Governance

University boards have the primary responsibility for ensuring fidelity to the institution’s mission, managing university finances, and setting personnel policies. The following articles expose poor governance practices and identify policies that keep boards accountable to the taxpayers, students, parents, alumni, and donors whom they serve.

Sep 20, 2017 · George Leef

The Chinese Don’t Like Academic Freedom, So American Schools Should Avoid Their Confucius Institutes

Academic freedom has long been a guiding principle for American colleges and universities: Neither faculty nor students should be told what to say or punished for saying whatever they think.…

Sep 15, 2017 · Rick Diguette

Grade Inflation Just Got Respectable: The New Eligibility Rule Governing Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship

Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship is now in its twenty-fourth year of existence. Originally the brainchild of then Governor Zell Miller, since 1993 this merit-based scholarship program has distributed in excess of…

Sep 13, 2017 · George Leef

Secretary DeVos Begins to Rectify the Title IX Mistake

It is very rare for a federal agency to admit having made a mistake and rarer still for the secretary of a cabinet department to announce a U-turn in policy…

Sep 11, 2017 · Jenna A. Robinson

Closing the Gap at North Carolina’s Historically Black Universities

Earlier this month, the Triangle Business Journal revealed that graduates from North Carolina’s Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) are lagging their peers in terms of median salary after graduation.…

Sep 8, 2017 · L.C. Sheahan

Contra the “McDonaldization” of Higher Education

The term “McDonaldization” was coined by sociology professor George Ritzer in 1993. He meant for it to describe “the industrial process of rationalization that [was] expanding beyond industry into the…

Sep 6, 2017 · J. Martin Rochester

It’s Not Just Students Who Suffer Under Title IX’s Unfair Procedures

Most people working within the halls of academia are at least somewhat familiar with the excesses having to do with infringement of due process, free speech, and basic rights under…

Sep 4, 2017 · Dan E. Way

Segregated Student Housing: Exclusion in the Name of Inclusion

Irwin Holmes was in his living room, a laptop computer in front of him, a pile of reading materials stacked next to him, and his wife seated nearby when he…

Aug 28, 2017 · Shannon Watkins

Should the Confederate Monuments Stay or Go?

It’s been more than two weeks since white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to march against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue and chant racist slogans. Social media…

Aug 25, 2017 · John Rosenberg

Higher Education’s Diversity Obsession: A Bad Bargain

The obsession with diversity is so widespread among American colleges that it has become a normal part of campus life. Just what “normal” looks like is revealed in a new…

Aug 23, 2017 · Allen Mendenhall

How to Fight the ABA’s Anticompetitive and Discriminatory Practices

Recently I urged top law schools to stand up to the excesses and abuses occasioned by the ministrations of the American Bar Association (ABA). These schools could band together and…