“Buyout” Madness

If you saw the 2004 Pixar hit The Incredibles, you might remember that Mr. Incredible, a.k.a. Bob, captures in one line the reason our schools are failing. Resisting his wife’s…

Last month, members of the UNC System Board of Governors’ Committee on Budget and Finance discussed proposed tuition increases, including increases for in-state undergraduates. This is the first time in…

The majority of students sitting in college classrooms today are female. Decades-long efforts to increase female representation in academia appear to have worked—perhaps too well. Women carry two-thirds of all…

More junior colleges are offering four-year bachelor’s degrees in addition to two-year associate’s degrees, and traditional universities hate the competition. But while students and policymakers should welcome new options, junior…

Members of the North Carolina General Assembly have spent years pursuing higher-education reform and reclaiming authority over the state’s university system. Legislators in other states have done likewise. Yet another…

We hear all the time that America is hopelessly polarized, that the electronic landscape allows us to stay in our own hermetically-sealed communities, and that no one can speak with…

On January 13, 2026, the Wyoming Legislature’s most powerful body—the Joint Appropriations Committee—voted to cut and withhold nearly $61 million from the University of Wyoming’s recommended budget. News of the…

Anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to academic sociology these days knows there are serious problems. I have been writing about this phenomenon now for a number of…