Blueprint for Reform: Wyoming
Wyoming’s colleges and universities play an essential role in preparing students for civic life and productive careers, as well as supporting the state’s long-term economic vitality. Yet higher education in…
50-State Comparison: Standardized Testing Requirements at Public Flagship Universities
Standardized tests are a vital tool for policymakers working to ensure fairness in college admissions and drive student success. In practice, these assessments serve two critical purposes: they allow universities…
50-State Comparison: Syllabus Transparency
In an era of the internet, AI, and constant information overload, most public colleges and universities in the United States still don’t consistently make syllabi and course information publicly available.…
Blueprint for Reform: Civil Discourse
American college and university campuses are at risk of becoming echo chambers. Many students are afraid to express their opinions because it’s unclear how their professors and peers will receive…
Where Are All the Men?
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…
Blueprint for Reform: Indiana
Indiana’s public universities face mounting pressure from declining enrollment, rising administrative costs, and eroding public trust. Demographic projections indicate a sharp contraction in the college-age population over the coming decades,…
Charting a Better Collegiate & Workforce Education Course
This policy brief analyzes North Carolina’s experience launching Project Kitty Hawk, a nonprofit project of the UNC System that works with North Carolina’s public universities to “build pathways for adult…
The Scientific Mind: An Update of the 1988 Survey ‘Sketches of the American Scientist’
Scientists tend to be on the cutting edge of knowledge—after all, their primary function is to discover new knowledge. Furthermore, their ideas, theories, and beliefs often become important policies. Their…
Peer Review Gone Wild
Faculty members at public universities are expected to educate students and advance knowledge through research in their fields of expertise. Academic research, however, has increasingly promoted ideological agendas over the…
American Higher Education Restoration Act
Rather than emphasize excellence in teaching, America’s public universities now produce a glut of academic “research” that almost no one reads and which does not meaningfully advance human knowledge. Unfortunately,…