One of the enduring operative principles of higher education has been reliance upon professors to do their work diligently and conscientiously without the eye of a monitor upon them. Yes, there are tenure reviews and other periodic reviews of faculty performance, but the day-to-day functioning of faculty members in their teaching and research has largely gone […]
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Some critics have called for a near-total rollback of the government’s involvement with higher education, including the end of subsidies to low-income students. Last month, for instance, Jarrett Skorup of Michigan Capitol Confidential.com suggested that state and federal governments should quit subsidizing higher education altogether because the aid fails to improve individual economic prospects or […]
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From the National Association of Scholars’ 100 Great Ideas for Higher Education *** Many colleges and universities today use student evaluation questionnaires to evaluate a teacher’s performance. The origin of this seemingly benign tool has much to do with its abuse as a weapon of conformity. The student protesters of the 1960s demanded greater “participation” in […]
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You’d think that after the recent debacle at Brooklyn College, anti-Israel fanatics would give CUNY a break. Guess again. The CUNY Graduate Center has scheduled for this spring a conference on “pinkwashing.” For the uninitiated, “pinkwashing” is the almost comical claim that that the Israeli government highlights its record on gay rights to detract attention […]
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The math is in. Harvard Law School confirmed today that although women are 51 percent of the nation’s population and 48 percent of the law school’s new students, only 20.4 percent of the school’s board of editors have been found to be female. Yielding to no one in the ceaseless quest to enhance its reproductive-organ […]
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Though many commentators have expressed skepticism over the future of traditional higher-ed, at least one group anticipates a bright future: real-estate developers. The Wall Street Journal reports today that some of the largest developers in the United States are gobbling up land to make way for palatial student dorms. Why? As it turns out, student housing is basically recession-proof: […]
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Indebted college graduates have recently begun to ask whether a four-year college education is worth what it costs. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal on February 11, for example, 23-year-old Bryce Harrison, who graduated last May from Goucher College with a political-science degree and about $100,000 in student loans to repay, is […]
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A new study of what high school achievement tests predict about the performance of California high school graduates in their first year at in-state community colleges has found “disturbing” achievement gaps. The study measured students’ performance on the California Standards Test as high school juniors against their first year community college performance in four areas: […]
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A fantastic New York Times piece yesterday shed light on Thomas Edison State College, an accredited state college in New Jersey. The article highlights TESC’s model of awarding credits to students based on demonstrating competency, not earning credits in situ, as is the norm at many schools. Many TESC students, earn credits by cobbling together […]
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Almost everyone is aware of the statistics-based morality on race and ethnicity: if any admired group does not contain the correct proportion of African-Americans and Hispanics, bias can reasonably be inferred. The same bag of statistical assertions which animated much appropriate (and some inappropriate) legal and social change has, of course, migrated over to discussions […]
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In an attempt to buck conventional wisdom, Nicole Allan and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic are tackling what they call “The Myth of the Student-Loan Crisis.” In a neat little infographic, they argue that both the cost of tuition and student debt obligations are lower than we think, that college is always and everywhere a wise investment, […]
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Say you go down to local fishmonger and order a nice tuna steak. You take it home, cook it up, serve it, and find it is succulent and delicious. But before long you have cramps, nausea, and something worse. Chances are what you thought was tuna was another fish, escolar. Tasty but not recommended. The New […]
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By John S. Rosenberg This may be a first: the president of a major research university has just been formally censured by his faculty — a no confidence vote may be coming next month — because of an opinion about a historical event (and a conventional, mainstream opinion at that) he expressed in a university […]
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Most reasonable people realize that the tuition bubble is bound to burst. On line courses are altering the university landscape, reducing costs and the need for brick-and-mortar settings. Moreover, despite President Obama’s call for additional student aid, Washington’s support for higher education is bound to wane in this period of economic exigency. Student aid is […]
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Those who advocate admissions preferences for “diverse” students say that colleges will be better learning environments if the student body isn’t all “the same.” Former Harvard president Derek Bok famously said, “It just wouldn’t do to have an all-white university.” In its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, a majority of the Supreme Court echoed […]
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Readers of Minding the Campus are familiar with the argument that universities produce far too many graduates in “impractical” humanities majors. This point applies especially to graduate education in the liberal arts, where today’s students are welcomed into a leftist fellowship with poor job prospects. Jordan Weissmann of the Atlantic claims to upend this narrative […]
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Past MLA President Michael Berube’s speech to the Council of Graduate Schools, a version of which was published this week at the Chronicle of Higher Education, offers a sober account of the terrible condition of the humanities circa 2013. Professor Berube mentions the job market, which “has been in a state of more or less […]
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A debate has raged for nearly a year over federal government’s funding of political science research. On one side are those who argue that very little public benefit is derived from such funding and that it only furthers Ivory Tower navel-gazing. On the other side are, not surprisingly, the political scientists themselves and those who […]
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In November, I reviewed the new, supposedly “untold” story of 20th century U.S. history penned by Oliver Stone and American University professor Peter Kuznick. (Parents of American University students can spend their tuition dollars having their children enroll in Kuznick’s course, “Oliver Stone’s America.”) In the review, I mentioned that Princeton professor Sean Wilentz had […]
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If I were asked to name the ten organizations most adversely impacting Americans – I would undoubtedly think of a few terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or criminal elements like Russian or Italian Mafia crime families, but also on my list, right below the quasi-corrupt NCAA that exploits young athletes to profit and entertain adults, might […]
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