If you can’t beat them, join them. So seems to be the MOOC mantra now that “tsunami” hype is fading. Gone is talk of do-it-yourself education replacing credit hours and diplomas en masse. Now MOOC providers are developing elements of the structure of the traditional institutions they once challenged, and focusing predominantly on niche tech […]
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Over the more than 25 years that I have been writing articles and giving talks critical of racial preferences at American universities, I think I have learned something about the contours of the public debate on this issue, especially as it pertains to the more selective institutions. Here are four salient conclusions
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Back in 2008, Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, wrote here that on campus, the word ”sustainability” was moving away from its normal English meaning (prudent use of resources with the needs of future generations in mind) toward a usage with heavy ideological baggage: “sustainability” (definition 2) – a condition that arises […]
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Kevin Carey hates college. Or rather, he hates the higher education industry, the system, the establishment. An encounter on page 39 of his new book, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere indicates one reason why. Carey sits down at a Starbucks in Washington, DC, with a junior at […]
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A campus debate on sexual assault was too much for Emma Hall, a junior at Brown, She had to retreat to a “safe space” because “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs.” Exposure to ideas you don’t already have is problematic on the […]
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Cornell is the latest university to face a due process lawsuit; last week, attorney Andrew Miltenberg filed a suit in New York’s Northern District. (You can read the complaint here.) The specifics are depressingly familiar—though with something of a twist, since Cornell featured one of the earliest post-“Dear Colleague” letter battles over due process. In […]
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The politics of campus due process are most unusual. Since the emergence of crime as a major (federal) political issue in the 1960s, Republicans have tended to be the tough-on-crime party, Democrats more concerned with the rights of the accused, especially when the accused are poor or racial minorities. (Obviously there have been exceptions in […]
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In her new book, Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier attacks “testocracy,” the over-reliance on standardized tests in deciding who gets into college, who has the chance to attend America’s premier institutions, and who is relegated to the cheap seats of community colleges and for-profit schooling. Unfortunately, Guinier’s “Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in […]
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Hillel is an unrivaled center of Jewish life on college campuses. Swarthmore College students decided this week to give up the Hillel name, and thereby break from the organization, because they thought it absolutely critical that its chapter host speakers and cooperate with organizations that denigrate Zionism and wish to expel Israel from the family […]
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Jordan Schneider, like many part-time college instructors, teaches on two community college campuses in order to cobble together a living. He earns a paltry $21,000 per year with no benefits for teaching a larger-than-normal load of four courses per semester. Non-tenure track full-time professors earn $47,000. Established professors’ salaries have remained flat, at between $60,000 […]
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This is the edited transcript of Manhattan Institute’s March 10 panel discussion of “The Truth About Campus Sexual Assault” featuring Heather Mac Donald (City Journal), KC Johnson (Brooklyn College, Minding the Campus) Amy Wax (U. of Pennsylvania Law) and moderator Howard Husock, (Manhattan Institute). *** HOWARD HUSOCK: We have been told that a crisis of […]
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette In the liberal ghetto of Ann Arbor, several University of Michigan administrators recently gathered for a passionate brainstorm. The head of student affairs declared he was simply “going to die” if he heard about one more so-called micro-aggression on campus. When a colleague told him he was “acting crazy” for being so sensitive, […]
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Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School spoke up quickly on the expelling of University of Oklahoma students for their racist chants—it was an impermissible violation of free speech rights. On his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, he wrote: “[R]acist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline […]
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Even Emory, a fairly elite law school, may be part of a “death spiral” from which few law schools will escape. Emory Law professor Dorothy A. Brown acknowledged that in a Washington Post article yesterday. Let me add to her observations from my vantage point as a professor of political science for over thirty-five years. […]
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Grade inflation has been quietly ravaging our universities… in the early 1960s, 15 percent of all college grades nationwide were A’s. Today, that number has nearly tripled—43 percent of all grades are A’s. In fact, an A is now the most common grade given in college nationwide. — Tom Lindsay, Forbes
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Notre Dame made a controversial move this semester by scheduling a for-credit class on white privilege. Shrouded in secrecy, this seminar requires students to apply for and receive departmental approval before actually enrolling—an unusual departure from normal university procedures. Moreover, three professors teach ten students in this one-credit class, while only a handful of Notre […]
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“In April 2011 the Obama administration launched a campaign to expand the role of sexual misconduct tribunals on campus. Schools have been ordered to investigate and adjudicate student reports of sexual assault—whether or not alleged victims have medical exams or file incident reports—and warned not ‘to accord due process rights to the alleged perpetrator’ that would […]
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Governor Scott Walker has called for draconian budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin System: $300 million, including $114 million for my flagship institution, UW-Madison. Coupled with previous recent significant cuts, this move furthers the on-going downward trend of state funding for higher education in nationwide. The Wisconsin legislature has the final say over Walker’s […]
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Earlier this year, Jonathan Chait, a liberal, caused a stir when he argued that “political correctness,” a “system of left-wing ideological repression” has made a comeback among students and intellectuals after a long lull. Among his cases in point was Omar Mahmoud, a University of Michigan student who was fired from the student newspaper, and […]
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The Chronicle quotes New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand celebrating the revised version of the Campus Safety and Accountability Act (CASA), introduced last week, on a an expanded bi-partisan basis (up from eight co-sponsors to twelve), to the Senate. Rejoiced Gillibrand, “”The bill actually has clarified rights for the accused,” since the current system “doesn’t serve […]
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CEI Recently, I wrote about a report to the Senate by a task force of college presidents, on how the Education Department is illegally dumping an avalanche of new rules and regulations on America’s schools, without even complying with the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment requirements. Yet another example of such mischief is the 2014 sexual […]
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