Universities in Islamic nations make the same mistakes we do—but worse
Universities are great inventions, and they have a role everywhere, in areas rich and poor, Christian, Islamic, and even atheist. But the Law of Diminishing Returns applies: universities in small doses can disseminate and advance knowledge in welfare-inducing ways, but if expanded too fast, they produce dismal results at the margin. In the Middle East/North African region, this problem is aggravated by over-centralization.
NLRB’s pro-union ruling attacks private higher education
American labor unions are in serious decline and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become nothing more than a legal enforcer for panicked union bosses. A recent example is the December 2014 decision in Pacific Lutheran University that may force more private-sector higher education faculty to accept unionism if they want to work.
It’s time to treat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement with the scorn it deserves
Since we are dealing here with a movement that traffics in extremism, it is not surprising that the BDS movement is having a nasty effect on some college campuses.
A university president says that America is “losing her way” in higher education
A university president says that America is “losing her way” in higher education
An unusual victory for donor intent at Trinity College
Recent developments at Trinity College with the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment provide rare good news for supporters of donor intent. Here, after an over two-decade struggle, the endowment’s purposes have been restored to the donor’s wishes.
How not to handle incivility in the Digital Age
A sad fact about some of today’s college students—particularly those of the leftist variety—is that they place greater value on their emotions and ideology than they do on tolerance, sensibility, and free speech.
Industrial relations: another academic field captured by ideology
Over the past few decades, much of American higher education has become ideologically left wing. You might have thought, however, that business schools could resist the trend. You’d be mistaken.
When university boards of governance actually govern
It is heartwarming to see state officials do the jobs they were elected to do. Too often they have shied away from their obligations to ensure that the university system adheres to appropriate standards of scholarship.
Rename Saunders Hall: An open letter to Carolina
As a UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus and former member of its board of trustees, I write to urge you to recommend to the trustees that they remove Saunders’s name from the building and rename it.
In North Carolina, university-backed political advocacy may be on the way out
Last week, a working group from the UNC system’s Board of Governors drew national attention and student and faculty protest after it announced plans to discontinue three of the system’s 237 centers and increase oversight of thirteen others. The centers slated for closure are East Carolina University’s Center for Biodiversity, NC Central’s Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change, and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, which was founded in 2005 by then-U.S. Senator John Edwards.