One of Our Few Great College Presidents Retires
University presidents make a difference. The best of them can steer a university to new heights of greatness, while the worst of them can bring costly mediocrity or even extinction.…
The Pushback Against Classroom Indoctrination Begins
America is finally waking up to the fact that poisonous, divisive ideas are proliferating in public education, from pre-K to graduate school. The question is how to push back against…
UNC’s Free-Expression Survey Elicits Both Fear and Hope
North Carolina’s public universities have a problem with free expression, and it mostly doesn’t come from censorious administrators or biased faculty members. Instead, it’s the students themselves who muzzle free…
UNC System Coaches’ Salaries: An Intentional Mystery?
College sports are a lifestyle for many people and an indispensable business opportunity for colleges and universities. Many UNC System schools are perhaps better known for their sports teams than…
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,…
Tenure’s False Promise
Although tenure has been hotly debated over the years, it is still widely misunderstood as guaranteeing a professor a lifetime position. What happened in May to Joshua Katz, a classics…
In Princeton’s Contempt for Justice, Shades of Duke Lacrosse
Presidents of prestigious universities often make outrageous decisions inconsistent with such bedrock values as freedom of expression and providing the accused with traditional American due process. The shameful manner in…
Remembering Title IX Abuses
Recently, Title IX has been in the news because of the Biden administration’s promised (and, as of yesterday, delivered) rejection of much-needed Trump-era reforms. As we are approaching the 50th…
Are UNC System Chancellors Overpaid?
Chancellor salaries at public universities across the country are far higher than those for other public executives, out of step with faculty compensation, and unrelated to student success and university…
Did You Know? Post-Tenure Review is Increasingly Common for University Faculty
58 percent of postsecondary educational institutions now employ a post-tenure review process. This is up from 46 percent in 2000. Tenure traditionally means that a professor has earned guaranteed job-security…