Seven Ways the Department of Education Has Made Higher Ed Worse
The Department of Education has had, so far as I can see, no positive impact on higher education and has either caused or ignored numerous negative effects. Thus it is a tragedy that the skeptics about creating it did not prevail back in 1979.
Welcome to North Carolina, Secretary Spellings
The search for the next University of North Carolina system president has finally concluded. Margaret Spellings, secretary of the U.S. Education Department during George W. Bush’s second presidential term, was unanimously elected by the system’s Board of Governors on October 23. Spellings, who will take the helm in March 2016, is a moderate Republican, but one who shows some promise of developing into a reform-minded university leader—a very welcome possibility. She opposes what she calls universities’ “send us the money and leave us alone” approach, and some of her views on higher education challenge those of the academic establishment.
Why Conservatives Should Defend Tenure
Without tenure, higher education would become even more of a progressive echo chamber.
Does Privatizing Higher Education Undermine the Public Good?
How much “privatization” have we actually had in higher education? In one sense, none, because no state-owned college or university has been sold off to private investors. But on the other hand, there has been quite a bit, since to a considerable extent, governmental funding for higher education has been replaced by private funding. In Privatization and the Public Good, Matthew Lambert, vice president for university advancement at William & Mary, gives us an approved “establishment” view of the privatization phenomenon in which it is perceived as a great threat.
The Humanities Man the Barricades Against Growing Criticism
Heightened skepticism regarding the value of the humanities and liberal arts is not just the result of external factors that are outside of higher education’s control, such as economic malaise or policymakers’ job-centricity. Internal problems related to debased curricula and hyper-politicization, for instance, may be more harmful to the future of the humanities. Unfortunately, at a recent event sponsored by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Program in the Humanities and Human Values of the College of Arts and Sciences, university leaders failed to acknowledge those problems, much less take ownership of them.
Mastery, Not “Creativity,” Should Come First in Arts Education
At issue, of course, is the fact that the purpose of the traditional music education
Political Activism Comes to the American Conservatory
As we replace, for the sake of politics or expediency, the teachers who quietly loved and maintained the classical music tradition with those who have made a career of loudly condemning or refuting it, the discipline will be chipped away from the inside by a myriad of tiny careerists and ideologues happy to attack or cheapen the long and living tradition of Western classical music for the sake of a petty promotion or a hearty pat on the back.
The Existential Crisis of the American Music School
Since at least the 1920s, America has done a fine job of nurturing its budding classical musicians within a large and well-funded network of conservatories that function either as independent institutions or else as colleges within larger universities. The grand venture of transplanting the pinnacle of European artistic achievement into the fertile soil of the New World has been a spectacular success. So can we say, then, that all is well in the world of higher music education on this side of the pond? Perhaps surprisingly, almost everyone you ask today will answer that question with a “no,” for all the wrong reasons.
North Carolina’s Process for Approving For-Profit Colleges Is Anticompetitive
State authorization policies govern the approval of new schools and degree programs; many of the affected institutions are for-profit, vocational, and online schools. North Carolina is one of several states called out in a recent American Enterprise Institute report for having cumbersome, ineffective authorization policies. The report offers several solid proposals that, if implemented, would reduce for-profit schools’ regulatory burden and open the door for new innovators seeking to expand in the Tar Heel State.
Higher Education Is Changing, and So Must “Shared Governance”
William G. Bowen and Eugene M. Tobin, both former college presidents (Princeton and Hamilton, respectively) grasp the crucial fact that the good old days of higher education are gone. In their new book, Locus of Authority, they tackle the traditional shared governance system (that is, the division of responsibility between the administration and the faculty). That system needs to change because it is getting in the way of the flexibility that is now essential.