Supremely Naive: The Impact of Southworth on the “Marketplace of Ideas”
In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Regents v. Southworth that using mandatory student fees to fund student organizations and speakers does not violate the First Amendment rights of those who disagree with the content. The Court’s decision, however, was premised on the idea that university officials would be “viewpoint neutral” in allocating funds—that they would not let the process be used to promote or silence any political perspectives. The Court was dreadfully naive about the state of affairs on campus. Its deferential attitude toward universities and the assumption of good faith speaks to a generation gap between what the justices experienced as students and what today’s students encounter.
Remediation’s End?
For quite a few years, North Carolina’s colleges and universities have blurred the line between higher and basic education by admitting students who need remedial classes before they can handle college-level work. Fortunately, several provisions moving through the General Assembly may change the face of remediation by shifting it back to lower levels of education where it belongs.
Why Professors Are Obsessed with Student Course Evaluations
At many colleges, keeping the students happy is the paramount concern. School officials still pay lip service to academic excellence, but the truth is that revenue maximization is far more important to them.
The Hidden Costs of Tenure
In effect, tenure is a barrier to entry in the academic job market that makes it difficult to replace poorly performing faculty with better alternatives.
Freshman Orientation: Conform or Be Cast Out
At UNC-Chapel Hill’s freshman orientation, I learned that free speech, so fundamental to the academy, is only permitted to those who toe the "progressive" line.
Freshman Reading Choices 2015: Welcome to Groupthink U.
Unfortunately, colleges often use their summer reading programs not to help students make the leap to the higher standard of scholarship that should be demanded of them at the collegiate level, but to expose them to books that may influence them to adopt the political agenda of the left.
Critical Thinking, or the “Expectation of Confirmation”?
With so many more Americans going to college than in the past, you would think that anti-intellectualism would be a distant, rapidly fading memory. But you’d be mistaken argue Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow, editors of a sharp new book The State of the American Mind.
Gene Nichol’s “Poverty Fund” Is About the Politics, Not the Poverty
The reopening of UNC–Chapel Hill Law School’s Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity as the “North Carolina Poverty Research Fund” by law professor Gene Nichol shows great contempt for the UNC system Board of Governors, the state legislature, and the people of North Carolina. It also may be illegal.
An Independence Day Special: Can the Republic Survive Higher Education’s Influence?
Tomorrow is the day we celebrate our nation’s founding—and the first time that a nation was deliberately founded on reason and the rule of law instead of on accidents of history. The central question of this article is “how are the founding and related topics treated in today’s academia?” It is a matter of crucial importance, since academia’s treatment of the nation’s history and fundamental ideals influences the future.
A Wharton Professor Asks, Will College Pay Off?
Wharton School professor Peter Cappelli has taken a careful look at the relative costs and benefits of college and concludes that going to college can be a terrible decision for many young Americans. He objects to “unqualified statements about the big payoff to a college degree.” His book, Will College Pay Off?, also provides some insight into the crucial question: What are employers looking for?