Court decisions can have unintended consequences just as statutes or regulations can. The Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power has had a huge impact on higher education,…
Businesses sometimes charge different customers different prices as a way to maximize revenue. Airlines, for example, usually charge more for seats reserved on short notice, on the theory that the…
The May 6 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education contains two illuminating and rather unexpected articles: “Should Everyone Go to College?” by Scott Carlson and “When Everyone Goes to College: a Lesson from South Korea” by Karin Fischer. What makes these pieces so interesting is that they say clearly what so many in the higher education community have long been at pains to deny, namely that a country can go overboard on higher education.
What is needed is for students and parents to realize that swallowing the education that’s given to them isn’t the best way. They’ll have to change things from the bottom by seeking out schools and online programs where student progress comes first.
Since the federal government feeds students in K-12 schools via the National School Lunch Program, it should similarly feed college students who are “food insecure,” argues a new policy brief published last month by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab.
No case better illustrates the degree to which American universities are in the thrall of political correctness than the fight that erupted back in 2014 at Marquette, and continues to this day.
The real harm of grade inflation is that it is a fraud on students who are misled into thinking that they are more competent than they really are.
The American higher education establishment suffers from the same problem as ruling establishments everywhere—the inability to look objectively at itself. Do you think that the members of the old Soviet Politburo ever asked, “Do our five-year plans actually do any good?” Of course not, and members of our higher education establishment are no more inclined to wonder, “Have we oversold college?” Illustrative of the inability of elites to question the basic assumptions of their status is the latest book from William Bowen and Michael McPherson, Lesson Plan.
For the last several years, Big Labor has pushed for mandated higher pay for workers, rallying around the slogan “Fight for Fifteen!” Fifteen dollars per hour as the minimum allowable wage, that is. The academic world has something similar: The movement for a large increase in compensation for part-time, untenured faculty who teach on semester contracts—the adjuncts.
Apparently, the more a school fusses over the inescapable fact that people are diverse, the more likely that it will experience campus turmoil—turmoil that will then be cited as the justification for still more diversity programs. Tennesseans are right to question whether the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Tennessee’s flagship campus produces educational benefits that are worth the cost.