona State University (ASU) charges 57 percent for F&A. When a professor spends $100,000 of grant money on direct costs, ASU collects […]
Read More