Anne Neal is the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
It’s common knowledge that the humanities are in trouble. To that end, one would expect that the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), a federation of 72 scholarly organizations, would offer a strong and constructive critique of the status quo. However, at its recent panel entitled “The Public Face of the Humanities,” the ACLS’s panelists […]
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Most everyone agrees that tenure is in trouble. At many schools, adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty make up a majority of college teachers, and in plenty of departments they teach the majority of classes. Writers are calling into question the value of tenure, alleging that it protects research-focused and even incompetent professors to the detriment of […]
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Recent studies say two things about the liberal arts. They’re very important…and they’re in a parlous state. To figure out why they’re in trouble, ACTA looked at America’s finest liberal arts colleges in our new report, Education or Reputation? In addition to classic ACTA topics such as general education and academic freedom, we report on […]
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The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is at it again. In the latest set of rulings to come from this regional accreditor’s Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, fifteen institutions find themselves in various states of probation or warning or show cause. No school is shut down; the federal dollars keep flowing. And […]
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In a new report on elementary teacher preparation, the National Council on Teacher Quality finds that only 10 of 77 schools surveyed did an “adequate” job of preparing aspiring math teachers. Low expectations and standards, inconsistent guidance, insufficient grounding in algebra, and a nationwide inability to agree on what math teachers should know is effectively […]
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Many in the One Dupont Circle crowd talk a good game about the “Federal Ministry of Education” and the threat of nationalized standards. (See “The Future of Accreditation” in Inside Higher Ed by Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation – a meditation on what accreditation will look like in 2014.) But […]
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In his brief tenure as president of the University of Colorado, former U.S. Senator and ACTA National Council member Hank Brown – who stepped down this past weekend – managed to leave an indelible mark on CU and higher education generally. Taking the reins in the wake of a number of scandals, Brown established a […]
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By Anne Neal Question: What happens when you take a world-class public university, let political correctness run amok, and give it regents who are asleep at the switch? Answer: You get the University of California. Over the last week, UC faculty, administrators and regents have illustrated, in gory and public detail, a principle one would […]
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