At Cairn University, a Program-Accreditation Nightmare
Just over one year ago, Cairn University, a small, private, Christian school in southeastern Pennsylvania, made a strategic institutional decision to eliminate its School of Social Work and all related…
UNC System Athletic Directors’ Salaries Tell Us What Universities Value
As previously mentioned in this series, college sports are a big business. Businesses need managers, and, as such, colleges and universities have athletic directors. In college sports, the athletic director…
How the Best of Intentions Created Today’s Academic Disasters
Today’s assault on intellectual excellence in the academy will eventually end. Hopefully, an investigation will then commence on its causes, and all the usual suspects will be rounded up. This…
Did You Know? Post-Roe, UNC-Chapel Hill Has Struggled to Stay Neutral
One of the most important principles for preserving a spirit of inquiry, discovery, and discussion on university campuses is institutional neutrality. This means that, while individual faculty are free to…
A Defense of the “Ungrading” Movement
In his April piece for the Martin Center, Adam Ellwanger critiqued “contract grading” as a symptom of “the war against academic excellence” and the broader societal movement toward “some fetishized…
A Popular Fiction Genre is Unreadable Garbage. Blame Colleges.
Over the last several years, a burgeoning new genre has put the book-watching world on notice. “New Adult,” a coinage first used by St. Martin’s Press in 2009, refers to…
Did You Know? Department of Education Extends FAFSA-Verification Waiver
Citing the continuing impact of COVID-19, the Department of Education extended its Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) verification waiver on May 18, 2022. Each academic year, millions of…
The Origins and Impact of Racially Divisive Curricula
In the fall of 2021, it appeared that Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, would rather easily defeat his Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin. But the election turned dramatically once a…
How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative
By now, only the most dishonest or intentionally ignorant observers deny the existential crisis facing higher education. Universities no longer even maintain the pretense of dispassionate rational and free inquiry,…
Did You Know? Student Loan “Pauses” Help Those Who Can Afford to Pay
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers implemented sweeping relief programs to offset the economic shock of lockdowns, layoffs, and shifts in consumer behavior. Among these actions was a…