Author Profile

Bruce Gans

Bruce Gans served as a professor of English for many years at the City Colleges of Chicago where he founded the Great Books Curriculum. The Curriculum, which became the model for similar programs around the United States, was funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education, and publicized through front page coverage in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Symposium, the student-written intellectual journal he founded, received a commendation from the Wall Street Journal and won an award from Columbia University. Professor Gans has published widely in journals ranging from American Scholar to Playboy and has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his fiction and an Illinois Art Council prize for his literary criticism.

Articles by Bruce Gans

Tenure’s False Promise Jun 29, 2022
Although tenure has been hotly debated over the years, it is still widely misunderstood as guaranteeing a professor a lifetime position. What happened in May to Joshua Katz, a classics professor at Princeton, calls into question this assumption and, by extension, raises a question about the rights of an individual in our legal system. Katz’s … Continue reading “Tenure’s False Promise”
Did You Know? New College to Launch in Wake Forest This Fall Jun 23, 2022
Thales College, a new undergraduate institution launching this fall in Wake Forest, N.C., is eagerly preparing to open its doors to its inaugural class. Thales College is a unique institution with a fresh vision for higher ed: rigorous academics and effective professional preparation joined with a commitment to affordability not often found among other higher … Continue reading “Did You Know? New College to Launch in Wake Forest This Fall”
The Limits of Expertise Jun 22, 2022
As a professor devoted to his college’s “pre-disciplinary” core curriculum, I was hooked by David Epstein’s title, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. The book is chock-full of anecdotes and evidence that people with breadth or range—indeed, amateurs in the true sense of the word—can contribute immensely to enterprises in environments that seem, … Continue reading “The Limits of Expertise”

Did You Know? New College to Launch in Wake Forest This Fall Jun 23, 2022
Thales College, a new undergraduate institution launching this fall in Wake Forest, N.C., is eagerly preparing to open its doors to its inaugural class. Thales College is a unique institution with a fresh vision for higher ed: rigorous academics and effective professional preparation joined with a commitment to affordability not often found among other higher … Continue reading “Did You Know? New College to Launch in Wake Forest This Fall”
The Limits of Expertise Jun 22, 2022
As a professor devoted to his college’s “pre-disciplinary” core curriculum, I was hooked by David Epstein’s title, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. The book is chock-full of anecdotes and evidence that people with breadth or range—indeed, amateurs in the true sense of the word—can contribute immensely to enterprises in environments that seem, … Continue reading “The Limits of Expertise”
Are UNC System Chancellors Overpaid? Jun 20, 2022
Chancellor salaries at public universities across the country are far higher than those for other public executives, out of step with faculty compensation, and unrelated to student success and university performance. A new program at UNC may help to address some of these concerns. In an article in Forbes, the economic historian Richard Vedder states … Continue reading “Are UNC System Chancellors Overpaid?”

How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative Jul 1, 2022
By now, only the most dishonest or intentionally ignorant observers deny the existential crisis facing higher education. Universities no longer even maintain the pretense of dispassionate rational and free inquiry, focusing instead on a particularly toxic and frankly absurd form of “social-justice” activism, increasingly even in the hard sciences. Why does this situation persist? Here, … Continue reading “How UT-Austin Administrators Destroyed an Intellectual Diversity Initiative”
Did You Know? Student Loan “Pauses” Help Those Who Can Afford to Pay Jun 30, 2022
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers implemented sweeping relief programs to offset the economic shock of lockdowns, layoffs, and shifts in consumer behavior. Among these actions was a provision for the blanket forbearance of student loan debt for 42.3 million borrowers. Despite the well-intentioned nature of such “payment freeze” policies, little was initially … Continue reading “Did You Know? Student Loan “Pauses” Help Those Who Can Afford to Pay”
Tenure’s False Promise Jun 29, 2022
Although tenure has been hotly debated over the years, it is still widely misunderstood as guaranteeing a professor a lifetime position. What happened in May to Joshua Katz, a classics professor at Princeton, calls into question this assumption and, by extension, raises a question about the rights of an individual in our legal system. Katz’s … Continue reading “Tenure’s False Promise”