Are Essay Requirements Holding College Applicants Back?
According to a working paper released two months ago by the Annenberg Institute, nearly 25 percent of students who applied to college during the 2018-19 application cycle started but never…
Is College a Cult?
Higher education is in a bad way these days. One encounters many metaphors for its current state. It’s a bubble, about to burst. It’s a pyramid scheme. A college degree…
Blueprint for Reform: Academic Transparency
Blueprint for Reform: Academic Transparency is a roadmap designed for state legislators and university trustees, emphasizing the necessity of academic transparency in higher education to enhance student decision-making and public…
An Open Letter to UVA President James E. Ryan
The University of Virginia is facing a choice of historic significance: namely, whether to embrace admissions policies based on our colorblind Constitution or to engage in mass resistance to the…
Just Pass Everyone
All political lives end in failure,” said British politician Enoch Powell, a proposition amply corroborated by his own career. Scholars are vulnerable to a similar fate. To paraphrase anthropologist Marshall…
Celebrating 20 Years of Academic Renewal
Since 2003, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal has been a voice for excellence in higher education. We are dedicated to promoting knowledge over credentials, restoring genuine liberal…
Now Is the Time to Renew History Departments
In 2022, Jon Lauck published The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900. His book describes a wonderful range of things to love about the 19th-century Midwest: its…
Despite Naysayers, UNC-Chapel Hill Climbs the Rankings
Yesterday, U.S. News released its 2024 Best Colleges Rankings. UNC-Chapel Hill moved up to number four among public universities and number 22 among all universities in the U.S. (up from…
The College Classroom Can Be a Judgment-Free Zone
Step inside any gym and you’ll likely see a familiar sight: regular gym buffs, for whom the gym is a second home, using the workout machines with ease. You will…
Campus “Anti-Racism” Is a Degenerating Research Program
Ancient and medieval astronomers could not explain the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies while shackled to a Ptolemaic paradigm of an Earth-centered universe. Thus they spun out ad hoc…