Early in the summer, a friend and I enrolled in Introduction to Sociology, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) recently discussed by Princeton Professor Mitchell Duneier. Prof. Duneier taught 40,000 online students via six weeks of free reading assignments, lectures, and discussions, interspersed with weekly quizzes and two exams. I quit three weeks into the […]
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Another wacky idea from California: forcing teachers in the state university system to provide some form of social service as a condition of achieving tenure. Assembly Bill 2132, which passed in the legislature and is now awaiting Governor Jerry Brown’s signature, “encourages” the independent University of California to include a demonstration of “service” in its […]
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Both Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education have articles this morning about a new survey of Economics PhDs that finds a dramatic gender gap on policy questions. Among the findings, women economists are: 20% more likely than men to disagree with the notion that the United States has too much government regulation; […]
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Last month, distinguished Ohio State English professor Brian McHale sent out the following email to colleagues: Colleagues, I’ve been in touch with a couple of campus organizers for the Obama campaign, who have asked me to pass along to all of you a request for access to your classes in […]
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A recent report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), entitled “Best Laid Plans: The Unfulfilled Promise of Public Higher Education,” explores a fair number of problems the California college system faces. However, I don’t think it covers them all. The report states openly and rightly the problems that California’s public colleges face […]
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Over the past several weeks, high-profile criticisms of the Freeh Report, which examined the Penn State administration’s failed response to a report of inappropriate sexual behavior by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, generated more heat than light. Nearly identical missives from a handful of renegade PSU trustees, the family of ex-coach Joe Paterno, and a […]
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Carol Howley, a nursing instructor at Chicago’s Richard J. Daley College, pocketed $307,000 in extra salary over the years by enrolling in doctoral classes at Chicago’s Rush University and receiving her doctorate. There’s only one problem, though: Rush has no record of Howley’s attendence. Cook County prosecutors recently indicted her for theft of government property. […]
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My new book, Sex & God at Yale, covers many of the shabby low points of sex at the university: Live nudity in the classroom, oral sex seminars, masturbation how-tos and other examples of dedicated folly. But it’s important to focus on the underlying problem I address in the book. Simply put: Yale, along with […]
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Yesterday Harvard University announced its investigation of about 125 undergraduates who are believed to have improperly collaborated on a take-home final examination last spring. It is tempting to use this case to generalize about an Ivy League sense of entitlement, declining student morals in general, or perhaps the failure of Harvard and other universities to […]
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As part of its series on higher ed issues in the 2012 campaign, the Chronicle of Higher Education has a long opinion piece in the form of a news article accusing Republicans of hypocrisy. In “Self-Sufficient, With a Hand From the Government,” author Scott Carlson claims to find “a striking dissonance” between the moving “pull-oneself-up-by-the-bootstraps […]
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To predictable outrage among anti-Israel activists worldwide, a Haifa court ruled Tuesday that former U.S. college student Rachel Corrie’s 2003 death was an accident. Corrie, a member of the fanatic International Solidarity Movement, was in Gaza at the time, trying to obstruct the work of the Israeli Defense Force; she was killed as she tried […]
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Originally posted at Open Market The Washington Times takes note of the burgeoning higher education bubble in a recent editorial: The cost of a college education has soared far in excess of the cost of health care. This is in spite of — or, more accurately, because of — massive government involvement in subsidizing […]
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A small controversy surfaced last week at University of Central Florida when a psychology professor sent an email to all his students to berate some of them for “religious bigotry.” According to the professor’s letter, some Christian students in class that evening claimed that their faith is “the most valid religion,” thereby “demonstrating to the […]
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KC Johnson drew our attention to an extraordinary development at UCLA, where the faculty senate of a major campus is now on record approving use of a class to promote an instructor’s personal political agenda. The practice itself is not new, but to date objections have been met either with obfuscation or outright denial. The […]
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Earlier this month Annette Clark, dean of Saint Louis University’s law school, abruptly resigned from her job via e-mail after only a year. She left after accusing the Jesuit university and its president, Rev. Lawrence Biondi, of looting the law school in order to fund other, non-law-related programs on the Saint Louis campus. This was […]
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The Obama Administration filed an amicus brief last week advising the Supreme Court to uphold the University of Texas’ policy of factoring race into admissions decisions. The related case, Fisher v. University of Texas, is the result of a lawsuit filed by a white applicant to the institution who was not granted admission, and who […]
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By Robert Weissberg America’s huge investment in higher education has always had a democratic justification: everyone should be able to attend college because this opportunity would flatten the social pyramid. Yes, a North Dakota State and Harvard degree differ in prestige, but at least the North Dakota State graduate can join the game. Put ideologically, […]
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As if you needed any more proof that the 2012 campaign will fail to take higher education issues seriously, the New York Times reported yesterday that President Obama is using his stops in swing states to assail Mitt Romney for his supposed views on financing college tution. Obama, the article notes, argued that Romney “would cut student loans and […]
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Today Professor William Jacobson (of Legal Insurrection fame) launched College Insurrection, a new website devoted to higher education. The site, according to Professor Jacobson, will help “conservative/libertarian students…find out what is going on with like-minded students on other campuses, and understand that they are the many, not the few, no matter what they are told.” […]
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Why go to college? Go back fifty years, and the answer commonly given was, “To become a well-rounded person who has a grasp of our civilization’s history, science, and art.” Go back about twenty-five years and the answer commonly given was, “So you’ll be able to get a good job.” And now one authoritative source […]
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