What SAT Scores Say About Teacher Effectiveness
The SAT has been in the news again, this time because of the claim that test-optional policies are a way for colleges to covertly impose affirmative action. It’s true that…
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Articles
Did You Know? Both Parties Agree that College Needs to Change
When both Republicans and Democrats agree on an issue, the issue must be rather basic. Both parties agree that inflation is not ideal. Both parties agree that literacy is important.…
America Needs Better Teachers
It’s a sad fact that many of our teachers are weak. They’re weak on knowledge of their subjects and weak on teaching technique. Unfortunately, we know little about effective professional-development…
Gov. Cooper’s Race-Preferences Brief is Inherently Discriminatory
On August 1st, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina submitted an amicus brief siding with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in its attempt to use race as a factor…
Engineering education requirements aren’t all that different from law
Being both a US-trained lawyer and having formerly held a professional engineer’s license, I have some personal knowledge of both the engineering and legal professions. The author misunderstands an engineer’s…
Inflation Will Hit Universities Hard
It is indisputable that the U.S. faces the worst inflation in 40 years, an outcome that seemingly no one was predicting a few years ago. The impact on Americans of…
Did You Know? Biden’s Student-Loan Cancellation is a Fiasco
Yesterday morning, President Joe Biden revealed his administration’s plan to forgive billions of dollars in student loans. According to a White House Fact Sheet, the plan will forgive up to…
No, There Is Not a “Neoliberal” Poltergeist in Higher Ed
Higher education suffers from a multitude of flaws. University marketing departments habitually over-promise the benefits of their degree programs to unsuspecting high-school students. Mandatory “general education” classes extract sizable tuition…
Administrative Bloat Harms Teaching and Learning
Over the years, American universities and colleges have slowly drifted away from their central concerns, teaching and learning. This shift is perhaps best seen in the increased number of administrators…
The mismatch admissions problem must stop
To the editor: The Mismatch Problem? Certainly we can and probably should spend the time & effort to study, with significant rigor, the outcomes of mismatched admissions to demanding programs….but…