Over the past few months commentators have appeared on this website to express concern about the state of American higher education. Most have seen this sector as being in tough shape, and at least one has used the word “catastrophe” in their assessment.
Narrow ideological thinking in Higher Education is stunting intellectual development. The “Ideological Imperative” amongst the left is to indoctrinate and aggressively attack any perceived threat or opposition. Recent examples of intimidation and violence on campuses by groups like Antifa are in themselves essentially Fascist tactics. The problem on campuses is obvious to all free-thinking people. Pointing out the problem, unfortunately, is not enough.
As college classes wind down for the year, attacks on free speech on campus are not. Since the end of March, at least two more shout-downs took place: At the City University of New York (CUNY) law school, students shouted at guest lecturer Josh Blackman for approximately 10 minutes before he could continue his remarks.
This past December, PayPal co-founded Peter Thiel put forward what he considered to be the chart of the year (pictured above: the ascending line is student-loan debt). Thiel’s selection for chart of the year illustrated why it is critically important that higher education move in the direction of credentialing courses and acquired skills, not institutions.
In the United States and North America, admissions integrity issues weren’t well-known until the Varsity Blues Scandal. It’s a logical leap to make a connection between students using top essay writing service reviews to gain admissions who then hire others to complete assignments on their behalf.
One of America’s foremost testing agencies, the Educational Testing Service, has released a new report that is incredibly sobering, demonstrating that adult Americans, regardless of educational attainment are, as a group, less literate with respect to both words and numbers, and less capable of solving problems, than counterparts throughout the industrialized world. Moreover, if anything, the problem has worsened over time despite the fact that the formal levels of educational attainment have risen. [...]
As college classes wind down for the year, attacks on free speech on campus are not. Since the end of March, at least two more shout-downs took place: At the City University of New York (CUNY) law school, students shouted at guest lecturer Josh Blackman for approximately 10 minutes before he could continue his remarks. [...]
Let’s imagine the following. After an unsuccessful presidential campaign, a politician in a deeply Republican state has his friends set up a center in the state’s flagship university. His big issue had been foreign affairs and so the university established The Center for Sensible Foreign Policy (CSFP). The politician was named as the center’s director with the purpose of keeping him in the public eye. [...]
Information in the Information Age comes like a flood. Purportedly all you need to know is available in a constant stream of messages containing 140 characters or less. Short bursts, however, leave out the details. [...]
It’s easy to blame sheer greed for colleges raising their prices at breakneck speeds – I know, I’ve done it – but it would be wrong to conclude they’re doing it only because they’re hopelessly money-grubbing. No, as Jacob, McCall, and Stange have found, colleges often have to furnish expensive amenities, dorms, etc., to compete for students. [...]
We’ve reached the point where even professors at prestigious law schools are talking about the desperate straits they are in. On March 9, the Washington Post ran such an article, “Law schools are in a death spiral. Maybe now they’ll finally change,” by Dorothy Brown, a professor at Emory Law School. [...]
In this heart-rending L.A. Times piece, we see the results of educational malpractice from early school on to freshman year at the University of California – Berkeley has damaged a young black student, Kashawn Campbell.[...]
With the $1.3 trillion student debt tab weighing heavily on American youth, colleges and universities have a pressing responsibility to provide their students with a valuable education. But as more graduates struggle to find work or settle for jobs that don’t require degrees, Americans all over the country are asking themselves, “What are we paying for?”[...]
This spring marks a revolutionary step forward in the Social Progress of the English language. Merriam-Webster has recently announced over 1,000 additions to its Eleventh Edition Collegiate Dictionary. These include lingual innovations such as “weak sauce” and “throwing shade.” These new words do more than streamline and simplify. [...]
As we watch undergraduates march on the quad, occupy the administration building, storm the president’s house, and demand wholesale changes in personnel and policy, let’s understand that the administrators and faculty have created these perceptions of “structural” or “systemic” racism. It comes down to the “mismatch” problem of affirmative action and the tensions it fosters. [...]
Several readers have responded to this piece by noting that amenities such as water parks often aren’t paid for directly by taxpayers, but through such funding streams as student fees. [...]
As for-profit colleges continue to take rhetorical, legal, and financial beatings, it is worth putting into context who their students are. Generally speaking, the most challenging demographics: disproportionately older, minority, and low-income people. [...]
One of the most difficult things conservatives face in academia happens off campus: press coverage that is just as biased to the left as is the professoriate. [...]
Andrew Rossi’s documentary Ivory Tower (2014) deftly captured the ostentatiousness of higher education’s amenities-industrial complex. [...]
The week after Labor Day is “Radical Rush Week” at UNC-Chapel Hill, sponsored by the ever-popular “UNControllables,” the university’s official student anarchist group. [...]
Across the country, thousands of bright-eyed undergrads are beginning their college career. Likewise, thousands of parents are worrying about their precious child as they start this journey. [...]
One of the truly delightful things about college is that it allows earnest young people to try out all sorts of ridiculous ideas without causing much lasting harm. [...]
Last month, New York Magazine published a profile of Judith Butler that recalls an episode from the 1990s worth remembering.[...]
In 2008, Mr. Boren endorsed Barack Obama for president. “Our most urgent task is to end the divisions in our country, to stop the political bickering, and to unite our talents and efforts,” OU’s president said at the time.[...]
You may have seen the news last year about the University of Chicago cutting ties with the Confucius Institute. As The Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz wrote on September 28, 2014[...]
I know that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is running for President, and the natural inclination is to speak as if he will personally transform things. [...]
So on we go – make that, on our major universities go, sorting out applicants by race, for the high-minded purpose of… [...]
Free speech on campus is less free today than it has ever been in academic history, and it’s getting worse. We now suffer on many colleges campuses from what has been called the “hecklers’ veto”—protesters, through yelling and screaming, and even violence, not permitting speakers to speak through the din. [...]
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” So wrote George Orwell, author of the dystopian classic, 1984. According to a recent study issued by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), the College Board is well on its way to obliterating Americans’ understanding of their history. [...]