How to Control College Costs in 2023 and Beyond
TRY WORKING HARDER The college-costs question invites a raft of sensible responses. But I’m a simple guy, and I’ll offer a simple place to start: Students, teachers, and staff should…
Articles by Phillip W. Magness
No, There Is Not a “Neoliberal” Poltergeist in Higher Ed
Higher education suffers from a multitude of flaws. University marketing departments habitually over-promise the benefits of their degree programs to unsuspecting high-school students. Mandatory “general education” classes extract sizable tuition…
Fit to Print? UNC’s Settlement with Nikole Hannah-Jones is Bad News
A reporter who hasn’t dreamt of one day writing for the New York Times is a rare bird. “I’ll start with my local newspaper,” they tell themselves. “Then I’ll move…
The Purely Imaginary ‘Rightward Transformation’ in Higher Education
One of the most peculiar claims to gain currency in higher education holds that academia has become captive to nefarious monied interests on the political right. Writings in this genre…
What the Hoax Papers Tell Us about the Decline of Academic Standards
By now, most followers of the higher education press have heard of the “grievance studies” or Sokal Squared hoax. In this incident, a team of three researchers successfully published several…
Are Full-Time Faculty Being Adjunctified? Recent Data Show Otherwise
The “adjunctification” phenomenon is a familiar concern to most recent Ph.D. graduates, as well as a recurring criticism of perceived trends in faculty employment. One professor recently wrote that it…