One of the best tools for gauging the historical knowledge and civic awareness of young Americans is the exam administered to 12th Graders by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in U.S. history and civics. Every few years, students across the country take these low-stakes tests and provide data on how many of them […]
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Brandeis University is hiring a full-time administrator to deal with sexual violence on campus. This might imply that an upsurge of sexual assault is under way on this very quiet, very liberal campus. But that is not the case. Brandeis has the usual elaborate safeguards against such offenses– conditioning at freshman orientation, a strong and […]
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The Boston Globe reports that at least one college, Dartmouth, is making real progress against binge-drinking on campus. Freshmen are banned from fraternity parties for their first six weeks at school. Student-led “Green Teams” circulate at campus parties in groups of four, sober, to watch out for and steady partygoers who may be on the brink of […]
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Here’s an idea much in the news recently: the best way to finance higher education is through post-graduation payments by students based on their income.. Oregon made a splash with legislation calling for a pilot program along these lines; students would pay no tuition or fees while in school, but would repay the state a […]
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How do you end the current disaster where thousands of intellectually mediocre and unprepared kids who should not attend college nevertheless enroll and learn little of value while building crushing debt? And, for good measure, how can we discourage colleges from offering intellectual fluff, e.g., Gender Studies. In other words, return higher education to reasonably […]
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The vultures in academia are out to get Mitch Daniels Jr., the president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that in e-mails he sent out while Governor, Daniels tried to get Indiana universities to stop using the best-selling A People’s History of the United States, written by […]
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The ratings season has begun. Forbes has just released its Best College list (full disclosure: the Center of College Affordability and Productivity, which I direct, does the rankings for Forbes). The Forbes list, more than that of US News & World Report, emphasizes student concerns -quality of instruction, vocational success of graduates, the amount of […]
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Stony Brook University has received a substantial grant from the MacArthur Foundation to promote – under the direction of sociologist Michael Kimmel – an earnest effort to study “masculinities.” Not men or males, mind you, but masculinities, as if there were an array of mysterious subspecies of human males waiting to be studied. This suggests […]
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I first heard of Trayvon Martin via a posted comment on an article I had written for the Chronicle of Higher Education in early March 2012. In retrospect that seems significant. The comment from some anonymous academic came a few days after the shooting and a month before President Obama observed in a Rose Garden […]
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The OCR is back in action, investigating new claims that college procedures dealing with sexual assault do not support accusers enough and so have violated Title IX. The Los Angeles Times reports that a complaint was filed against USC–by a student who had brought her allegations to police, only to have the DA’s office conclude […]
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A long-time university insider told me she could not remember any prior appointment of a new president of the University of California made in such an unhappy atmosphere. Since joining the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 1966, I’ve seen eight new presidents, and I too have never seen such gloom over any of the previous […]
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Colleges and universities have learned a lot from the late, great bank robber Willie Sutton, who, when asked why he robbed banks, answered “that is where the money is.” In an extension of the Sutton Hypothesis, colleges have learned that an awful lot of the largess that keeps them flush with funds comes from 51 […]
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The Duke lacrosse case represented an almost textbook example of how key elements of the media (notably the New York Times) should not cover sexual assault cases. Uncritical acceptance of Mike Nifong’s version of events, undisguised sympathy toward accuser Crystal Mangum, an utter lack of skepticism about key procedural issues presented by Mangum’s defenders. Yet […]
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Using state open-records laws, the Associated Press has gained access to some embarrassing emails sent by Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue, when he was governor of Indiana. Daniels is shown asking that the work of far-left historian Howard Zinn be banned from state schools. We share Daniels’s opinion of Zinn’s work, which, in our opinion, […]
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What would we do without educational research, and how did we manage when there was less of it? A new study I discussed on Monday, for example, informed us that organized students who master advanced subjects in high school do better in college than disorganized students who don’t. The authors of today’s new study, to […]
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Janet Napolitano’s appointment as president of the University of California is among the oddest choices ever for chief executive of a major university. Napolitano has no discernible qualification to serve as president of the nation’s premier public university. This is not to say that she lacks attainments. Before she was appointed Secretary of Homeland Security […]
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A wide array of public interest groups (ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy to the Student Press Law Center) and scholars (including me) have signed onto an open letter from FIRE urging the Education and Justice Departments to retract their Montana “blueprint,” which if applied would impose […]
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A few weeks ago, the Regents of the University of Colorado voted to commission a “political climate” survey of the Boulder campus to determine whether ideological discrimination exists there. Not long after, the AAUP issued a letter in response, warning against the threat to academic freedom that the survey poses. The letter is a prime example […]
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Summer is not considered prime time for student takeovers of college presidents’ offices, but at New York’s Cooper Union, one such takeover, launched May 13, lasted 65 days, until this past Friday. The issue was a decision by the Board of Trustees to charge tuition at the school for the first time in a century. […]
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As a long-time refugee from higher education, I tend to forget — and hence am continually shocked when I rediscover — that denizens of that strange land are often impressed by research findings that those of us who live in more pedestrian territories assume everyone (even college administrators) already knew, without the need of research. […]
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