Teaching Teachers How Not to Teach
Do our schools of education really do good a job of training teachers?
Articles by George Leef
Good News on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Despite declining enrollments, HBCUs produce many of nation’s black scientists.
The Top 10 Clarion Calls of 2007!
From politically-indoctrinating professors to innovative educational programs, 2007 had it all.
“Conventional Wisdom” Not Always Wise
There’s a famous line of Mark Twain’s that goes, “The trouble isn’t what people don’t know, but rather what they know that just ain’t so.”
That’s every bit as true when it comes to education as in any other field. Ideas that people are certain are true because they’re heard them again and again are often untrue. They form the “conventional wisdom” that gets in the way of seeing things the way they really are.
In a new paper entitled “Over Invested and Over Priced,” Richard Vedder takes a critical look at several pieces of the conventional wisdom about higher education. Vedder, a jovial, outspoken economics professor (at Ohio University) has focused his attention on higher education for the last several years. He was one of the few people on the Spellings Commission who raised deep questions about the value students receive for all the money we spend on higher education. In this new paper, he continues doing that.
Still Needed: An Honest Discussion on Affirmative Action
How important is a college degree from a prestige school? Many believe that having such a degree is extremely important – a virtual guarantee of success in life. The higher education establishment works hard at propounding the idea that without a college degree, a young person’s life will be one of almost Hobbesian misery. The elite institutions go a step further and portray themselves as the essential training grounds for the nation’s leaders. If you accept those views, the destiny of the nation is largely shaped by who goes to college and where.
In his new book Color and Money: How Rich White Kids are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action, Peter Schmidt has swallowed those ideas hook, line, and sinker. That isn’t surprising for a reporter who has been immersed in higher education for many years. Schmidt writes, “In modern American society, many of us assume – or at least desperately hope – that the people in leading positions in government, business, and the professions are our best and brightest….How do we decide who deserves such status? Generally, we rely on academic credentials. We entrust the task of identifying and training our best and brightest to our elite higher education institutions….”
Building Excellence into Higher Education
The American higher education system is often called the envy of the world. Many careful observers, however, find that much of what goes on in the name of higher education is mediocre or worse. The recent Spellings Commission found that American higher education is very high in cost, but to an alarming degree fails to deliver on educational basics for many students.
While the recommendations of the Spellings Commission focus on what the federal government should do, others in higher education prefer to focus on what individual schools should do to make their programs excellent. An assembly of leading educational observers will share their insights at the October 27 conference of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
Every fall, the Pope Center hosts a day-long conference devoted to a key higher education issue. This year’s conference, to be held October 27 at the Hilton RDU Airport-RTP, will be about educational excellence. Do we have it? If not, what can we do?
In addition to hearing nationally acclaimed speakers — from college presidents to intellectual flame-throwers — address these questions, participants can dine with the speakers in small groups the night before by attending the October 26 “Dinner with a Scholar.”
American Higher Education: From Butterfly to Caterpillar to What?
A new paper just issued by the Pope Center, From Christian Gentleman to Bewildered Seeker: The Transformation of American Higher Education by Russell K. Nieli takes a sweeping view of college education in America, from the colonial days up to the present. Nieli shows that the point of going to college used to be the acquisition of a coherent body of knowledge about the world so that the individual might understand its interconnectedness. Today many schools offer the student nothing but a smorgasbord of courses that give little more than a bit of vocational training. Missing entirely is any effort at to achieve what used to be thought a “well-rounded” education.
Nieli’s purpose is to explain how this unhappy metamorphosis came about and he accomplishes that purpose beautifully.
Harvard Dean, a Critic of Today’s Higher Education, to Speak at Pope Center Conference
Each fall the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy hosts a conference focusing on issues in higher education. This year’s conference, which will be held on Saturday, October 27, has the theme “Building Excellence in American Higher Education,” and the keynote speaker will be former Harvard dean Harry Lewis.
Harry Lewis is an ideal choice. He has many years of experience as a professor and administrator at Harvard. Last year he published a book entitled Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. It spells out in detail the reasons why Harvard – and most other colleges and universities – are failing to live up to all their publicity hype.
The most glaring defect Lewis addresses (and which will be the topic of his speech at the conference) is in the curriculum. In years gone by, most colleges and universities required students to devote most of their credits to a core of courses that, by general assent, were crucial to a well-founded education. Some subjects, in other words, were more important than others.
The Firing of Ward Churchill: A Good First Step
Last week, the University of Colorado terminated the employment of Professor Ward Churchill, the head of the “Ethnic Studies” department. It is an exceedingly rare thing for a university to fire a tenured professor and it took Colorado two years of investigation and hearings to finally determine that his employment would be ended.
Churchill’s firing was perfectly justified, but in my view is only the first step that the University of Colorado should take if it is to be truly accountable to the people of the state.
The case is well known, but let’s review the facts.
Keeping College Grads in the State
Politicians will try just about anything that might boost their state’s economy. There aren’t many measures that will actually do that, so they resort to policies that they can plausibly say will produce economic benefits.
One idea that has been cropping up a lot in recent years is that a state can give its economy a lift by trying to keep students who graduate from colleges within its borders from taking jobs elsewhere. Several states have gone down that path, most recently Maine and West Virginia.
In Maine, Governor John Baldacci recently signed legislation that makes residents who graduate from a college or university in the state eligible for ten years of state tax credits of about $2,100 annually as long as the individual works in Maine. In West Virginia, Governor Joe Manchin recently said that in order to get “more of a return” on his state’s investment in higher education, he would like to see residents who have graduated from a college in the state be exempted from the West Virginia income tax until they turn 26. He also suggested giving students who remain in the state tax credits for money devoted to repaying student loans.