Higher Education

Madam Secretary DeVos, Tear Down These Regional Higher-Ed Accreditors

  Roughly 3,000 American colleges and universities periodically undergo what is called the accreditation process, which is meant to certify their academic quality as determined by one of seven regional accreditors operating in six geographic regions. Since 1952, accreditation by a federally recognized accreditor has been required for a school to qualify to receive student aid funds....

November 8, 2017

Higher Education

Mitch Daniels And The Purdue Miracle: Lessons For The Rest Of Us

  Over the past decade, a growing chorus of students, parents, and state legislators have urged tuition reductions or freezes on their public colleges and universities. To this request, defenders of the higher education status quo have rejoined that freezes will materially undermine their universities’ ability to provide an excellent education for their students. For...

October 31, 2017

K-12 Education

MOOCs Reborn: Online Education’s Student-Friendly Makeover Promises Better Results

  Although the public’s faith in traditional, brick and mortar higher education is dwindling, college tuition prices keep rising. A Pew Research Center national pollfound that 57 percent of prospective college students believe that a college degree no longer offers a value commensurate with the price of tuition and fees. The same poll revealed that 75...

October 11, 2017

Higher Education

The Constitution Is As Racist As The Flag And Anthem That Celebrate It

  When Colin Kaepernick took a knee last fall during the singing of the National Anthem, it sparked an intense debate over race-based police brutality. Since then, some have defended Kaepernick by arguing that, in addition to the police brutality issue, the National Anthem is racist. This defense then escalated into a larger conflict over the status of ...

September 29, 2017

Higher Education

America The Distrustful: Bureaucratization, Cynicism, and Despotism

  History suggests that, when citizens come to deeply distrust their country’s institutions, the cancer of political degeneration may be taking hold. In America, cynicism appears to have metastasized to such an extent that it is now afflicting high schools. At least that’s the conclusion suggested by Jessica Contrera’s recent Washington Post piece. Contrera reports that, in...

September 20, 2017

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