If Anthony Carnevale, higher education apparatchik extraordinaire and, according to Inside Higher Ed, “a grizzled expert on educational access and equity,” were a corporation he would be the bluest of blue chips, perhaps even a one-man conglomerate. His resume is a virtual road map of the loftiest sinecures of politically correct labor and educational policy […]
Read More
It’s rare indeed to get an inside look into how the “holistic” admissions process actually works at a major university. The “holistic” approach allegedly treats all applicants individually but, it’s widely assumed, actually serves as a cover to allow public universities to employ unconstitutional, quota-like racial preferences. A first-person recollection of Cal-Berkeley’s “holistic” process penned […]
Read More
On his blog, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw reports an email saying that several Indiana colleges and universities will likely be cancelling some economics classes because of Obamacare. The note says: “I have been teaching multiple sections of economics for four years now at several Colleges and Universities in the State of Indiana….With the implementation of […]
Read More
The “hookup culture” on college campuses has been a subject of much concern (and, one suspects, prurient interest) in recent years. The first dispatches from this new sexual battlefield, starting with reporter Laura Sessions Stepp’s 2003 article in The Washington Post and her 2007 book Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both, treated it as one in which […]
Read More
In a recent post at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation urges professors to “embrace the new academic freedom,” particularly freedom from tenure. Tenure, Carey argues in a fit of hyperbole, “is one of the worst deals in all of labor.” First, only “a few worthy souls use tenure […]
Read More
Yale’s latest report on its new sexual assault policy, written by Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler, is already drawing fire. The feminist blog Jezebel angrily asserts that at Yale, rape “is described as ‘nonconsensual sex,’ and it’s usually punishable by ‘written reprimand.’” Anti-due process activists on campus, according to Jezebel, are similarly infuriated. But at Yale, […]
Read More
Here’s a probable growth area for litigation: suits against colleges for rigging sexual misconduct hearings against males, some of whom are being convicted of rape and other sexual offenses without any semblance of due process. The federal government is implicated here: the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has mandated a lower threshold of certainty in sexual […]
Read More
One of the best tools for gauging the historical knowledge and civic awareness of young Americans is the exam administered to 12th Graders by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in U.S. history and civics. Every few years, students across the country take these low-stakes tests and provide data on how many of them […]
Read More
Brandeis University is hiring a full-time administrator to deal with sexual violence on campus. This might imply that an upsurge of sexual assault is under way on this very quiet, very liberal campus. But that is not the case. Brandeis has the usual elaborate safeguards against such offenses– conditioning at freshman orientation, a strong and […]
Read More
The Boston Globe reports that at least one college, Dartmouth, is making real progress against binge-drinking on campus. Freshmen are banned from fraternity parties for their first six weeks at school. Student-led “Green Teams” circulate at campus parties in groups of four, sober, to watch out for and steady partygoers who may be on the brink of […]
Read More
Here’s an idea much in the news recently: the best way to finance higher education is through post-graduation payments by students based on their income.. Oregon made a splash with legislation calling for a pilot program along these lines; students would pay no tuition or fees while in school, but would repay the state a […]
Read More
How do you end the current disaster where thousands of intellectually mediocre and unprepared kids who should not attend college nevertheless enroll and learn little of value while building crushing debt? And, for good measure, how can we discourage colleges from offering intellectual fluff, e.g., Gender Studies. In other words, return higher education to reasonably […]
Read More
The vultures in academia are out to get Mitch Daniels Jr., the president of Purdue University and former governor of Indiana. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that in e-mails he sent out while Governor, Daniels tried to get Indiana universities to stop using the best-selling A People’s History of the United States, written by […]
Read More
The ratings season has begun. Forbes has just released its Best College list (full disclosure: the Center of College Affordability and Productivity, which I direct, does the rankings for Forbes). The Forbes list, more than that of US News & World Report, emphasizes student concerns -quality of instruction, vocational success of graduates, the amount of […]
Read More
Stony Brook University has received a substantial grant from the MacArthur Foundation to promote – under the direction of sociologist Michael Kimmel – an earnest effort to study “masculinities.” Not men or males, mind you, but masculinities, as if there were an array of mysterious subspecies of human males waiting to be studied. This suggests […]
Read More
I first heard of Trayvon Martin via a posted comment on an article I had written for the Chronicle of Higher Education in early March 2012. In retrospect that seems significant. The comment from some anonymous academic came a few days after the shooting and a month before President Obama observed in a Rose Garden […]
Read More
The OCR is back in action, investigating new claims that college procedures dealing with sexual assault do not support accusers enough and so have violated Title IX. The Los Angeles Times reports that a complaint was filed against USC–by a student who had brought her allegations to police, only to have the DA’s office conclude […]
Read More
A long-time university insider told me she could not remember any prior appointment of a new president of the University of California made in such an unhappy atmosphere. Since joining the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 1966, I’ve seen eight new presidents, and I too have never seen such gloom over any of the previous […]
Read More
Colleges and universities have learned a lot from the late, great bank robber Willie Sutton, who, when asked why he robbed banks, answered “that is where the money is.” In an extension of the Sutton Hypothesis, colleges have learned that an awful lot of the largess that keeps them flush with funds comes from 51 […]
Read More
The Duke lacrosse case represented an almost textbook example of how key elements of the media (notably the New York Times) should not cover sexual assault cases. Uncritical acceptance of Mike Nifong’s version of events, undisguised sympathy toward accuser Crystal Mangum, an utter lack of skepticism about key procedural issues presented by Mangum’s defenders. Yet […]
Read More