Out-of-state friends frequently ask me what life is like in “Deep-Red Texas.” I answer that there are many blessings to living in the Lone Star State, to which I escaped from Chicago a decade ago. But when they ask whether the same blessings accrue in Texas public higher education, the story is mixed, for I...
The extortionate cost of higher education continues to rise and is unlikely to moderate soon. From 2000 to 2020, college tuition and fees nationwide rose more than three times faster than general price inflation and more than twice as fast as average hourly wages. Put simply, college is unaffordable to many and becoming more out...
“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those, the art of living well.” So wrote the philosopher Aristotle in the Fourth Century B.C. Books are indispensable to a sound education, and in light last week being National Library Week, I wanted to look for...
I love Major League baseball. And not just Major League. I’ve stopped to watch High School and even Little League games in the hope of identifying the next Mike Trout. I’ve subscribed to MLB for years so that I could follow my beloved White Sox even after moving away from Chicago. I even watched all...
If a U.S. president can be impeached twice—even with the second trial coming after he leaves office—Abraham Lincoln can be assassinated a second time, with the second attack coming on his reputation. This posthumous attack comes from the woke luminaries heading up the San Francisco Unified School District, which recently decided to rename its schools formerly known...
With President Joe Biden in the White House, progressives are pushing for universal student loan forgiveness. New data from the Department of Education provides an excellent snapshot of how badly targeted student loan forgiveness would be. This new data gives us the most detailed view into the roughly $86 billion in student loans taken out by students who graduated...
Friends of the First Amendment were elated this fall to read University of Texas President Jay Hartzell’s clarion call for free speech on college campuses. The title of his op-ed in the Dallas Morning News got to the heart of the matter: “There is no higher education without free speech.” Nor is there democracy without free speech. These...
During his successful run for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush warned against “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Then-candidate Bush delivered his remarks at the 91st annual meeting of the NAACP on July 10, 2000. Bush added, “A great movement of education reform has begun in this country built on clear principles: to raise the...
In this era of highly polarized politics, we appear finally to have arrived at an issue upon which both the Left and Right agree, namely, that “fake news” is undermining democratic discourse. How can we prevent voters from being deceived by fake news? To this bipartisan concern, I offer a nonpartisan answer—education. Specifically, the country’s...
Amid all the uproar of 2020’s contentious presidential election race, the country now finds on its plate another Supreme Court nomination, to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. As the New York Times’s Adam Liptak put it recently, “Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, has compiled an almost uniformly conservative...
It was the best of rides; it was the worst of rides. I took an Uber drive from the White House to Reagan airport last March. When I got in, the driver, after saying hello, immediately informed me, “America was founded on slavery.” I was a bit taken aback by his assertion, not that I...
For decades, America has failed to instill a love of country in its younger generations, with a recent poll finding that only 51 percent of young Americans are proud of America, while only 40 percent would be willing to sacrifice for their country. Along the same lines, most Americans do not know even the basics...