It seems to me that Texas always likes to try to outdo everyone else—think of outsized political personalities like Lyndon B. Johnson. Maybe the state has something of an inferiority complex that it thought it could remedy by adroitly using its massive oil revenues. Two large direct beneficiaries of those revenues are the University of […]
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Is there hope for higher education? If so, it will be found at the University of Austin (UATX). In an email shared with Minding the Campus yesterday, Pano Kanelos, formerly dean of Christ College, the Honors College of Valparaiso University, and now founding president of UATX, gave news of “officially announcing the launch of America’s […]
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By Stuart Taylor, Jr. and Richard Sander Even for people who approve in principle of some use of racial preferences in university admissions — notably including Justice Anthony Kennedy — the size of the preferences, and of the resulting racial gaps in academic performance in college and beyond, should matter a great deal. So it’s […]
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“Mend it, don’t end it” was the famous advice on affirmative action from Bill Clinton, who did neither. There are, of course, other useful slogans, such as “Muddle it,” which the Supreme Court essentially did in the 2003 Gratz and Grutter cases. The Court held that the University of Michigan could not give a fixed […]
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On the day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v. Texas, a case challenging racial preferences in college admissions, the Wall Street Journal published a piece purporting to give “A Liberal Critique of Racial Preferences.” Author Richard Kahlenberg argued (as he almost always does) in favor of changing “affirmative action” to a system […]
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The Supreme Court holds oral arguments tomorrow in Fisher v. Texas, possibly the most consequential case in years involving affirmative action. Many of us critics of racial preferences are optimistic that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote, will agree to modify if not overrule Justice O’Connor’s ruling in the 2003 Grutter case, which, in […]
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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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Browsing through the collection of over 70 pro-“diversity” amicus briefs submitted on behalf of the University of Texas in the Fisher case, I am reminded, as I often am, of how eerily the current defense of “taking race into account,” i.e., preferential treatment based on race, resembles the old Southern arguments in defense of segregation. […]
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The ongoing controversy over University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus is a textbook example of how a legitimate scholarly dispute can turn into a political witch-hunt. Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at Texas’s flagship campus in Austin, published a peer-reviewed paper in June in the journal Social Science Research concluding that the adult children […]
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Those of us who were disappointed when a divided Supreme Court upheld the distribution of burdens and benefits based on race in Grutter are hopeful that decision might be overturned — or that at least its most deleterious effects might be reined in — when the Court revisits affirmative action next fall in Fisher v. […]
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Inside Higher Ed reports this morning that the University of Texas has hired a big Los Angeles-based law firm, Latham and Watkins, to defend its race-based admission policy before the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, which the Supreme Court will hear next fall. “The law firm, with extensive Supreme Court expertise, will […]
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On March 14, Washington Post reporter Daniel de Vise, in his piece “Trying to assess learning gives colleges their own test anxiety,” reported that the University of Texas at Austin ranks very low in achievement of student learning. “For learning gains from freshman to senior year,” writes de Vise, “UT ranked in the 23rd percentile […]
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“Diversity,” as everyone surely knows by now, is the sole remaining justification for racial preference in higher education allowed by the Supreme Court. Defenders seem to regard it as even more essential to a good education than books in the library or professors behind the podium. But a funny thing has been happening on the […]
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As you probably know by now, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Fisher v. Texas, depending on your point of view a promising or threatening challenge to affirmative action. Major and minor media, blogs, whatever, are all filled with cries of hope or wails of fear that the racial preferences sanctified in Grutter will […]
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If college and university officials finally want to solve the longstanding problems ofmediocre retention rates and pitiful graduation rates, then a magic, off-the-shelf solution awaits them. It’s called MyEdu, a private company that claims its website will help colleges solve the problem of disappearing students. How? By allowing students to see such titillating facts as […]
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Remember the furor last spring over the release of “productivity” figures at Texas public universities? The figures displayed for all to see how much money every instructor in the University of Texas (UT) system was being paid, along with numbers of students taught and research dollars generated. The furor spread to other universities and hasn’t […]
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Stuart Taylor, my colleague from the lacrosse case, and UCLA Law School professor Richard Sander, have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Fisher v. University of Texas, the University of Texas racial preferences case. Hopefully the brief will achieve its purpose; it certainly presents a compelling indictment of the racial preferences structure […]
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Some key questions are rarely asked about the success or failure of affirmative action programs on college campuses. Among them are: Does ignorance foster negative racial stereotyping? Does the greater opportunity for contact between people of diverse races and ethnicities brought about by “race-sensitive admissions” help prejudiced whites overcome their prejudice against blacks and other […]
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The Chancellor of the University of Texas system has issued a disappointing response to pressure from the public and Governor Rick Perry for greater accountability on the system’s nine campuses. Chancellor Francisco
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One of the less inspiring features of academia over the years has been the tendency of the professorate (or at least a vocal portion of them) to respond to certain ideas with contempt. Twenty years ago it was “political correctness” that earned their scorn–that is, denying there was any such thing–and ten years ago it […]
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It’s hard to tell whether it’s a news story or a media meme: Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, a fan of Texas Republican Gov. (and current GOP presidential candidate) Rick Perry, is reportedly considering foisting on Florida’s public universities the same much-criticized reform proposals that Perry has been trying to foist on public universities in […]
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A huge brouhaha has erupted over the release and interpretation of data about the faculty of the University of Texas, centering on whether a relatively few individuals are doing most of the teaching at the system’s flagship institution, UT-Austin. Two reports drew most of the fire, one by my organization, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity […]
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The firing of a controversial aide to the University of Texas system has triggered a full-blown debate over the productivity of teachers and whether “star” professors who teach few classes are really worth the cost to the public. Rick O’Donnell, dismissed on April 19 after only 49 days on the job as special adviser to […]
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The Center for College Affordability and Productivity has published an important report, “Faculty Productivity and Costs at the University of Texas at Austin,” based on data recently made available to the public, thanks to the efforts of reform-supporting regents at the UT system. Co-authored by Richard Vedder (the Ohio University economist), Christopher Matgouranis and Jonathan Robe, the report uses […]
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If the 80 percent of faculty at the University of Texas-Austin with the lowest teaching loads were pushed to teach just half as much as the 20 percent of faculty who do most of the teaching, tuition could be cut by more than half. That’s the stark conclusion of a preliminary report from the Center for College […]
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Below, my colleague Charlotte Allen appropriately laments the recent 5th Circuit decision upholding the University of Texas’ racial preferences scheme, in the process expanding the scope of Grutter. She also praises the de facto dissent of Judge Emilio Garza. Garza’s opinion is worth reading in full, if only because it represents a rare instance of […]
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit not only upheld racial preferences in college admissions decisions on Jan. 18 but upheld them with a vengeance. The Fifth Circuit’s three-judge panel unanimously agreed, in Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin, that UT’s flagship campus in Austin could consider an applicant’s race and ethnicity […]
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What if all college professors were forced to be higher-education entrepreneurs, with salaries pegged to the number of students they attract to their classes? That’s the model recently proposed by a Texas professor who styled himself “Publius Audax” on a Pajamas Media blog. Publius launched his proposal, he wrote, as the solution to a projected […]
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In his recent speech at the University of Texas in Austin, President Obama expressed deep unhappiness that the United States is no longer the country with the highest percentage of college graduates in the 25 to 34 age bracket. By 2020 he wants us to regain the top position we enjoyed ten years ago before […]
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The hysterical reaction of some professors at Texas’s public universities to a new state law requiring them to post their resumes and course syllabi online says more about the paranoia and elitism of the professoriate than about the supposed witch-hunting mentality behind the new law. The law, Texas House Bill 2504, passed in May 2009, […]
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