Academic Groups Respond to Abortion Decision
"The Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood decisions, which upheld the right of a pregnant person to get an abortion, received mixed reactions from academic organizations." - Inside Higher Ed, 6/27/22
Under Investigation for Criticizing Roe Decision
"As Americans across the country continue to react to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, eight law students at American University are under investigation for criticizing in a private group chat the draft opinion of the abortion ruling leaked last month. Another student filed a harassment complaint against the chat group, arguing that their comments amounted to discrimination against him for his religious and antiabortion beliefs." - Inside Higher Ed, 6/27/22
Supreme Court Sides With Coach Over Prayers on 50-Yard Line
"The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The case pitted the rights of government workers to free speech and the free exercise of their faith against the Constitution’s prohibition of government endorsement of religion and the ability of public employers to regulate speech in the workplace. The decision was in tension with decades of Supreme Court precedents that forbade pressuring students to participate in religious activities." - New York Times, 6/27/22
In Princeton’s Contempt for Justice, Shades of Duke Lacrosse
"If this were an aberration in the academic world, Princeton’s injustice would not be a cause for serious concern. But university presidents striving to be politically correct have frequently thrown principles and fair play aside to appease campus militants, particularly on matters involving race." - The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, 6/27/22
Tulane Admitted Two-Thirds of Students Through Early Decision
"Tulane University has become more and more popular with applicants in recent years. Last year, Tulane received more than 45,000 applications, a record, which was 55 percent more than the university received five years earlier. Last year, the university announced that half of the students who enrolled applied early." - Inside Higher Ed, 6/27/22
The Key to Making College Admissions Fairer
If quality education is the key to success, then the transformation of a race-based affirmative-action program to a class-based one would be a more effective policy for providing better opportunities to students most in need. ... Establishing a college-admissions system that incorporates students from every economic background could be the first step to making the American dream attainable once more." - National Review, 6/26/22
Don’t blame teachers unions for bad schools. Worry instead about inertia.
"The real villain is the administrative inertia found in nearly all human organizations, including school systems. Innovative teachers discover their best ideas look too risky to principals or too expensive to district administrators. School boards have never spent much time on what happens inside classrooms and thus rarely engage with such reforms. The same is true of teachers unions." - Washington Post, 6/26/22
How much will you pay? Navigating the true cost of higher education
"High school and college graduation ceremonies across the country have wrapped up, and a new generation of students is preparing to begin their higher education. Or perhaps not. A recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows 662,000 fewer students enrolled in undergraduate programs in spring 2022 than a year earlier, a decline of 4.7 percent." - The Hill, 6/26/22
The Port Huron Statement at 60: Still Not as Good as Its Counterpart
"On June 15, 1962, members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) met for their first national conference at a labor-union retreat camp just outside of Port Huron, Mich. They produced the famous Port Huron Statement, which outlined the ideology of the New Left in its discomfort with the U.S. posture in the Cold War and other policies or institutions its members believed led to oppression." - National Review, 6/26/22
Colleges should do more to slow down ‘fast thinking’
"Administrators and faculty should lay the foundation for slowing down fast thinking in and outside the classroom, at orientations and convocations, and in communications to alumni and parents of undergraduates, before heated controversies arise. When they do, college and university officials should condemn offensive speech and behavior but have the courage — and it will take courage — to distinguish incidents that are unrepresentative from those that indicate a systemic problem, and base policies and responses on a careful assessment of all available evidence, even when that takes time." - The Hill, 6/26/22
Fantastic! Love your blog.
Okay, here we go again with the all-to-common misunderstanding of textbook pricing. I agree that if you’re going to buy, the best prices are not at the campus bookstore. But please understand that it is the used book market that forces publishers to jack up their new prices and bring out frequent new editions in the first place. The publishers and authors do not make a penny from used book sales, so must make up their costs and a reasonable profit (none of us are getting rich from writing textbooks and the publishers are dying) on new sales only. Students buying new books are subsidizing their friends who buy used.
I don’t know too many people who are willing to produce quality content for free, whether we’re musical artists or textbook writers. What we need is a new business model that takes the used book market out of the loop. A one-time download, like iPod, worked in the Napster case, and it will work here as soon as students are ready for it. As an author, I’d love to see this happen.