When a political science lecturer at UCLA read to his class Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and showed clips from a documentary on racism, he found … Continue reading “UCLA’s Discrimination Office Targeting Professor Threatens Academic Freedom”
Higher ed leaders have bemoaned what they see as insufficient federal support during the coronavirus pandemic, but they might have a bigger problem: convincing students to enroll in the fall. … Continue reading “Did You Know? Colleges Could Lose 1/3 of Students if Fall Classes Stay Online”
Professor John Ellis has served on college faculties since 1963 and is now an emeritus professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz. He has witnessed enormous changes in higher education … Continue reading “A Scholar’s Lament”
In yet another window into the country’s polarized political environment, in 2017 the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans regarding their views of major civic institutions. While there were divisions in … Continue reading “College Climate Surveys Needed to Understand Free Expression on Campus”
Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts released its ruling in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University. That means affirmative action—its application and limitations—is … Continue reading “Did You Know? Eight States Ban Racial Preferences in College Admissions”
“Opportunity zones,” defined by a 2017 law, are poor areas targeted by the federal government for economic investment. In a study by the Brookings Institution, researchers discovered that money intended … Continue reading “Did You Know? An Anti-Poverty Program Sent Funds to 33 Well-Off College Towns”
Public colleges spend public money, but college officials are reluctant to make information about their budgets easy to understand. That aversion to transparency makes it easier to pass non-instructional expenses … Continue reading “Without Financial Transparency, Colleges Mislabel Research Spending as Instructional”
The modern American university has changed almost beyond recognition from the form it had even 100 years ago. It is larger, more “diverse,” more of a business, and more industrialized … Continue reading “The Mess of Federal Funds Is Changing the University”
The public has lost faith in the NCAA and colleges to protect student-athletes. When surveying the numerous ideas for fixing college sports, it’s hard to make any other conclusion. Reform … Continue reading “Waiting for Reform: The Plans to Fix College Sports”
Traditionally, higher education introduced students to life’s most fundamental questions: “What is good?”; “What is true?”; “Do our lives have meaning beyond the material?”; and so on. The focus used … Continue reading “Repairing Academia’s Crisis of Meaning”