While this year has become best known as the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, it was also forty years ago that the first African-American Studies department was established, at San Francisco State University. Forty-one fall semesters later, there are hundreds of such departments. Has what they teach evolved with the march of time? What should the […]
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Every now and then an American university sponsors a conference on Israel and Palestine that appears to be an open and fair-minded event, but turns out to be a one-sided anti-Israel rally. Wesleyan University, for example, sponsored one such conference in 2004, with much anti-Semitic commentary and some printed material covered in swastikas. The Toronto […]
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Will ACLU campus events for Banned Books Week feature any of the censored illustrations from the Yale Mohammed cartoons volume?
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Last week, the Boston Globe reported on the founding of a two-year college (for junior and senior transfer students) in New Hampshire. The curriculum of the American College of History and Legal Studies will consist solely of history classes. The college will accept community college transfer students, and has promised small classes that focus largely […]
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Yet another act of censorship by yet another college. St. Louis University is banning David Horowitz as a campus speaker. According to the College Republicans, who had invited the conservative activist to give a talk on October 13, Dean of Students Scott Smith said he could not allow the speech because Horowitz might “insinuate that […]
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By Edward Blum As the saying goes, “fuzzy law begets controversy”, and nothing has proven this maxim better than the Supreme Court’s 2003 landmark ruling on “diversity” in higher education. Lacking clarity, the ruling has left individual institutions to interpret how to achieve diversity on their campuses, stoking never-ending conflict over race and admissions. However, […]
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Community colleges stand to be major beneficiaries of the massive Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act passed by the House on Sept. 17, with about $9 billion in federal dollars to be directed their way if the bill becomes law. Community colleges, as locally based, take-all-comers institutions that typically offer two-year degrees for minimal tuition, […]
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I want to say how pleased I am to join Minding the Campus as a regular blogger. My first in-depth exposure to the power of the blogosphere came during my tenure battle, when I received timely and extremely effective support from bloggers Erin O’Connor and Jerry Sternstein. I quickly discovered that in commenting on technical […]
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The script is almost always the same: a campus conservative group invites a speaker who opposes illegal immigration; angry leftist students denounce him as a white supremacist and shout him down, knocking over tables or breaking a window; the president or chancellor of the university promises to investigate, but no penalty descends on the censors. […]
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Here’s a fun job: adjunct professor, as described by University of Akron adjunct Maria C. Maisto writing in a Sept. 10 manifesto in Inside Higher Education: I teach English composition — one of the most labor-intensive teaching assignments out there. This semester I’ll have to respond to 85 students on two different campuses and almost […]
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Fourteen Columbia professors are protesting the university’s apparent decision to award tenure to Joseph A. Massad, a controversial anti-Israel professor of Arab studies. The professors are from the schools of law, business and public health. They expressed their concern in a five-page letter to the incoming Provost, Claude M. Steele. The letter asserts that the […]
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Test prep pioneer Stanley H. Kaplan, who died this week at the ripe old age of 90, was a living embodiment of the roller coaster changes that have roared through the college admissions scene over the last three decades. He also set the stage for students, and later colleges and universities, to game the system. […]
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Some faculty members in the University of California system plan to stage a walkout starting on Sept. 24—which also happens to be the first day of classes at several of the system’s 10 campuses. The aim of the walkouts is to protest an $813 million cut in state funding for the university system during the […]
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Cuyahoga Community College expects to see nearly 30,000 students enrolled for credit on its three campuses in Cleveland when it opens for the fall semester late in August, with an additional 30,000 taking non-credit courses for job-training “personal enrichment” (instruction in art, photography, and other hobbies). According to campus officials, the 30,000-strong for-credit student population […]
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In an effort to show which colleges are reaching out to low-income students, U.S. News & World Report has published “economic diversity” rankings of American colleges and universities. That sounds ambitious, but the rankings are based solely on the percentage of students at each institution who receive federal Pell grants, which mostly go to applicants […]
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Check out Mariah Blake’s Washington Monthly piece “Pie in the Sky” for the unfortunate story of Ave Maria University.
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Of every 100 kids who enter American high schools, only about 20 obtain a bachelor’s degree within a decade. That is why the proportion of adult Americans with baccalaureate degrees is rising relatively slowly, and why the U.S. has fallen behind a number of other nations in the proportion of young adults with college degrees. […]
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Some of the college selections seem premised on the strength of a college’s activist community (University of Kansas) or environmental studies programs (several) but most of the others are quite sound. The modest list is here.
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The latest installment of the Washington Monthly college rankings is out. Their ranking evaluates such factors as the percentage of students entering ROTC or the peace corps, awards won by professors, and total research expenditures. If you’re a sucker for college lists, you won’t be able to resist this one (here are some reasons why […]
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Almost all of the best-paying undergrad degrees by salary are in engineering, the Huffington Post points out in a gloss on the PayScale rankings of degrees by average salary.
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In a recent interview with Mars Hill Audio Magazine, Stanley Fish insists on a distinction bound to vex his colleagues. Professors must remember, he says, the difference between academic judgment and political judgment. In a classroom situation, academic judgment is the application of academic training to materials within the purview of a discipline, for instance, […]
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Average scores on the SAT dipped a bit for high school seniors who graduated in the class of 2009, and the usual suspects—our friends at the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FAIR) are already using the lower scores to attack the whole idea of standardized testing, a platform that includes not only the […]
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AAUP president Cary Nelson recently e-mailed his membership about an important new venture for the academic union. Proclaiming “this is not your grandparents’ AAUP,” Nelson celebrated the work of the “Department of Organizing and Services,” which had discovered “a faculty band from Ohio performing original songs about the ironies of current academic life.” Perhaps Nelson […]
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The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has released a trustee guide Restoring a Core as a follow-up to What Will They Learn, their recent survey of core curricula (more about that here) Take a look at the “How Will A Core Benefit My Institution” section beginning on page 4 for some interesting examples from […]
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