Grading and Moral Hazard
As political pressures for equity—equality of outcome—have grown in recent years, traditional methods of evaluating college students have come under threat. As the proportion of the population going to college…
Articles by John Staddon
Larry Chavis and the Decay of the Academy
Larry Chavis is clinical professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC. He has taught there for 18 years on a renewable contract. He has now…
Is a New Campus Speech Initiative For Real?
Thirteen college presidents, including those of Duke, Cornell, and Rutgers, have signed on to the “Campus Call for Free Expression” (CCFE), a project organized by a low-profile Princeton-and-Woodrow-Wilson-related group called…
Science Needs Honesty, Not Affirmative Action
Holden Thorp is a very clever fellow. With a PhD in chemistry from Caltech and after some business ventures and a spell teaching at the University of North Carolina at…
Credo Quia Absurdum: Education and the Cult of Anti-Racism
The notion of antiracism now dominates at all levels of education, from infant to university. In a previous piece, I described how the 2017 President of American Educational Research Association…
Math Teachers are Taught that Elementary Math Education is a “Struggle for Justice”
Does the average person have any idea what is now considered “normal” in the field of K-12 education? I already had some misgivings after reading Jay Schalin’s devastating review of…
Diversity Über Alles: Science Is Threatened by Identity Politics
I have worked in academic science my entire life and I have never seen any sign of racism, systemic or otherwise. On the contrary, I have seen people go to…
An Open Letter to Duke President Price about Anti-Racism
Dear President Price: On June 17, you published a 1,400-word “Statement to the Community Regarding Anti-Racism.” The document contains many expressions of concern, fully in tune with the current national…
If All Men are Created Equal, Why Do We Need Grades?
I just finished a fascinating book, The Recovery of the West, by polymath Englishman Michael Roberts. Roberts became famous as a poet, but was trained as a scientist and spent…
Why Do American Universities Lead the World in Scientific Research?
Miguel Urquiola is professor and chair of the department of economics at Columbia University. His special field is education and his book Markets, Minds, and Money: Why America Leads the…