Herb London is president of the London Center for Policy Research.
What do college students read? According to one survey Shades of Gray, the sado-masochistic novel, was the most widely read book outside the classroom. Another survey indicated that The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, dealing with her battle with cancer and racial grievance, was the most popular book. But as the recent publication of the […]
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Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, gave voice to what is now a standard appeal for diversity in American institutions of higher learning on the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 5, 2013). Challenging Justice Clarence Thomas’ claim that there is “no principled distinction between the University’s assertion that diversity yields educational […]
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For forty years I labored in the groves of Academe as professor and dean. Though I learned many lessons in this four decade period, three of them are worth noting. NYU, the place I called academic home, transformed itself from a “commuter school” into a “world class university” with campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai […]
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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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It is difficult to know if MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a conspiracy to undermine the academy or a way to open the avenues of higher education. However one sees it, though, a revolution is certainly taking place: millions of people are already taking on-line courses. It seems that the U.S. Department of Education […]
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Most reasonable people realize that the tuition bubble is bound to burst. On line courses are altering the university landscape, reducing costs and the need for brick-and-mortar settings. Moreover, despite President Obama’s call for additional student aid, Washington’s support for higher education is bound to wane in this period of economic exigency. Student aid is […]
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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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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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In 1956 my Jamaica high school basketball team played Far Rockaway, a league rival. At the end of the first quarter I had 19 points and our team was ahead by twenty. The result of the game was already determined. I felt confident of breaking the school scoring record and perhaps the city record as […]
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I was fortunate to know Jacques Barzun as both a teacher and colleague. Jacques changed my life from basketball jock to library denizen. So intoxicated was I by the Trilling-Barzun seminar that I wanted to speak French, dress like Jacques, and write literate cultural essays about every topic the mind could conjure. I was hooked, a […]
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The State of Minnesota has cracked down on free on-line courses offered by Coursera, founded by Stanford computer science professors. A spokesman for the state’s office of Higher Education said that Minnesota is simply “enforcing a longstanding state law requiring colleges to get the government’s permission to offer instruction within its borders.” How this state […]
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I chair the Governing Board at Grantham University in Kansas City, Missouri, an on-line, for-profit institution. Grantham diverges from Congress’ caricature of for-profits. More than ninety percent of its students have a military background; in fact, most of these students remain in active service as they pursue their degrees. Most are also first generation college […]
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What does one do when a culture of corruption is so pervasive that graduate students openly cheat and professors give out answers on exams? According to allegations at the Baruch (Zicklin) School of Business in the City University of New York, “cheating is their bread and butter.”
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Although high school students applying to colleges invariably rely on college ranking guides as a primary source of information, these guides are often misleading and, in most cases, counterproductive. Frederick Hess and Faryn Hochleitner at the American Enterprise Institute (College Rankings Inflation: Are You Overpaying for Prestige) AEI, 5/24/12 contend “the ranks of the top […]
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By any standard, including the misguided behavior of Western elitists, Bo Guagua is a bon vivant with a penchant for sports cars, equestrian sports, alcohol and women. His father Bo Xilai, faces charges in China of corruption and abuse of power in what has become a case receiving worldwide attention. His mother, Gu Kailai, is […]
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A phenomenon is taking hold in universities on both sides of the Atlantic. For lack of a better label, I call it the Absolute Truth brigade, i.e. intellectuals so sure of their views that they will not entertain contrary thought. Friedrich Hayek used the following quote from David Hume on the front page of The […]
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A mantra fills the airways from the White House to the NCAA and from there to California governor’s mansion: keep graduating students from American colleges and universities. Keep the system of higher education humming. But what precisely does a graduate rate measure other than the completion of thirty, perhaps 32, courses whose quality is unknown […]
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When President Obama talked about unaffordable college tuition, he failed to point out that federal subsidies are responsible for much of the unaffordability. In his State of the Union message, he said, “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.” However, since tuition is dependent on […]
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Dr. London, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, received the Jeane Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom on February 9 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the American Conservative Union Foundation. These were his remarks on the occasion. *** It is with enormous humility and gratitude that I accept this award from the […]
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Mark Emmert, the head of the NCAA, is a man with a mission. A series of unprecedented scandals has eroded confidence in big-time college sports. In fact, some critics contend the NCAA is an enabler that is compromised by the billions of dollars colleges earn through football and basketball programs. Mr. Emmert is intent on […]
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The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are no longer merely residents of Zuccotti Park, they have converted themselves into roving bands restricting traffic on Broadway and Church Street and occupying nearby buildings. Yet the city authorities avert their gaze and well known scholars who share a hard left ideology such as Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek and […]
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A well-publicized cheating scandal at Great Neck High School featured a criminal entrepreneur taking SAT tests for college-bound high school students. My colleagues in the Academy tell me cheating is endemic with papers written by “service” organizations and plagiarism a national contagion. Teachers are routinely engaged in “scrubbing” various tests in an effort to increase […]
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The Thomas Fordham Institute released the results of a study this week entitled “Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students.” This is among the first studies to examine the performance of America’s highest achieving children over time and at the individual student level. Produced in partnership with the Northwest Evaluation Association, this […]
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At long last an attempt is bring made to curtail blatant anti-Semitic commentary on American campuses. The Israel Law Center warns that colleges and universities “may be liable for massive damage” if they fail to prevent anti-Semitism. The center sent hundreds of letters to university presidents drawing a line in the sand. This Israel civil […]
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The redoubtable Anne Neal, President of ACTA, has released a survey entitled “What Will They Learn?” – a sobering analysis of general education in the nation’s colleges and universities. The report covers major public and private institutions in all 50 states. Each of the higher education institutions was assigned a letter grade from “A” to […]
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In Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz the Wizard says he wants an educated populace, “so by the power vested in me I will grant everyone out.” My guess is if a university president were completely honest today, he might say the freshman bring almost nothing in and leave by taking nothing out. The question […]
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This is the slightly edited introduction to the author’s new collection of essays, Decline and Revival in Higher Education ( Transaction Publishers ). Dr. London is president of the Hudson Institute, one of the founders of the National Association of Scholars, and the former John M. Olin Professor of the Humanities at New York University. […]
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At a recent conference on higher education organized by the National Association of Scholars there were several references to Schumpeter’s famous expression “creative destruction”. It was argued that technology was fomenting a change in pedagogy and the delivery of knowledge. Presumably in an environment of tightening resources, the university as we known it will change […]
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Prince Al Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, the world’s 19th richest man with a net worth of $21 billion, recently gave a 16 million British pound donation to the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh to launch two research centers for Islamic studies. The signing ceremony was attended by Prince Philip, the […]
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Recently The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 9, 2008) devoted four full pages to a new book by two professors at the University of Chicago, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, one a professor of economics and behavioral science and the other a professor of law. The book, entitled Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and […]
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