It is indisputable that the U.S. faces the worst inflation in 40 years, an outcome that seemingly no one was predicting a few years ago. The impact on Americans of rapid, unanticipated price increases varies. Retired citizens living on interest income from bonds and fixed pensions are badly hurt, for example, while some others, including … Continue reading “Inflation Will Hit Universities Hard”
Over the years, American universities and colleges have slowly drifted away from their central concerns, teaching and learning. This shift is perhaps best seen in the increased number of administrators in higher education and the exponential growth in the portion of institutions’ budgets dedicated to administrative salaries. The educational data service IPEDS categorizes administrators as … Continue reading “Administrative Bloat Harms Teaching and Learning”
If you want to learn law and be a working lawyer in the United States, you have one option: earn a J.D. (Doctor of Laws) degree, which requires three years of study in law school. You’ll also need a four-year bachelor’s degree first. After being admitted to one of the 200 American Bar Association (ABA) … Continue reading “A Better Way to Teach Law”
There is much discussion in academia at present about the future of tenure. Critics of this protection from political or moral pressure against freedom of inquiry include both left-progressives, who see it as an illegitimate method to prevent the penalization of conservatives, and some on the right who believe that market forces should be allowed … Continue reading “The DIE Revolution Will Transform Tenure”
Last week, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees passed two important resolutions on campus viewpoint neutrality. With the addition of these protections, UNC’s free-speech policies are among the best in the nation. In a joint meeting of the University Affairs Committee and the Strategic Initiatives Committee, trustees voted unanimously to adopt both resolutions. The “Resolution … Continue reading “Did You Know? UNC-Chapel Hill Now Has Some of the Best Free-Speech Policies in the Nation”
A reporter who hasn’t dreamt of one day writing for the New York Times is a rare bird. “I’ll start with my local newspaper,” they tell themselves. “Then I’ll move on to a statewide paper, before making a name for myself at something with a national readership. From there, I’ll be drafted into service at … Continue reading “Fit to Print? UNC’s Settlement with Nikole Hannah-Jones is Bad News”
As students and parents shop for colleges, trying to envision what they will receive in return for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, one of the central questions on their minds is, “How much personal attention and access to professors does this college offer?” No simple statistic can provide an answer. At first glance, … Continue reading “Beyond Student-Faculty Ratios”
University presidents make a difference. The best of them can steer a university to new heights of greatness, while the worst of them can bring costly mediocrity or even extinction. A few weeks ago, Mitch Daniels of Purdue, arguably the primus inter pares of American university presidents, announced that he was stepping down at the … Continue reading “One of Our Few Great College Presidents Retires”
America is finally waking up to the fact that poisonous, divisive ideas are proliferating in public education, from pre-K to graduate school. The question is how to push back against such ideas. Solutions are easier in K-12; primary and secondary teachers do not have the same protections of academic freedom that college faculty have, and … Continue reading “The Pushback Against Classroom Indoctrination Begins”
North Carolina’s public universities have a problem with free expression, and it mostly doesn’t come from censorious administrators or biased faculty members. Instead, it’s the students themselves who muzzle free speech. “Many UNC System students do indeed have significant concerns about expressing political views on campus.” So state the findings of a comprehensive, carefully designed … Continue reading “UNC’s Free-Expression Survey Elicits Both Fear and Hope”