Author Profile

Richard Bishirjian

Richard Bishirjian is president of Yorktown University, an online liberal arts college. He earned a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh (1964) and a Ph.D. in government and international studies from the University of Notre Dame (1972) under the direction of Gerhart Niemyer. He did advanced study with Michael Oakeshott at the London School of Economics (1968/69) and studied Sanskrit at Columbia University (1978). Bishirjian taught at universities and colleges in Indiana, Texas and New York. He is the author of a history of political theory and editor of A Public Philosophy Reader. He was appointed by President Reagan as Acting Associate Director of the United States International Communication Agency, now USIA. He served on the staff of the United States Senate. He was president and founder of World News Institute and associate director of Boston University's College of Communication, where he managed continuing education seminars to government and business executives in the Washington, D.C. area. After the fall of the Berlin wall, he was a privatization consultant in Eastern and Central Europe and later for the County of Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Articles by Richard Bishirjian

Mar 8, 2007 ·

The Federal Takeover of Higher Education

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Richard Bishirjian is president of Yorktown University, an online liberal arts college dedicated to teaching the forms of knowledge we have inherited from western civilization.

Two events occurred in Washington, DC, in late February that could foreshadow a significant decline in the independence of American colleges and universities.

First, representatives of accrediting associations, state universities, and private colleges engaged in negotiated ‘rule-making’ with representatives of the Department of Education. This rule-making was to establish procedures by which college students are tested, and by which colleges and universities will be compared on the basis of that testing. The other event was even more ominous — an announcement that actions would be taken to control the independent system of accreditation of American higher education by establishing a national accreditation foundation.