Great Books Are Key for a Unified Education
The Great Books—the primary texts that include the greatest writings of Western Civilization—once formed the basis of all higher education. The highest levels of society were often closed to those…
Psychology Professors Argue Against Groupthink in Their Field
Does social science research and understanding suffer because most of the individuals working in the field are on the left side of the political spectrum? A new book gives us…
Peer Review: the Publication Game and “the Natural Selection of Bad Science”
Editor’s Note: This is part II; part I can be found here. Professor Brian Wansink is head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. The lab has had…
How Is Science Judged? How Useful Is Peer Review?
The British journal Nature, home in 1953 to Watson and Crick’s important DNA paper, was by 1966 rather in the doldrums, with a backlog of submitted manuscripts and losing ground…
How the One-Size-Fits-All College Application Model Hurts Homeschoolers
The season for college admissions is upon us. My younger daughter is still a junior but her public school teammates are all abuzz with chatter of who applied where, who’s…
How Could a Professor Make ‘The Case Against Education’?
In his long-awaited book, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan argues that “the education system is a waste of time and money.” He is emphatically not against people learning skills…
Sorry, Students, but I Have Never Espoused Racism or White Supremacy
As I watched the antics of the hooded “Antifa” mobs at Berkeley and other large universities last year, I thought that I’d missed something in my many years as a…
Master’s Degrees in Janitorial Science?
There has been mounting evidence that the financial payoff from the traditional bachelor’s degree is declining, particularly for men. For example, Census Bureau data suggest that, from 2005 to 2016,…
An Ambassador of Civil Discourse
In today’s universities—and in society in general—the ability to engage in intellectually rigorous and courteous conversation can appear to be a lost art. All too often, the rule of politically…
What to Look For in Higher Ed in 2018
New Year’s Day means a time to take stock of what’s happened on college campuses. Higher education in 2017 had more of students leading campus protests, college administrators struggling to…