I chair the Governing Board at Grantham University in Kansas City, Missouri, an on-line, for-profit institution. Grantham diverges from Congress’ caricature of for-profits. More than ninety percent of its students have a military background; in fact, most of these students remain in active service as they pursue their degrees. Most are also first generation college […]
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When critics of higher education complain about a lack of “intellectual diversity,” mostly what they deplore is the shortage of conservative professors. But there is much more at stake than that. Consider climate change: As I write this, parts of the nation have endured sweltering heat, serious drought, and treacherous storms, at one point leaving […]
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Why is it admirable to “target” women and minorities for some educational programs but a violation of federal civil right laws to “target” them in others? That’s the question that must be asked about a federal lawsuit filed by seven Mississippi women, five of them African-American, against for-profit Virginia College, […]
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Now that Paul Ryan has joined the Republican ticket, it’s worth considering how his much-discussed budget changes higher education. Ryan wants to cap the maximum amount of Pell Grant awards at the current level of $5,550, eliminating the automatic increase according to inflation. Ryan would also shore up the eligibility requirements, adding a maximum income […]
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How to attend UCLA on the cheap? Be an illegal immigrant. Actually, be a leftist illegal immigrant. UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education and the union-subsidized National Labor College in Maryland have teamed up to establish “National Dream University” for the undocumented. The tuition is low: just $65 per credit hour, in contrast to […]
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In explaining why the American Jewish Committee had (with his help) supported Alan Bakke’s lawsuit against the University of California but also supported the University of Michigan’s racial preferences in Gratz and Grutter, Alan Dershowitz wrote that We feared that our hard-earned right to be admitted on the merits would be taken away. The WASP […]
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This week featured some interesting political news regarding campaign contributions: confirming the partisan shift on Wall Street, Business Week revealed that around 70 percent of Goldman Sachs employees who have donated to this year’s presidential campaign send funds to Mitt Romney. The contrast to 2008, when about 75 percent who made contributions had donated to […]
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If African American students are disciplined in schools at a higher rate than are white students, the obvious reason is that African American students commit a disproportionate number of infractions. Not according to “disparate impact” (or “disparate outcomes”) thinking, however. Any time one sees significant gaps in black and white treatments or results–suspensions, test scores, […]
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I recently wrote here about the unwarranted optimism that the dawn of distance learning brought to higher education in the 1990s. That trip down memory lane might–and probably should–throw cold water on the enthusiasm about online education today. Arguably, the troubles with online education now are no different from those of the old distance learning […]
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The University of Texas has filed its main brief in Fisher v. University of Texas, and it’s a doozy. It argues, among other oddities, that the continuing “underrepresentation” of blacks and Hispanics requires the continued use of racial preferences to increase their numbers, but that the reason for increasing their numbers has nothing to do […]
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Over the past several years, a number of studies have shown that registered Democrats far outnumber registered Republicans in the academy, or in particular academic departments (history, for instance) that would seem to have no reason to have wide partisan imbalances. Invariably, the most interesting thing about these studies is not the finding itself–which, after […]
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Think back. What was the revolutionary technological advance of the 1990s that we thought pointed the way to the future of higher education? It was “interactive television,” of course! Interactive television was at the center of the revolution in education called “distance learning.” It would connect classrooms within a city, state, or even (with some […]
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Scott Rose’s 1,085-word letter to the editors of Minding the Campus does not contest–or find any factual error in–my Aug. 1 article titled “Regnerus and the ‘Liberal War on Science.‘” My subject was the academic hysteria over University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus’s article in the journal Social Science Research concluding that the adult children of […]
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To the Editors: It is quite the laughable bit of hypocrisy, that you hold up Allen Bloom as an intellectual hero, at the same time that you are supporting the unscientific garbage pumped out by Mark Regnerus. Regnerus’s “study” is a control-group, test-group study, in which there is no valid comparison between a test and […]
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Columbia is not the only elite university promoting exclusionary hiring in a big way. The University of Pennsylvania has just announced that it will spend $100 million over the next five years “on hiring and retaining more diverse faculty members.” George Leef asks a very good question: “Why does it cost so much money to simply screen […]
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Just a few lawyerly thoughts to add to KC Johnson’s excellent post yesterday on Columbia University setting aside $30 million to hire female and minority faculty. It was clear enough all along that Columbia’s hiring would be racially discriminatory, if not racially exclusive; and, as Professor Johnson points out, even the pretext that sometimes a (politically […]
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In 2005, amidst the Harvard faculty’s ultimately successful effort to purge President Larry Summers, Columbia president Lee Bollinger announced that his university would launch its own “diversity” hiring initiative. Bollinger committed $15 million to “add between 15 and 20 outstanding women and minority scholars to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences over the next three […]
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Open a marketing brochure for any college or university in the United States and you’ll find an info-graphic touting the variety and number of degree programs that the institution offers. The more options, the rationale goes, the more likely a student will find a desired specialty. The distinction between programs can be subtle, for instance […]
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By Duke Cheston Originally Posted from the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy About a year and a half ago, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro attempted to hire a new chief diversity officer. The university sought an administrator who would focus on increasing appreciation for racial differences on campus–even though UNCG already had […]
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The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has entered into its latest Title IX-related agreement with Xavier University. Unlike the OCR’s agreement with Yale, which used a manufactured controversy to weaken the due process rights of the university’s students, at least at Xavier the OCR involved itself only in response […]
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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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Cross-Posted from Open Market New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants to kick Chick-fil-A out of New York because its CEO, Dan Cathy, opposes gay marriage. Accordingly, she informed the head of New York University (which leases space to the one Chick-fil-A restaurant in New York City) that “Chick-fil-A is not welcome in New York […]
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President Obama issued an executive order on Thursday that created an specific educational initiative for African-Americans. Dubbed the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans, the program aims to increase black children’s access to quality instructors and educational programs from kindergarten to college. While Obama’s professed goal of equal access to a quality education […]
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The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions released a massive and negative report today on the for-profit college industry. In explaining why more than half of students leave for-profit colleges after a median of four months, the report’s main contention is that “Congress has failed to counterbalance investor demands for increased financial returns with […]
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First it was gender quotas for the sciences–and now it’s gender quotas for philosophy. Two philosophy professors are calling on their colleagues to boycott academic conferences that don’t feature at least one woman as a keynote speaker.
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For a half century I’ve vehemently opposed racial preferences in higher education. Opposition was partially ideological–I believe in merit–and partly based on sorrowful firsthand experience with affirmative action students and faculty. Though my principles remain unchanged I am now ready to concede defeat, throw in the towel and raise the white flag. Abolishing racial preferences […]
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UCLA’s “Academic Freedom Committee” has delivered an important document that appears to give carte blanche to professors to introduce unrelated political advocacy into their classrooms–in apparent violation of Regents’ policy. The case involved David Delgado Shorter, a UCLA professor in the “Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.”(His dissertation was entitled, “SantamLiniamDivisoriam/Holy Dividing Lines: Yoeme Indian […]
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Here’s a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the unionization of graduate students at private universities, an issue soon to be decided by the National Labor Relations Board. It seems that the whole matter comes down to a definition: are graduate students students or employees? The American Council on Education says, “Students enroll […]
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(Picture: UC Chico’s 2011 Sustainability Report) California State University at Chico takes sustainability seriously. Yahoo listed it last year as one of the top five ‘green’ colleges in America. The university has made creating “environmentally literate citizens” an official strategic priority, and it has elaborated its general education program to include a “sustainability studies” track. […]
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College is supposed to last four years, right? However, only 31 percent of entering freshmen at U.S. colleges and universities manage to graduate in four years, and only 53 percent obtain their bachelor’s degrees within six years. Indeed, the six-year figure–which typically entails a 50 percent increase in overall tuition–has become so common that it’s […]
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