Dec 10, 2025

The Complex World of Student Journalism

Recent scuffles at American colleges highlight the need for partnerships.

Unique among the wide variety of American media formats and platforms is the student-run college newspaper. Often hovering somewhere between professional publication and glorified newsletter, student newspapers must constantly navigate…

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The Scientific Mind
Dec 9, 2025

The Scientific Mind: an Update of the 1988 Survey Sketches of the American Scientist

Scientists tend to be on the cutting edge of knowledge—after all, their primary function is to discover new knowledge. Furthermore, their ideas, theories, and beliefs often become important policies. Their…

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Dec 9, 2025

Texas’s Tip of the Spear

Higher-education reform has a new hero, and he hails not from the self-styled patrician environs of the Ivy League but from Texas. We all know how tough it is to…

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Dec 8, 2025

Student Learning in the Higher Education Compact

Introduction The authors of the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education were right to label the section on grade inflation “Student Learning.” The section demands that grades…

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Dec 8, 2025

How Shall Academic Freedom Be Defined?

Martin Center: You have noted that the current UNC System policy manual affirms that academic freedom is essential but does not offer a precise definition. And obviously this has been…

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Dec 5, 2025

Putting the Progressive University in the Dock

Conservatives interested in higher-education reform often ask themselves where things went wrong. Answers usually range from the radicalism of the 1960s to the rise of social media or the triumph…

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Dec 4, 2025

In Praise of the Commission for Public Higher Education

Complaints about the Commission for Public Higher Education’s (CPHE) proposed solutions to accreditation problems are unwarranted. This October, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article titled “Will the Commission…

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Financial Responsibility in the Higher Education Compact

Introduction According to recent Pew Research Center polling, seven in 10 Americans believe the higher education system is headed in the wrong direction. Majorities of Americans also give colleges low…

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Higher Ed’s Diseconomies of Scale

In Texas, we take pride in doing everything BIG. That seems to apply to our university systems, as well. While other states have one or two public university systems, we…

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