
AI Meets Civil Discourse
As universities across the U.S. seek to deal with protests, polarization, and the presidential election, many have focused on how to foster civil-discourse skills in students. As this tweet (below)…

Accreditation-Reform Hopes for the Second Trump Administration
Higher education seemingly played an important if largely negative role in the recent presidential election. Exit polls showed that non-college-educated voters overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump. Many voters associated Kamala Harris…

Stop Overregulating Research
The newly inaugurated second Trump administration has arrived, and among the changes that the president and his allies have proposed is large-scale simplification and elimination of government regulations. President Trump…

Three-Year Med Schools Are Coming
Much of medical education is careening into an ideological ditch. Following the directives of the “health equity” movement, med schools have veered off the course of teaching future doctors the…

Reforms We’re Cheering For in 2025
Each year at this time, the staff of the Martin Center share our higher-ed-reform dreams for the coming 12 months. Will all of our wishes come true? Probably not. Nevertheless,…

Community Colleges Needn’t Infantilize Students
In the latest instance of colleges providing hand-holding incentives to students, Baltimore City Community College (BCCC) has begun paying some students to meet with career counselors. Through grant funding, students…

The Bell Tolls for Higher Ed
Writing four centuries ago, John Donne memorably opined, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” He…

Heritage Foundation’s College Ratings Should Be Welcomed to the Field
In September, the Heritage Foundation launched an interactive, web-based guide to help students “Choose College with Confidence.” It currently grants nearly 300 colleges and universities one of three designations: “great…

Blueprint for Reform: Accreditation
The Blueprint for Reform: Accreditation critiques the current accreditation system in higher education, which has shifted from a voluntary advisory role to a regulatory gatekeeper for federal funding. This transformation has…

A New Liberal-Arts University Arises
Ralston College counts among its first graduates a 24-year-old man who, in his third term of study, asked me what he could do to help ensure our fledgling institution would…