Here, in a nutshell, is the human toll of the student-loan mess: it is forcing many recent grads to defer marriage and having children; it is hobbling many prospective entrepreneurs that our economy badly needs and may well delay the retirement of new grads by 11 or 12 years. The total student-loan debt hit $1 trillion dollars […]
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Michelle Obama would like more students to attend college. In a speech on November 12, which was immediately recognized by the media as a major shift in policy emphasis, Mrs. Obama told students at a Washington, D.C. high school that the administration would work hard to increase the number of low-income students who pursue college […]
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Most parents, college graduates, or even legislators could be excused for lacking a detailed sense of the state of affairs on college campuses today, since higher education policy issues rarely emerge in the mainstream media. This pattern makes the one-sided coverage in the one newspaper–the New York Times–that regularly covers higher-ed issues especially objectionable. A […]
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Like compulsive Las Vegas gamblers, many university presidents like to make big bets hoping for large payoffs. And like most gamblers, they usually lose. But they have a big advantage over those going to Vegas: they are gambling with other people’s money. The most famous form of higher education gambling involves football and basketball, where […]
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Is a MOOC more like an ATM or an American Express Centurian card? The former provides a service to everyone with a bank account. The latter serves a smaller niche of the prosperous few. Like an ATM, MOOCs are automated dispensers providing accessible, on-demand service to thousands of users. They faithfully output course material, input […]
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Peter Wood’s article “New York’s Left-Most Mayor Takes Over” was cross-posted by City Journal, where it drew a protest from the CUNY administration and a response from the author. Michael Arena, CUNY: Peter Wood is inaccurate when he states that Mayor Bloomberg conceived of CUNY’s Pathways general education framework. Unfortunately, the writer did not check […]
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On two issues a chasm exists between the academic mainstream and views outside the campus walls. The first, of course, is using racial and ethnic preferences in faculty hiring procedures and (except for Asians and Asian-Americans) in elite university student admissions. A virtual article of faith in the academy, the use of racial preferences attracted […]
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Janet Napolitano left her post as Secretary of Homeland Security in July to become the president of the University of California. The decision of the UC Regents to appoint her surprised me. As I wrote at the time, she had “no discernible qualification” for the position–other than a politician’s ability to raise money and a […]
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An important victory for FIRE in the organization’s efforts to encourage the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to return to a position of respecting the due process rights of the nation’s college students. Last week, the OCR (which under 1st-term Obama appointee Russlynn Ali consistently ignored FIRE) sent a rather churlish letter to FIRE president […]
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Most readers of Minding the Campus are well aware of the phenomenon of “mismatching” in colleges first brought to national attention in regard to African American students by Cornell economics professor Thomas Sowell in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Sowell showed that many of the black students at Cornell, who often had scores on national exams […]
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Brandeis University gave a surprising good-bye present to former president Jehuda Reinharz: a post-retirement compensation package of $600,000 a year for little apparent work. Indeed, Reinharz is earning another $800,000 annually in a full-time job for the Mandel Foundation (a Cleveland-based charity that has generously supported Brandeis). These kinds of deals are increasingly common in higher education. […]
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The heavily publicized campaign by gay activists against University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus is back in the news, this time with more ominous implications for peer review and academic freedom. A Florida court has ordered that records of confidential peer reviews of scholarly articles be turned over to a self-styled “investigative journalist.” It is […]
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The Yale Daily News has an interesting scoop today–it turns out that the university has the authority to access a student’s e-mail account, without informing the student. The paper interviewed 73 students on campus; only three, according to the Daily News, “were aware of the specifics of Yale’s policy.” The paper’s report further indicates that […]
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Demographics are working against our colleges and universities. The number of graduating seniors, especially those from families who can pay full tuition, is dropping. So colleges and universities have more seats than there will be students to fill them. This story has been told again and again, so it’s difficult to make it interesting. But […]
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One of the architects of the MOOC revolution has decided that the movement should go in a different direction. In a lengthy interview with Fast Company, Sebastian Thrun, the inventor of the MOOC platform Udacity, announced that he’s shelving his original goal to displace traditional higher education by delivering free online courses to millions of […]
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New York City is bracing for the arrival of its new mayor, Bill de Blasio, whose policy preferences are rooted in the left-wing thinking prevalent in our universities. In his successful mayoral campaign, de Blasio, who collected 73 percent of the vote, had much to say about K-12 education and pre-K education. De Blasio expressed […]
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Asian and Asian-American students, an increasing presence in our college campuses, are carrying a crucial message that the rest of Americans have trouble hearing: that college costs too much time and money to be devoted predominantly to fun and games. Americans generally underestimate the salience of education in most Asian cultures. Take Korea. South Korea […]
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In Cathy Young’s excellent article on the “campus rape that wasn’t” at Ohio University, she referenced an open letter, penned by 34 Ohio University professors, expressing “deep concern” about the purported assault. You’d think, in light of the experience of Duke’s Group of 88, college faculty would be reluctant to pen open letters about sexual […]
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The perceived threat of a MOOC tsunami presumes that vast numbers of students will opt for supersized online courses in place of smaller, traditional classrooms. And so far, millions have already enrolled in MOOCs. The platform is versatile and the course offerings broad. Mid-career professional development? Check. Remedial classes at community colleges? Check. Elite DIY-Ivies […]
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Perhaps because of my experience with the Group of 88 in the Duke lacrosse case, I’m always a little suspicious when I see an open letter signed by dozens of professors at an elite school attacking their institution’s student-athletes. Recently, 63 professors at Colgate signed an open letter insinuating–though never quite coming out and making […]
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