Teresa Wagner’s lawsuit against the University of Iowa law school ended a few weeks ago when a jury declared that the school did not submit her to political discrimination when it rejected her application for a job. Wagner made a second allegation–that her equal protection rights were violated because the law school held her political […]
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This morning in the Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes summed up one condition of the Republican Party: “What’s their problem? In Senate races, it’s bad candidates: old hacks (Wisconsin), young hacks (Florida), youngsters (Ohio), Tea Party types who can’t talk about abortion sensibly (Missouri, Indiana), retreads (Virginia), lousy campaigners (North Dakota) and Washington veterans (Michigan). Losers […]
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The September cover of Maclean’s Magazine displayed two youthful faces, a boy and a girl, the former kindly but quietly fearful, the latter openly stressed, perhaps at a breaking point. The text announced: “CRISIS ON CAMPUS: The Broken Generation–A shocking number of Canadian students feel depressed, even suicidal. Why our best and brightest are so troubled.” The […]
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In this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, Joseph Cohn, director of policy at FIRE, summarizes the due process implications of a letter sent to colleges and universities last April by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. As was widely reported at the time, the letter instructs schools to adopt the lowest standard of […]
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The release of SAT scores last week gives strong ammunition to proponents of a core curriculum. As reported in the Wall Street Journal , reading scores hit their lowest figure in four decades. Writing scores hit their lowest number since a writing component was added to the exam six years ago; in fact, writing scores […]
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The Daily Texan has reported that a conservative student group at University of Texas-Austin has inaugurated a “watch list” containing the names of professors who “politicize the classroom” and squash “dissenting opinion.” The chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas describes the list as an information resource, providing information on wayward instructors before students sign up […]
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Concordia University in St. Paul made news by cutting regular tuition costs by a hefty 33.7 percent–$10,000–leaving students to pay $19,700 if they receive no assistance or discounts. But the reduction disguises a fact true at Concordia and at most every other private schools: up to half of undergraduates don’t pay the full fee. At […]
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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 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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If African American students are disciplined in schools at a higher rate than are white students, the obvious reason is that African American students commit a disproportionate number of infractions. Not according to “disparate impact” (or “disparate outcomes”) thinking, however. Any time one sees significant gaps in black and white treatments or results–suspensions, test scores, […]
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Here’s a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the unionization of graduate students at private universities, an issue soon to be decided by the National Labor Relations Board. It seems that the whole matter comes down to a definition: are graduate students students or employees? The American Council on Education says, “Students enroll […]
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A report has been issued by the Coalition of the Academic Workforce that makes for depressing reading. It’s called “A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members,” and it offers preliminary findings of a survey of contingent faculty members and instructors in higher education. What is most depressing is not the median compensation adjuncts receive for teaching–overall, […]
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It wasn’t so long ago that the infrequent charge of liberal bias on college campuses was met with mockery and disdain. The allegations go all the way back to William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale (1951) and Russell Kirk’s Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition (1955), neither of which earned the authors anything […]
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On May 25th, the House of Representatives passed what is called the Flake Amendment, which prohibits the National Science Foundation from funding projects in political science. Here are Congressman Jeff Flake’s words on the House floor from May 9th: “Let me simply say I can think of few finer examples to cut than the National […]
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The Washington Post and the president of Georgetown University have defended the appearance of Kathleen Sebelius at a commencement ceremony on the grounds of basic academic mission. The Post cited “the proper role of a university and the importance of vigorous, open debate, even–or perhaps especially–involving matters of intense controversy and religious disagreement.” In his […]
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Posted by Mark Bauerlein and Richard Vedder The removal of Naomi Shaefer Riley from the blogging staff of the Chronicle of Higher Education has been widely circulated in the cybersphere and the press, including Riley’s own account in the Wall Street Journal and many of our own contributors at Minding the Campus. All of them […]
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As has been reported here and here and here, some 90 Georgetown University professors and administrators sent a letter to Congressman Paul Ryan in advance of his speech on campus last week. The main point the letter makes is that Ryan’s political outlook and the budget that issues from it violate Catholic teaching, even though […]
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The problem is stated bluntly in this report from the American Association of Community Colleges, entitled, “Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation’s Future.” The report contains an overly-dramatic framing, with dire assertions such as this opening in the Executive Summary: “The American Dream is imperiled. Upward mobility, the contract between one generation […]
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For the Obama campaign, the college campus poses a whole different challenge in 2012 than it did in 2008. Earlier, the campus was one of the most solid and energized pro-Obama zones in the country. The group Students4Obama, which operated on more than 700 campuses, was just one program in the conversion of the campaign […]
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On most any college campus, first-year courses with more than a few dozen students have a high proportion of bored, disaffected, and/or uncertain students. Sometimes they feel that way because course materials just don’t excite them, or because they don’t seem relevant to their backgrounds and futures. But another reason is that neither the pace […]
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A story today at insidehighered.com has a hole in it: the faculty is missing. Entitled “So Close,” the piece covers unionization efforts at University of Michigan by graduate research assistants, those efforts recently blocked by state legislation, signed by the governor, preventing the union from happening. The story contains viewpoints from research assistants, union advocates, […]
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Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, a DC think tank, has a commentary in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education that signals the kind of rhetoric we may expect from proponents of affirmative action as the Fisher case heads to the Supreme Court. It is a mixture of high-mindedness for one side and denunciation […]
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The first sentences of Jeffrey Williams’ essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Deconstructing Academe: The Birth of Critical University Studies”, sounds like an introduction to the many conservative and libertarian critiques of higher education that have appeared in recent decades, starting with Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, Martin Anderson’s Imposters in […]
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As KC Johnson explained here a study by social scientists at Duke found that African American students “disproportionately migrate from science and engineering majors to less challenging majors in the humanities,” thus questioning the benefits of preferential admissions. In response, faculty members and student groups protested. It’s important to examine the actual content of those […]
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“Political and Social Views Decidedly More Liberal.” That’s the first finding in the 2011 American Freshman Survey, a project of the Higher Education Research Initiative at UCLA, one of the largest annual surveys of college students. Last year, the Survey chalked up 204,000 first-year-of-college respondents who filled out a lengthy questionnaire on behaviors, attitudes, and […]
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Another racial hoax on campus surfaced this week, this one at University of Wisconsin-Parkside. WTMJ reported on Feb 2nd that a noose had been found in a residence hall on the previous afternoon, then threatening notes had been sent to the person who reported the initial incident the next morning, along with other African American […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education had a cover story last week by Peter Schmidt on Angana P. Chatterji and Richard Shapiro, two anthropology professors at the California Institute of Integral Studies who have been fired, according to the school, because “they had breached student confidence, falsified grades, misapplied funds, and otherwise engaged in unprofessional conduct, generally […]
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What does a young academic need to do to qualify for tenure? For the answer, take a look at this recent survey of provosts. In a set of questions regarding tenure, the key question was, do you agree with this statement?: “Junior faculty today confront rising standards for tenure–standards that many of their senior colleagues […]
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Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for a Massachusetts senate seat may be most known outside the state for this statement she made a few months back: “You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you […]
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Last week on its “Working It Out” page, The Atlantic Monthly posed a far-reaching question: Should each college be required to prominently post consumer information for prospective students — a kind of nutrition label for higher ed?
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