A Book Full of Advice for High School and College Grads
America’s education establishment beams out a message to young people like a pulsar: Go to college! A high percentage of them do. Once the students are enrolled, however, the schools…
Articles by George Leef
Our Accreditation System Has Bennett College Struggling for Life
Founded in 1873 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Bennett College is one only two of historically black colleges just for women. It has been a four-year college since 1926, but in…
Can Americans ‘Handle the Truth’ About Individual Achievement Differences?
In the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, there is a courtroom scene where the prosecuting attorney (played by Tom Cruise) tells the defendant Marine officer Nathan Jessup (played by…
Caveat Magister: Even Medical Professors Must Not Say Politically Incorrect Things
How far has the United States gone down the road of punishing people for uttering politically incorrect thoughts? Very far indeed, as an incident at the University of Louisville shows.…
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…
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…