Accountability first at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine
It is highly likely that the fiscal woes of ECU’s Brody School of Medicine can be stabilized without adding more challenges to State taxpayers. Sixteen million dollars is a lot to hand over without attempting to solve obvious problems first.
Sustainability: A new college fad with fangs
There is a new fad rampaging across the college landscape—sustainability. For the last ten years, this mania has been gathering momentum because, like identity studies, sustainability pushes the hot buttons for leftist academics: environmentalism, anti-capitalism, salvation through liberal activism, and the chance to hector all those wrong-thinking people. It’s almost irresistible.
UNC-Chapel Hill nudges students into a conversation about race
UNC-Chapel Hill has launched Carolina Conversations, an initiative designed to provide forums for students to discuss sensitive topics. UNC-CH will do this in three ways: sponsor regular large-scale town-hall-style forums called My Carolina Voice, smaller gatherings called Carolina Pulse, and My Chance, a process whereby students can apply for school funding for “grassroots interactions.”
The police, not universities, should be handling rape accusations
Campuses are not adept at handling sexual assault issues because they lack experience, resources, and an unbiased agenda. Due process is immediately thrown out the window when we rely on the campus to punish the accused; injustice is built into the system. The customary standard, “innocent until proven guilty,” is reversed when we call on colleges to adjudicate rape.
Universities in Islamic nations make the same mistakes we do—but worse
Universities are great inventions, and they have a role everywhere, in areas rich and poor, Christian, Islamic, and even atheist. But the Law of Diminishing Returns applies: universities in small doses can disseminate and advance knowledge in welfare-inducing ways, but if expanded too fast, they produce dismal results at the margin. In the Middle East/North African region, this problem is aggravated by over-centralization.
NLRB’s pro-union ruling attacks private higher education
American labor unions are in serious decline and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become nothing more than a legal enforcer for panicked union bosses. A recent example is the December 2014 decision in Pacific Lutheran University that may force more private-sector higher education faculty to accept unionism if they want to work.
It’s time to treat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement with the scorn it deserves
Since we are dealing here with a movement that traffics in extremism, it is not surprising that the BDS movement is having a nasty effect on some college campuses.
An unusual victory for donor intent at Trinity College
Recent developments at Trinity College with the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment provide rare good news for supporters of donor intent. Here, after an over two-decade struggle, the endowment’s purposes have been restored to the donor’s wishes.
How not to handle incivility in the Digital Age
A sad fact about some of today’s college students—particularly those of the leftist variety—is that they place greater value on their emotions and ideology than they do on tolerance, sensibility, and free speech.
Industrial relations: another academic field captured by ideology
Over the past few decades, much of American higher education has become ideologically left wing. You might have thought, however, that business schools could resist the trend. You’d be mistaken.