In a year when numerous faculty members who aren’t “woke” have been pilloried, and many universities are revamping themselves in accordance with the agenda of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, I was amazed to read an article by Harvard history professor Naomi Oreskes and her student, Charlie Tyson, who claim that research findings that university … Continue reading “Who Says Academia Isn’t Awash in Liberal Bias?”
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released a report decrying the politicization of public higher education governance, entitled The New Order: How the Nation’s Partisan Divisions Consumed Public-College Boards and Warped Higher Education. The report says more about the tunnel vision that pervades the liberal media and academic establishment than it does about the real … Continue reading “America Wants Its Public Colleges Back and The Chronicle Isn’t Happy About It”
Though the 2020 election has focused on COVID-19 and the economy, higher ed has still gotten some attention. But only one party has a plan to transform college in their image. The Democrats have promised more money, more student debt forgiveness, and more initiatives to push young people through the college system in some way, … Continue reading “What the Election Will Mean for Higher Education”
Students are paying a higher price tag for college, but is the quality of their education also increasing, or at least staying stable? A lot of indicators suggest “no.” During the George W. Bush administration, the Spellings Commission found evidence that “the quality of student learning at U.S. colleges and universities is inadequate and, in … Continue reading “Did You Know? The Ignorance of College Graduates”
“Sunlight,” Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” Few aspects of the contemporary academy more need enhanced sunlight than the Title IX adjudication process, which operates almost entirely in the dark—even going as far as not publicizing the training materials that adjudicators used … Continue reading “Using ‘Transparency’ to Obscure: The Daily Tar Heel and UNC’s Title IX Records”
When the University of Chicago English Department announced over the summer that, in response to the protests after the death of George Floyd, they would only admit graduate students willing to work in Black Studies (a proclamation that, after media attention brought criticism, they recently removed from their webpage), observers of the increasing dominance of … Continue reading “The BlackLivesMattering of Higher Ed: Some Notes from the Field”
Since the pandemic, many colleges have gone from giving letter grades to offering students a pass/fail grading option for their courses. Letter grades become a passing (P), which gives students credit but is not included in their GPA. If a student fails, they receive an F that stays on their record. Schools suggest that students … Continue reading “Did You Know? Grad School Can Affect Whether Students Take a Class Pass/Fail”
For ten years I served on the GRE Literature Exam committee. The exam is one of the special subject matter exams separate from the regular GRE (with math, verbal, analytical sections), and several English departments require that applicants take it. Each year five of us would meet for several days at Educational Testing Service’s campus … Continue reading “They’ve Got to Get Rid of Western Civ—They Have To “
In spring 2020, when universities went online due to COVID-19, few of them expected to be online in the fall as well. After a failed reopening of schools, courses again went online. Davidson College in North Carolina launched a College Crisis Initiative to determine how “colleges and universities innovate in a crisis mindset” and found … Continue reading “Without Lab Time or Facilities, Students Get Lower-Quality Education”
On August 3, the Executive Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication approved a position statement on “Black Linguistic Justice.” The statement was crafted as a set of “demands” that “teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm.” The “Four Cs” is the largest and most important professional … Continue reading “Disadvantaging Black Students with a Demand for ‘Linguistic Justice’”