(Author’s note: In response to my 10/29/19 Forbes piece, “Death to Merit: —College Admissions Process Descends Into the Abyss,” a number of readers asked me to expand on a subject I mentioned in the course of that piece—grade inflation. What follows distills my research over the years on this subject.) There is a genuine crisis in American...
A recent headline in The Washington Post informs us that “a record number of colleges” are dropping their “SAT/ACT admissions requirement amid growing disenchantment with standardized tests.” Or is it “growing disenchantment with standards of merit”? Is this what is at the bottom of American universities’ moves to jettison the SAT and ACT tests as a requirement...
Should we trust studies published in academic journals? A few decades ago, virtually all of us would have responded in the affirmative. But that was then. Now, too many academic studies have been shown to be substantially defective. The nonpartisan National Association of Scholars (NAS) has been documenting the “reproducibility crisis” that “afflicts a wide range of...
Should we trust studies published in academic journals? A few decades ago, virtually all of us would have responded in the affirmative. But that was then. Now, too many academic studies have been shown to be substantially defective. The nonpartisan National Association of Scholars (NAS) has been documenting the “reproducibility crisis” that “afflicts a wide range of...
I learned something new when I taught the very first class of the TPPF Summer Institute for high school civics teachers. “By the time student reach middle school age,” a teacher told me, “they come to class already cynical about the American form of government.” Another teacher added, “and it gets worse each year.” The challenge...
If you think the title’s question is silly, you’re right. But here’s the problem: Increasing numbers of college students today would unhesitatingly respond, “Hell, yes!” to the query. Could it be because that is what they are being taught? I first learned of this misconception about slavery about three years ago, when a professor published the...
As a former college professor and university senior administrator, I was saddened to read a recent op-ed by Columbia University’s president, Lee Bollinger. Titled, “Free Speech on Campus Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You,” the immediate object of Bollinger’s ire is President Trump’s March Executive Order, which threatens universities that fail to uphold the First...
Too many students feel afraid to speak honestly on campus for fear of offending someone, a new national survey of college students says. University censorship regimes are teaching some students not only to live with but to embrace the conformism of thought inculcated through university speech codes, speaker dis-invitations, “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and campus...
In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates compares the person who battles for genuine political reform to a doctor. This doctor, in Socrates’ analogy, is called up on child-abuse charges. His accuser is a pastry chef. Moreover, the jury assembled to decide the doctor’s fate consists entirely of small children. The pastry chef’s case for the prosecution consists of...
If our students are not free to learn, they stand little chance of learning how to be free. Both American democracy and American higher education will wither if free speech and debate are squelched.
President Trump’s executive order regarding free speech on college campuses is a solid first step toward restoring colleges and universities to their original mission — guarding free inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. The executive order — the signing of which I was honored to attend — will tie federal funds to real, measurable...
In his book The Way to Wealth (perhaps America’s very first book of financial advice), Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Franklin might amend that today, in light of the skyrocketing cost of a university education, the crushing burden of student debt, and the mismatch between graduates and available jobs. Indeed, later...