Academic Freedom Doesn’t Mean Grandstanding
Earlier this summer, Harvard dean Lawrence Bobo wrote an essay for the Harvard Crimson that provoked a chorus of criticism, much of it justified. Reflecting on the post-October 7 turmoil…
Posts tagged with
“Wall Street Journal”
The Emptiness of College Rankings
Inputs are out, and outcomes are in. So goes the current thinking about the methodology used to create college rankings. The publications that tell us which colleges are best, next…
How to Cut Costs on Campus
In my last article for the Martin Center, I outlined how increasing tuition discounts are indicative of a looming financial crisis for many colleges and universities. Tuition discounting and a…
The Decline (and Fall?) of College
“A majority of Americans don’t think a college degree is worth the cost,” wrote Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Belkin in late March. That revelation was inspired by the results…
Did You Know? Survey Paints Grim Picture of Academia, But Signs of Hope
Free speech in higher ed is threatened, and leaders in our academic institutions won’t save it. “Unless reforms come from outside the academy,” writes Eric Kaufmann in The Wall Street Journal, “universities…
What the Feds Can Do for Higher Education: Appoint Richard Vedder
Assuming that Betsy DeVos, the new secretary of education, has sufficient commitment and stamina, she will change how her department addresses K-12 education. Her support of school choice through charter…
The Modern University’s Greatest Failing
In 2006, I clipped a “Non Sequitur” cartoon that captured perfectly the mystique that surrounds our nation’s universities. The cartoon pictured a professor ensconced in a cubicle surrounded by an…
The High Cost of Cultural Amnesia
Famed literary critic George Steiner once said that cultural knowledge allows one to “resist” and that “no one can make a zombie of you if you carry [cultural knowledge] inside…
The Burden of Uncle Sam’s “Generosity” Towards College Students
It was a bad idea for the federal government ever to get into the business of financing college with its various grants and loans, but at least in the old…
The Education Department Gives ITT the Death Penalty
Foremost among the criticisms of the way our administrative law system works is that bureaucratic agencies get to act as lawmaker, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. That…