In Praise of Summer Bridge Programs
Once upon a time, “college” referred to a discrete, limited, and usually brief phase of life. The typical college student typically arrived on campus fresh out of high school and…
Articles
Articles
Harvard’s Just Comeuppance
Despite the best efforts of its media lackeys, Harvard University has spent the better part of the past two years going through the meat grinder of bad publicity. Is this…
The Business of Selling Dreams
The point of a college degree is to gain essential skills and knowledge that support your career. In other words, it is to get a job in a field you’re…
How Strong Is the Ivy League Curriculum?
We hear over and over that the eight universities comprising the Ivy League are elite institutions. They train our future leaders and do so much to advance knowledge. That’s what…
Five Steps to Revive the Liberal Arts
For centuries, the liberal arts have been a cornerstone of academic life at Western universities. A liberal-arts education offers an interdisciplinary foundation in the humanities, natural and social sciences, and…
RE: Johnson & Wales
I am a former trustee and graduate of Johnson & Wales University (class of 1973). I served as a trustee for over seven years and during that time worked to…
Colleges Are Reaping the Anti-Natalist Whirlwind
A recent report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) forecasts that this fall will be the last year of college-admissions bounty, with high-school graduates nationwide hitting their…
RE: “The Rise and Fall of Johnson & Wales University”
Johnson & Wales University was founded as a secretarial/business school in 1914 by two women, Gertrude I. Johnson and Mary T. Wales. When I joined the faculty in 1968, it…
Not All New Credentials Are Created Equal
A new report from AEI and the Burning Glass Institute offers a data-rich yet sobering diagnosis of modern credentialism. As Americans have sought faster, cheaper alternatives to traditional college degrees,…
The Diversity Game Is a Gigantic Con
In his famous story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Andersen imagines a situation where everyone fears to speak the truth about an obvious falsehood, namely that the emperor’s supposedly…