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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The recent story of the City University of New York is a tale of CUNY leadership making a series of bold and positive moves, and having each one blocked or opposed by leadership of the faculty union. The current PSC leaders opposed the Board of Trustees’ courageous (and at the time, highly controversial) plan to […]
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A few days ago, I received two similar letters from parents asking a very common question, if the quality of college education is declining as rapidly as many people say, where do you think my daughter or son should go to school? I sent a note putting this question to Peter Wood, president of the […]
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By Robert Martin and Andrew Gillen A popular notion within the academy is that teaching quality cannot be measured, but this is an article of faith, not a demonstrated fact. Very few institutions have made a systematic effort to measure teaching quality, largely because the faculty is opposed to it and administrators have little incentive […]
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On paper, accreditation is an amazing system. Among other things, it simultaneously advises colleges on how to improve, enforces a minimum level of quality, provides needed information to policy makers, and protects colleges from government intrusion. It does all this with only a few hundred employees, and a few thousand volunteers. Indeed if accreditation actually […]
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Charlotte Allen’s September 23 post here, College for the Intellectually Disabled, has outraged some Down Syndrome activists, one of whom sent us the letter below. The gist of the letter is that the intellectually disabled deserve to be in college, though by definition, they will be unable to do the work. Kindness and a feel-good […]
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The National Research Council has finally issued its rankings of doctoral programs, with coverage appearing here, here, and here . Right now, everybody is trying to assimilate the results, which are more complicated than those in the 1995 report. The “Data-Based Assessment” runs to 282 pages, the “Guide to the Methodology” 57 pages, and each […]
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On average black students do much worse on the SAT and many other standardized tests than whites. While encouraging progress was made in the 1970s and early 1980s in improving black SAT scores and reducing the black/white test score gap, progress in this direction came to a halt by the early 1990s, and today the […]
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Forbes has issued its 3rd annual College Rankings, delivering its crown to Williams College. Comparison to the U.S. News and World Report list is inevitable so let’s not delay in getting to it; this result, and most of the top 20 rankings on the Forbes list aren’t that dissimilar from the similar U.S. News list […]
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Few higher education groups have as pernicious an agenda as the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). The diversity-obsessed organization combines an unrelenting campaign against quality—especially at schools whose student bodies are more middle- or working-class—with an Orwellian tendency to use words to describe their opposite. Beyond this pattern, AAC&U initiatives tend to have […]
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The long-term decline of graduation rates is one of the most intractable problems facing American Higher Education. Trustees at the University of Arkansas are now mulling what appears to be the most popular solution to the problem – simply lower requirements. Under a current proposal, a requirement for 66 core credits would be reduced nearly […]
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The University of Chicago met widespread national opposition ten years ago after it instituted a new, less demanding core curriculum to make way for more electives. It was part of a plan to make the curriculum significantly less demanding (more “fun”) to attract more students and improve the school’s bottom line. Instead of 21 required […]
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Grade inflation is one of those realities of the post-60s academic world that most college teachers bemoan but feel powerless to do anything about. It is virtually impossible for any single faculty member to do much to stem the tide of ever rising grade distributions. If a faculty member refuses to go along with the […]
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A group called Strong American Schools has just issued a report with the provocative title Diploma to Nowhere. The report is a lavishly produced cry of alarm: our high schools are failing. Millions of graduates are tricked into thinking their high school diplomas mean they are “ready for college academics.” But they aren’t. As a […]
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