Dear Humanists: You Have Done That Yourself
Every time I read an op-ed piece from some English professor (and isn’t it always an English professor?) whining about the demise of the humanities, in The Chronicle of Higher Education or elsewhere,…
Articles by Rob Jenkins
The Case for Reopening College Campuses
Higher education media has gone “all in” for keeping college campuses closed this fall, with articles like “The Case Against Reopening” in The Chronicle of Higher Education and “Colleges Are Deluding Themselves”…
How Colleges Can Survive the Coming Enrollment Crash
Nationwide, higher education enrollment has been trending down for several years. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2019 was the eighth straight year of decline, with an overall drop…
No, the World Doesn’t Need More Humanities PhDs
In May, The Chronicle of Higher Education asked four academics from across the country to weigh in on the “adjunct crisis.” The results were predictable, with most of the blame directed at the usual…
Why Conservative Policymakers Should Support Community Colleges
In the first installment of this series, I offered several reasons why conservative families ought to consider sending their kids to the local community college. This time, I would like…
The Conservative Case for Community Colleges, Part I: To Parents
For many parents, the prospect of sending their kids off to college can be daunting. If the price tag alone doesn’t scare them silly, there are more than enough stories…
Notes from the Free Speech Underground
In October, I attended the first-ever FIRE Faculty Conference. If you’re not familiar with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), you should be—assuming you support free speech, open inquiry,…
Let’s Not Throw the Dual Enrollment Baby Out with the Bathwater
Dual enrollment programs, which allow high school students to take college courses for college credit, have been getting some bad publicity lately. In 2013, the popular college watchdog site Minding…
Why College Graduates Still Can’t Think
More than six years have passed since Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa rocked the academic world with their landmark book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Their study of more…