Higher Education

Sagging Enrollments, Faculty Inertia, and GOP Backlash Yield Gloomy Financial Forecasts For Colleges

  For the past seven years, Gallup, commissioned by Inside Higher Ed, has polled the opinions of the country’s college and university business officers. This year’s results are out. They are not optimistic, nor should they be. According to the respondents, a growing number of their schools face not only financial decline but also an inability/unwillingness to deal...

September 7, 2017

Higher Education

A Roadmap for Defending Free Speech: After Backlash, SMU Restores 9/11 Memorial

This commentary was originally featured in Forbes on August 29, 2017. If you thought Texas was immune to the campus madness spreading near-daily across America, consider the case of Southern Methodist University (SMU). This summer, the Dallas university seemed ready to leap aboard the bandwagon of censorship and intolerance. That it ultimately retreated from this...

August 29, 2017

Higher Education

Our College Campuses Are Guilt-Tripping Down The Road To Despotism

This commentary was originally featured in Forbes on August 22, 2017.  As the campus culture wars grind on, two new groups have emerged—the hypersensitive and the guilty. Anticipating the first of these, I argued here that, under the tutelage of the campus PC/SJW crowd, sensitivity has been “weaponized.” Much of the media criticism of campus censorship suggests...

August 22, 2017

Higher Education

Joseph Stalin, And Why Universities Aim to ‘Rewrite the Soul’ of Engineering Education

This commentary was originally featured in Forbes on August 15, 2017.  Remarking on the relation between education and politics, Joseph Stalin observed that “the writer is the engineer of the human soul.” In Stalinist fashion, today’s campuses are endeavoring to rewrite the souls of engineers. With this latest assault on science and human reason, one begins to...

August 15, 2017

Economy

State Regulation Of Cities Does Not Illegitimately Infringe On “Local Control”

In sum, the battle between state authority and local control comes down to the choice between government regulation and individual liberty. Some cities in Texas, and not only in Texas, would preempt state authority in order to increase their power to regulate the lives of their citizens. When such regulation violates individual liberty, it is not only the right but the duty of state leadership to intervene on behalf of liberty.

July 24, 2017

Higher Education

Draining The Higher-Ed Swamp: The Case For Closing Evergreen State College

With its announcement that liberal education at Evergreen takes its bearings from the requirements of “Social Justice,” the veil drops and the campus’s recent meltdown is seen for what it is: the putting into practice of what Evergreen proudly teaches.

July 19, 2017

Higher Education

To Restore Campus Free Speech Nationwide, Secretary DeVos Should Look To Wisconsin

We can hope that a bipartisan consensus on upholding the First Amendment will grow as public awareness of the campus threats to free speech grows. As U.S. Department of Education Secretary DeVos prosecutes this battle nationally, she would benefit from close consideration of the Wisconsin model.

June 29, 2017

Higher Education

From ‘Borked’ To ‘Mizzou’d’: How To Restore The First Amendment On Our Campuses

It has been said that what is taught in the classroom in this generation will be practiced in the legislature in the next. Bottom line: If free speech is lost on our campuses, it will shortly thereafter be lost in our politics.

June 9, 2017

Higher Education

Administration’s First Budget Looks to Inject Market Discipline Into Student Loan Program

This commentary originally appeared in Forbes on May 30, 2017. President Trump’s first budget has been submitted to Congress. It would enact a number of changes in higher education policy: eliminating the taxpayer subsidy for low-income students’ loan interest payments while enrolled in school; raising the limit on borrowers’ payments under the Income-Driven Repayment program...

May 30, 2017

Higher Education

Nicki Minaj’s Generosity Exposes Huge Scandal Of College Grading Standards

This commentary originally appeared on Forbes on May 19, 2017. Nicki Minaj just became a higher-education philanthropist. But her well-intentioned generosity could ensnarl her in significant debt of her own. Here’s how it happened. As reported by Avalon Zoppo on NBCNews.com, Grammy nominee Minaj announced on social media that she would pay the college tuition...

May 19, 2017

Higher Education

American Higher Education: An Autopsy

In short, our universities have none but themselves to blame for the growing public backlash from which they are suffering—and will likely suffer further if they continue to treat concerns over campus censorship with what sometimes appears to be smug indifference. By letting ideology trump scholarship, by elevating feelings over rational arguments, by strangling the quest for truth—their reason for being—at the altar of political correctness, our colleges and universities have squandered the almost-devotional respect felt for them by the larger society.

May 8, 2017

Higher Education

NYU Administrator Goes Full Orwell: Violating Free Speech ‘Ensures The Conditions Of Free Speech’

Now, I’m all for protecting the rights of minorities to participate in public discourse—that’s why I support the First Amendment, which protects free speech for all. But, according to Baer, supporting free speech for all disenfranchises minorities. Somehow, minorities are not included in “all.”

April 30, 2017