How Bad Is For-Profit Higher Education, Actually?
For about fifteen years, from 1995 to 2010, enrollments grew rapidly in the for-profit higher education sector, but since then have fallen substantially. The reason for the decline is mainly…
Articles by George Leef
Former University President Nails Many of Higher Education’s Ills
Often, the strongest criticisms of higher education come from insiders. One insider is Daniel Johnson, who retired as president of the University of Toledo in 2006 after an academic career…
Title IX Administers Another Flogging to Campus Free Speech
When Congress wrote the 1972 amendments to the Education Act, it meant to prevent colleges and universities that received federal money from discriminating against students based on sex. Title IX…
How Nike Transformed the University of Oregon
While money is not the root of all evil, it is undeniably responsible for the transformation of the University of Oregon (UO). It changed from a typical state flagship where…
The Professor Who Was Harassed for Pointing Out the Truth
That famous line from the movie A Few Good Men—“You can’t handle the truth!”—applies more and more to the world of higher education. If you doubt that, consider the case…
Why Shouldn’t College Students Have the Equivalent of Miranda Rights?
Colleges and universities need rules defining unacceptable behavior and how students accused of infractions of those rules will be treated. Because determinations of guilt can have serious, long-lasting consequences, schools…
The Democrats Retake the House; Now What for Higher Ed?
Back in the summer, it seemed that the Republican/conservative vision for higher education reform was building momentum. A House GOP bill called the PROSPER Act was on the verge of…
What Do College ‘Chief Diversity Officers’ Accomplish?
Over the last few decades, the number of college administrators has grown far more than the numbers of students and faculty. Amid this administrative bloat, the greatest growth has been…
Higher Education and the Threat of Fascism
In a recent essay published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley is haunted by a spectre—the spectre of American universities aiding the rise of fascism.…
Exposing the Harms of the ‘Diversity Delusion’
On November 7, 2006, Michigan voters passed Proposition 2, a measure that banned the use of racial preferences throughout state government and state universities. The next day, University of Michigan…