Friday, July 03, 2009

Tenure-Granting by Stealth   [Candace de Russy]

Columbia University professor Joseph Massad's execrable scholarly record and bullying of students whose opinions differ from his own have long been a matter of record.

Yet the campus's president and board of trustees, prostrating themselves and their hoary institution before anti-Israel ideology and campus politics, recently tenured him. Not only that, writes Jacob Gershman in the New York Post, they took "extraordinary measures" — a tangled series of secretive steps — to tamp down public knowledge and outrage about their decision. Especially, it would seem, they wished to keep Jewish alumni and donors in the dark.

Note to Pres. Lee Bollinger and Columbia trustees: If you are determined to betray academic standards this badly, you should have the backbone to do it openly.

07/03 10:35 AM Share

The Market vs. Tenure   [Jane S. Shaw]

David, three cheers for recognizing that the market is working, even when anti-market forces such as tenure appear to defeat it. I agree that the “creative energy of thousands of hopeful academics who are willing to do more for less” may well right the academic ship.

Adjuncts’ wages are low because tenure protection has enabled tenured faculty to keep their wages high, even while their teaching productivity goes down. The high costs they impose on universities have forced administrators — eager to teach a lot of students — to find lower-cost workers. And since the tenured faculty have been productive in one way — producing Ph.D.s — there are lots of non-tenured teachers to choose from.

Ultimately, tenure will largely disappear; the number of tenure-track faculty is already shrinking, just as the number of unionized workers gradually shrank throughout this country in the post-war period. Those who protect their jobs at higher-than-market wages will ultimately become a mere remnant.

We are beginning to see the advent of teaching specialists like Dirk Mateer at Penn State and Michael Rizzo at the University of Rochester, both economists. These outstanding lecturers have renewable contracts, not tenure, but they are well-paid because they are so effective at teaching (and they bring more students into the discipline). In fact, it’s a win-win situation because the tenured faculty get to reduce their teaching loads even further.

The people who don’t “get” this are the representatives of the tenured faculty, the AAUP, who think that unionizing non-tenured workers will magically cough up money for everybody. Jay Schalin discusses their misguided thinking in an essay about Marc Bousquet’s book How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation on the Pope Center website.

07/03 10:32 AM Share

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

More on Ricci and Higher Education   [Candace de Russy]

Commenting on the Clegg-Meloy debate on whether the recent Supreme Court decision in Ricci v. DeStefano might influence employment practices on campuses, George concludes that it's impermissible for public colleges, like other govenment entities, to rule out job openings for individuals because they lack the racial identities favored by the institutions.

Peter Wood also weighs in on this issue, lamenting that Ricci won't help much to counter the insidious role of identity politics in higher education:

Higher education has become America’s last great fortress of this kind of unfairness. Ricci doesn’t even try to bridge its moat, but it registers once again how isolated the academy has become in its determination to keep race at the center of things.   The great irony here is that colleges and universities like to think of themselves as far in advance of the rest of society. That is surely what the ideologues at Virginia Tech are thinking as they try to impose a litmus test of contributions to “diversity” for faculty promotion and tenure, or to make “inclusive excellence” a substitute for actual achievement.  The mumbo jumbo never ceases, but as of today, an ordinary person of any race has a better shot at fair treatment in the New Haven Fire Department than at Virginia Tech or a myriad of other colleges and universities.

07/01 06:40 PM Share

The Difference Between Status and Belief   [David French]

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik does a nice job covering the implications of the Supreme Court's cert denial in Truth v. Kent School District.  One quote stands out. Speaking in defense of expansive university nondiscrimination statements, Hastings Law School attorney Ethan Schulman said

he found the Christian groups' positions "dangerous and troubling" in that they could invalidate any anti-bias rules. "If religious organizations can not be required to follow non-discrimination rules, then what is to stop hate groups from seeking university funds to form groups that exclude African American or Jewish or Asian students?"

There's much to address here. First, when defending university nondiscrimination statements, university lawyers always fight a straw man. Groups like the Christian Legal Society are simply not attempting to invalidate "any" nondiscrimination rules. Blurring the clear distinction between identity and belief, universities argue that allowing Christian groups who have belief-based membership requirements is but the first step on a road that leads straight to the Klan (a group that makes status-based distinctions). This is nonsensical. There is an obvious distinction between status and belief.  

For example, there is nothing about a person's race that is relevant to their environmental views, but an environmentalist group would be crazy to include in its leadership people who, say, celebrated Cleveland's notorious Cayahogo River fire as a triumph of industry over nature. In other words, when it comes to expression, beliefs matter and race doesn't. All the Christian groups ask is the ability to maintain a membership and leadership that actually shares the goals and values of the group. Other groups on campus almost always have that ability (for example, the College Democrats could exclude Republicans if they wish), but religious groups do not.  

Second, university lawyers always talk about funding as if that is the primary issue. It's not, and it never has been. The primary issue is access to campus. While universities have different kinds of recognition regulations, they share certain common features — among them, a clear preference (and sometimes exclusive preference) for "recognized" groups to receive access to campus space. At some schools, only recognized groups get a right of access. At others, recognized groups get first choice and all others are given leftovers.  

Third, the "funding" that's at issue in these cases is not university funding but student-fee funds. There is a profound difference. The Supreme Court has decisively held not once, but twice, that student-activity fees must be dispensed on a "viewpoint neutral" basis. Students are forced to pay for groups they may not like (or may even find morally repugnant), but in compensation are permitted to form their own organizations and receive funding from the same pool of money. The university is not dispensing tax dollars. It is dispensing a fund that belongs to the students, and to say that Christian students can't get access because of their pesky insistence on maintaining a Christian message violates both the letter and spirit of Supreme Court precedent.

In countless legal arguments, speeches, panel discussions, and media interviews, someone always asks me, "What about the Klan?" In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a caller asks just that question tomorrow when I discuss the Truth case on the Michael Medved Show. But that's not the issue, and it's never been the issue. There is a difference between status and belief.

07/01 06:39 PM Share

The Not-So-'Curious' Liberal Take on Health-Care Reform    [Candace de Russy]

In debunking various arguments currently being bandied about in the health-care debate,  George Newman expresses puzzlement, at least rhetorically, that liberals view rising education costs favorably but look askance at rising health-care costs. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he wonders why they believe it would serve society so much better if funds were moved from health care into education:

What is curious is that this rise in education costs is deemed by the liberal establishment smart and farsighted while the rise in health-care costs is a curse to be stopped at any cost. What is curiouser still is that in education, where they always advocate more "investment," past increases have gone hand-in-hand with demonstrably deteriorating outcomes. The rising cost in health care has been accompanied by clearly superior results. Thus we would shift dollars from where they do a lot of good to an area where they don't.

But there is nothing "curious" about such a liberal stance. The educationists typically behave in self-serving ways. Hence their steadfast resistance to the adoption of serious, public reporting of educational outcomes that would force them to account for their performance. Hence too their drumbeat of demands from for an ever-greater share of public funds. No matter whether these monies are diverted from vital health needs or, for that matter, vital national-security needs.

Yet the educational establishment — and the liberals it has coopted into accepting its profligate and accountability-averse approach to education — would be the first to scream bloody murder if society failed to meet their vital health or security needs.

07/01 06:36 PM Share

Adjunct Faculty: The Free Market at Work   [David French]

Thank you, George, for directing us to Maurice Black and Erin O'Connor review. As I read the somewhat surprising news that no one really seems to know how many adjuncts there are and no one really understands how they are (systematically) hired and fired, I couldn't help but think that we're seeing the beginnings of a functioning free market in labor in higher education. While the market is still dramatically distorted by tenure, the very desirability of academic jobs creates the virtual equivalent of a black market in lecturers, instructors, adjuncts, and aides. Budget pressures are eased by the crush of willing applicants, and thorny tenure decisions can be postponed, perhaps indefinitely, by hiring a series of part-time professors eager for even an outside shot at a true, enduring academic career.

While there are no doubt many bad adjuncts, and there are no doubt many instances of unfairness toward and even exploitation of part-time academics, this merely places the university workplace on a more equal footing with virtually any other career. Are these disadvantages worse, on balance, that the disadvantages of the present, tenure-bound system? After all, we know what tenure has given us: a semi-permanent class of academic elites who think alike, cost a lot, and educate poorly.

At the end of the day, lasting academic reform may not come from top-down legislative or legal initiatives, but from the relentless logic and creative energy of thousands of hopeful academics who are willing to do more for less. After a while (and especially during a recession), the costly ideological monoculture spawned by tenure and other hidebound academic traditions simply stops making sense.

07/01 03:47 PM Share

The Ricci Decision   [Mark Bauerlein]

I just saw Dahlia Lithwick on C-SPAN discussing the Ricci decision, and she skipped carefully around the questions at the heart of the case. The case is, indeed, a minefield for commentators and reporters who want to appear objective and non-partisan. (She spoke better than Nina Totenberg, it should be said, who appeared uncomfortable on TV last night and likewise avoided discussing the real issues, downplaying any real significance to the decision.)

Lithwick did mention Alito's concurrence as a remarkable action, however, one that directly challenges the factual nature of Ginsburg's dissent. One of the striking things about it is that Alito takes the time to detail the acts, interests, and personalities of people in New Haven associated with the case. He mentions meetings, e-mails, travels, behind-closed-doors decisions, and statements by New Haven officials and Reverend Kimber.

It's a sordid narrative, and some wonder why Alito offers it.

The reason is simple. Because in race-based decisionmaking in the United States, we often have a wide divergence of the high ideals of race-based policy from the actual procedures in the implementation of them. And while most Americans more or less agree on the ideals of equality, the evils of prejudice, and the desirability of proportionate representation of different groups, they recoil when they hear about tactics sometimes used to reach them, for instance, in this episode. 

07/01 03:45 PM Share

Why the Cost of College Keeps Rising   [George Leef]

The Pope Center has just released a new paper by economics professor Robert Martin. In it, Martin explains why we have a "revenue to cost spiral" that largely precludes effective cost management in higher education.

In this week's Clarion Call, I comment on the paper.

07/01 01:14 PM Share

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Debunking Myths in Feminist Scholarship   [Allison Kasic]

Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Christina Hoff Sommers takes aim at some persistent myths in feminist scholarship.

06/30 01:06 PM Share

Adjunct Faculty: Is There a Problem?   [George Leef]

Maurice Black and Erin O'Connor of ACTA have written an excellent review for Minding the Campus of Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education by John Cross and Edie Goldenberg.

The book, Black and O'Connor report, takes a dispassionate approach to a topic that is often sensationalized by faculty organizations that hope to gain from portraying the situation of adjunct professors as hardly better than Dickensian mill workers.

06/30 11:33 AM Share

Rich Vedder Reviews Goldin and Katz   [George Leef]

Rich Vedder, who has done as much as anyone to challenge the conventional wisdom that the more people who get college degrees, the better, here reviews The Race Between Technology and Education by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, a book that seems to support the conventional wisdom.

Goldin and Katz try to show that economic progress depends on getting more people highly trained so that they're able to make use of our ever-improving technology. Vedder questions whether going to college is the best way to acquire whatever skills are needed.

I think that Goldin and Katz overestimate the extent to which the labor force is changing to require skills and knowledge that can only be learned in college classrooms (which isn't the same as using college credentials as a screening mechanism), and that they also overestimate the extent to which the typical student gains useful skills and knowledge from his coursework. There are great numbers of young Americans who go through college and emerge without even much advance in basic skills (reading, writing, math), much less high-level training in advanced fields.

06/30 10:53 AM Share

A Free-Association Setback   [David French]

This morning the Supreme Court announced that it would decline to review the 9th Circuit's decision in Truth v. Kent School District, a case holding that a Christian student group at a public high school could not limit its membership to Christian students. Although federal courts are generally far more protective of student First Amendment rights at colleges and universities, the 9th Circuit has already extended Truth's reasoning to the higher-education context — rejecting the Hastings Christian Legal Society's limitation of voting members to those who agree with the group's statement of faith.

The battle for commonsense (and historically understood) free-association rights is not over, however. Not by a long shot. The Hastings Christian Legal Society has filed its own cert petition (which is still pending), and the Ninth Circuit now has two additional appeals before it, one from Christian student groups at the University of Montana and the other from Christian Student groups at San Diego State. In the second case, the university even refused to allow one of the groups to limit its leadership (and not just membership or voting membership) to Christians only.  

If the Ninth Circuit continues to dramatically shrink free-association rights, it will place itself on a collision course with the Seventh Circuit (in Christian Legal Society v. Walker, the court issued a ringing defense of fundamental First Amendment liberties) and perhaps the Eleventh, which is still considering a Christian fraternity's claims against the University of Florida.

After now almost a decade of intense public controversy surrounding student free association, I have yet to hear any public institution articulate a compelling reason why it should inject itself into the very membership and leadership decisions of the private religious organizations. As civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer noted in a recent Atlantic blog entry, the relationship between group expression and group membership is not only "obvious," it is "practically tautological." Further, any student who disagrees with a religious student group is free to form a competing organization.

But perhaps the "state interest" here is really in control for its own sake. After all, if a student group uses university facilities — so the argument goes — shouldn't the university have a say in the group's composition and, ultimately, message? But such reasoning takes the school down a dangerous path, where the marketplace of ideas is crushed in the explicitly ideological zeal to impose an "institutional" (state-approved) message on various hot-button cultural issues. Before such a model can be fully imposed, the Supreme Court will have to speak. Too many of its own precedents are at stake.

The proper way to look at the end of the Truth case is justice delayed — hopefully not justice denied.

06/30 10:46 AM Share

Does Ricci Matter in Higher Ed?   [George Leef]

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision in Ricci v. DeStefano (the New Haven firefighters case) has people wondering if it might affect employment practices in higher education. This story from Inside Higher Ed features some jousting between Roger Clegg (well known to PBC readers) and Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education.

Clegg maintains that the ruling could and should have an impact, particularly where decision-makers advertise a faculty opening but then decide to hire no one when the pool of applicants turns out not to have anyone with the right "diversity" characteristics. Meloy counters such "diversity" efforts by colleges and universities are different because the firefighters against whom New Haven discriminated on the grounds that it desired more diversity "had a much greater assurance of being promoted" than would a group of finalists for a professorship.

True, but why should that be the touchstone? Why should it be impermissible for a governmental entity to say that a group of employees who had earned promotion will be denied that promotion because none is a "minority" and yet permissible for a public college to say that no candidate from an objectively qualified group will be hired because the school really wanted a "minority" candidate? In both instances, individuals are ruled out of certain job openings because the institution doing the hiring had a preference for a person or persons with different racial characteristics. What's the difference?

06/30 10:41 AM Share

Monday, June 29, 2009

Where Marxism Endures   [George Leef]

It has been said that the strongest remaining bastion of Marxism is the American higher-education system.

Among other pieces of evidence for that proposition, one might point to Prof. Marc Bousquet's book How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation, which my Pope Center colleague Jay Schalin reviews here.

I started reading the book last year, but stopped before the sound of fingernails on a blackboard (the author's constant use of Marxian lingo is like that) drove me crazy.

It's true that many people who were drawn to earn Ph.Ds by the allure of a well-paid, secure employment wind up either doing something else or struggling to get by as adjunct faculty, but the solution is not to create "good" jobs for all of them but to stop overselling higher ed as a career.

06/29 05:57 PM Share

More on Knowledge Transcripts   [Candace de Russy]

Fred spotlights Jack Hough's argument against the present system of higher education, in which colleges "simply certify knowledge among their students, at a high cost, instead of imparting it." Hough insists, rightly, that it's high time for campuses to start providing to the public hard evidence of what students have learned.

Moreover, in his advocacy that standardized knowledge transcripts replace "say-so" degrees, Hough is nobody's fool. He also specifies that the testing of student knowledge and skills must be done independently of colleges. As he sensibly puts it: "Colleges should no more vouch for their own academic competence than butchers should decide for themselves whether their meat is USDA prime."

06/29 05:56 PM Share

With So Many True Scholars, Why Do Universities Invite Ranters?   [George Leef]

Last Friday, the Pope Center published this piece by Charles Geshekter, professor emeritus of history at Cal State Chico. His lament: that CSUC has a habit of inviting left-wing ranters, most recently Norman Finkelstein, to speak on campus.

06/29 03:27 PM Share

Why Go to College?   [Fred Schwarz]

Today’s New York Post has a longish article expanding on a point we have often made at Phi Beta Cons: Too many people go to college. Jack Hough, an editor at SmartMoney, agrees with Charles Murray, Richard Vedder, the Spellings Commission, and others that most colleges today simply certify knowledge among their students, at a high cost, instead of imparting it.

Hough suggests cutting out the colleges, or at least making them optional, by certifying learning through a set of standardized tests (many of which already exist) and letting people decide for themselves how to acquire the necessary knowledge. Instead of saying, “I have a B.A. from such-and-such college,” a job applicant would present evidence of what he knew:

I can only guess what this knowledge transcript would look like — something like a résumé or credit report, perhaps. I picture a scrawny tree drawn on a page, with the branches representing the fields of learning and the student tasked with extending them. Perhaps vocational certificates would be listed, too. Maybe, once the tree reached a prescribed fatness, we'd call the student a bachelor of arts. But employers could select whatever tree shapes suited them, and college would no longer be a degree-or-nothing affair. Learning would be available everywhere and at a moment's notice, and would be rewarded right away.

06/29 03:26 PM Share

Podcast with Dan Klein on Academic Groupthink   [George Leef]

Recently I wrote about the Independent Review article by Dan Klein and Charlotta Stern on academic groupthink. If you want to get into more detail on this subject, here is a podcast Dan recorded recently.

06/29 01:05 PM Share

Friday, June 26, 2009

Toxic Talk at Chico   [Jane S. Shaw]

"Universities should be places of vigorous debate, but its leaders should be discerning about the individuals they invite to speak on campus," says Charles Geshekter in his report on the visit of anti-Israel polemicist Norman Finkelstein to California State University at Chico. Finkelstein doesn't have a university home right now (he failed to get tenure at DePaul in a celebrated case), but his one-sided diatribes and ad hominem attacks (for example, calling Elie Wiesel "the resident clown of the Holocaust circus") make for good speaking gigs at universities around the country.

06/26 01:17 PM Share

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Corruption of Affirmative Action   [Carol Iannone]

Racial injustice against African Americans is still alive in America, and the wounds and disadvantages of slavery and segregation linger. The vision of an entirely colorblind society can itself be a kind of blindness, ignoring continuing struggles and continuing bigotry. Institutions should be able to address past and present injustice through some forms of affirmative action, including the aggressive recruitment of minorities and the use of race as one factor among many in subjective admissions and hiring decisions. But denying earned benefits because of race alone is an injustice that will never solve an injustice.

06/25 12:19 PM Share

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

More on Dull Asians Who Study Too Much   [Robert VerBruggen]

Walter Williams offers his thoughts on Ward Connerly's Minding the Campus article.

06/24 04:01 PM Share

Protecting the Public Interest   [Anne D. Neal]

In today’s Inside Higher Ed, I and others weigh in on how to ensure the reconstituted National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity serves the American taxpayer.

06/24 02:54 PM Share

Is More Education Necessarily a Good Thing?   [George Leef]

Thomas Sowell's column today takes dead aim at the recent Wall Street Journal piece Jane and I attacked earlier in the week. Sowell questions how much benefit there can be in processing more of the low-achieving high-school graduates through to college degrees. I particularly like his analogy to the housing bubble, where policymakers mindless pursued the goal of increasing percentages of home ownership without stopping to wonder if home ownership made sense for those people lured out of renting by cheap rates and lax documentation.

Today's Wall Street Journal letters section also has several crushing rebuttals to McPherson and Schulenberg. I've pasted the first two after the jump. The first was written by a student at Davidson College who is interning at the John Locke Foundation, and the second is Jane's:

Keep reading this post . . .

06/24 11:43 AM Share

Have Colleges Failed if Students Don't Graduate?   [George Leef]

That's the conclusion of a recent paper published by AEI on college graduation rates. The authors see low graduation rates as a problem or even a crisis, but I think there's nothing to worry about and don't accept the portrayal of schools with low graduation rates as "risky investments." Picking a college isn't like trying to find the casino game with the best odds.

I comment on the AEI paper on this week's Clarion Call.

06/24 10:38 AM Share

A Silver Lining at Harvard   [Lucy Morrow Caldwell]

Harvard University president Drew Faust announced Tuesday that the University will lay off nearly 275 workers in the next seven business days. Previously famous for boasting the world’s largest endowment fund, Harvard Management Co. lost 22 percent of its value last year and is projected to reach a 30 percent drop by the end of this month. Yet there may be a silver lining to Harvard’s financial meltdown, as budget cuts have ushered in a reordering of institutional priorities.

Most notably, administrators appear slightly less inclined to cow to the army of political correctness that usually occupies Harvard Yard. Last month, Harvard University Health Services announced it would end anonymous HIV testing, which is an expensive resource to maintain, as well as underused. In the future, students will still be able to have confidential HIV testing, but the results will appear in their medical files. In a statement that was uncharacteristically brazen for a Harvard administrator, director Dr. David Rosenthal sensibly noted that he didn’t think this would be a problem, since very few people ought to need anonymous testing. “What kind of person needs an HIV test?” Rosenthal asked a group of outraged students, according to an account that later circulated via e-mail. “Promiscuous.”

Last week, a similar flap occurred when administrators revealed that the university would be closing the Office of Sexual Assault, Prevention, and Response (OSAPR) for the month of July, but would maintain other outlets for students reporting crimes of sexual assault or rape. OSAPR’s director despaired that this would be particularly problematic since the summer months are the time the office reserves for planning new programs.

If anyone’s wondering what sort of programs she means, just review some of the office’s previous calendars. In 2007, OSAPR co-sponsored a program aimed at college freshmen entitled, “Hooking Up: Hot Hints for a Great Sex Life,” which promised “sexy and scintillating talk” while troubleshooting bedroom issues. Later that year, the office sponsored an event entitled, “Choose Your Own Sex Adventure,” which encouraged students to collectively think through a hypothetical hook-up scenario (the scenario ended with the question of what color condom to choose).

Much outrage has followed announcements of Harvard’s decisions to cut anonymous testing and suspend OSAPR. A lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies Committee organized a May “test-in” at Harvard University Health Services in which students ate pizza and donned red ribbons to protest the end of anonymous testing. News of OSAPR’s hiatus has sparked accusations that Harvard is not providing sufficient resources to victims.

That Harvard appears to be standing its ground on these fronts despite the outrage is both surprising and refreshing. Heather Mac Donald wrote earlier this year of how Harvard’s archrival, Yale, appears to be following the opposite strategy in coping with a down market. Despite a series of budget cuts and a similarly collapsing endowment, Yale has moved forward in its plans to inaugurate the Office of LGBTQ Relations.

Budget cuts are rarely pleasant, but if a side effect is that a few of Harvard’s typically lavished social activists have to sweat a little, that might make a shrinking endowment worth it.

06/24 07:00 AM Share

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Perpetuating the Myth about the Depression   [George Leef]

In the June 26 issue of The Chronicle Review, Brown University history professor Elliott Gorn contributes an article entitled "The Meanings of Depression-Era Culture." (Subscriber site.) What caught my eye was the typical leftist jab that a recession became the Great Depression because Hoover and the Republicans in Congress sat around and did nothing in obedience to their laissez-faire beliefs.

It's important for the Left that people keep believing that myth. If most Americans came to understand that government economic intervention is the cause of recessions and its blundering efforts at ameliorating them are counter-productive, support for the status quo would plummet.

I just sent this letter to the editor:

In his article "The Meanings of Depression-Era Culture," Elliott Gorn can't resist wading into economic policy and taking the usual shot at Herbert Hoover: "After the stock market crash that ended the 1920s, the economy had more than three years to stagnate, as President Herbert Hoover and Congress did what Republicans now recommend: not much."

I know that this notion fits perfectly with the anti-capitalist narrative the left finds so useful, but it's flatly untrue. Herbert Hoover was a whirling dervish of economic interventionism, with a host of policies that substituted politics for free market adjustments in wages, prices and production. If he's interested in the truth about Hoover, I suggest starting with Murray Rothbard's book America's Great Depression.

Recessions and depressions don't just happen. They're caused by government  cheap money policies that distort investment and production. The Federal Reserve's inflation in the late 1920s led to a boom in which some industries over-expanded. Hoover tried frantically to prevent the necessary economic adjustments, and everything he did just made matters worse.

I'm not siding with the Republicans, who have been just as culpable as the Democrats in giving us a leviathan state that has vastly more power than any government should have. The sooner Americans of all parties and persuasions give up the myth that free markets cause depressions and government has to cure them, the better off we'll be.

George C. Leef
Director of Research
Pope Center for Higher Education Policy
Raleigh, NC

06/23 03:25 PM Share

Update on Free Speech at Bucknell   [Allison Kasic]

A few weeks ago, David referenced a free-speech kerfuffle at my alma mater, Bucknell University. To recap: The school shut down two political events in the spring semester, one dealing with the stimulus package, the other with affirmative action. Luckily, FIRE has stepped in to assist the students involved and stand up for free expression at Bucknell. The Alliance for a Better Bucknell, an alumni group I'm a part of, is also calling on alumni, parents, and friends of the university to stand up against these gross injustices on campus.
 
The Philly Inquirer reported on the recent incidents today, and it's truly saddening to see my school's administrators stick to their talking points that they've done nothing wrong in this ordeal. Worse, they go so far as to label the events themselves as "discriminatory." It is sad enough for all of us who care about Bucknell, or liberal education in general, that administrators there are stifling political debate on campus. But it's even more distressing that they have the nerve to lob one of the most vicious attacks in today's lexicon, an accusation of discriminatory behavior, at students who simply expressed a differing political view using satire.

06/23 03:24 PM Share

Do Some Groups Have Superior "Ways of Knowing"?   [George Leef]

Minding the Campus today features an excellent essay by Prof. Daphne Patai, in which she takes a critical look at "standpoint theory" — the notion that some groups of people have distinctive and superior "ways of knowing." It's inspired by the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. As almost everyone knows by now, she asserts that as a Latina, she has different and better insight into legal disputes than do members of other groups.

This is an idea we frequently encounter in higher education, particularly in the various identity courses. The fact that it survives in college (much less in the federal judiciary) is a poor advertisement for the ability of colleges to instill "critical thinking" in their students. The assertion that there is a feminist epistemology (or an African-American epistemology or a working class epistemology or anything else along this line) is divisive nonsense, but few dare to say so.

One who did so long ago, by the way, was Ludwig von Mises, who attacked the idea of polylogism back in the 1940s. Back then the claim was that there was an Aryan "way of knowing" that was superior to "the bourgeois, Jewish way of knowing." Mises denied that there was any validity to polylogism. Exactly what argument can an advocate of the superiority of one group's epistemology make when confronted by a similar claim by someone of a different group? At that point, logic departs and the weapons come out.

Patai sees the danger in this silly intellectual fad: "Without such overarching principles, what we can expect is precisely what one finds in the world of identity politics: an endless divsion of groups into smaller and smaller identity units, dependong on a few shared characteristics that are always in danger of dissolving." It's a socially destructive idea, but one that Obama and many other politicians are glad to exploit for short-run advantages.

06/23 03:22 PM Share

Gender-Symmetrical Sports Analysis   [Allison Kasic]

In honor of Title IX's birthday, the College Sports Council is offering a sneak peak at a new study to be released later this summer:

The preliminary findings of a study of NCAA participation and scholarship data conducted by the College Sports Council (CSC) shows that in gender symmetrical sports, which have teams for both male and female athletes, women are accorded far more opportunities to compete and earn scholarships at NCAA Division 1 schools, the highest level of intercollegiate athletics.

"After nearly four decades after the passage of Title IX, it's time to erase all institutional gender discrimination, and that includes bias against boys," said CSC Chairman Eric Pearson.  “Current NCAA policies cultivate the disparity between male and female scholarship opportunities. In sports where there are symmetric teams the scholarship limits should be the same. The CSC calls on the NCAA to equalize scholarship limits in all sports which have teams for both male and female athletes."

Later this Summer, the CSC will release a comprehensive study on athletic opportunity in NCAA Division I in “gender symmetric” sports where both men and women compete.  Preliminary findings of this study include:

-At the NCAA Division I level, there are far more women’s teams (2,653) than men’s teams (2,097), denying thousands of male athletes the opportunity to compete.

-Overall in “gender symmetric” sports, there are far more scholarships available for women (32,656) than for men (20,206).

-By far, the most difficult athletic scholarship to obtain at the Division I level is in men’s volleyball, where there are 489 high school athletes for every full NCAA scholarship.

06/23 03:20 PM Share

Monday, June 22, 2009

Do You Want Nutrition or Cotton Candy?   [George Leef]

My Pope Center colleague Jenna Robinson writes here about the choice students have as they enter college: four years (or more) of goofing around and doing as little work that could improve themselves as possible, or trying to maximize the possibilities for intellectual growth and enrichment.

It's excellent advice, but I'm afraid it will mostly fall on deaf ears. Few of the disengaged students who have never known education that wasn't built around the notion that it is supposed to be fun, ego-boosting stuff with rewards for everyone are going to have epiphanies. It is possible, though. Back in my own teaching days, I had a few students who admitted that they'd been pretty lazy throughout high school, but figured out in college that learning can be enjoyable and useful.

06/22 03:01 PM Share

Re: Ridiculous WSJ Article   [Jane S. Shaw]

Let’s hope that the column was published because one of the authors is the former chairman of Dow Jones & Company, not because the Wall Street Journal endorses this position. Peter McPherson is now president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU, previously known as NASULGC). He and coauthor David Shulenburger want more federal money sending more students to college.

The program they espouse will have perverse results. It will boost tuition (due to the a cat-chasing-its-tail situation in higher ed) — and as George mentioned, it will create more unhappy drop-outs and produce additional college graduates delivering pizza.

06/22 02:38 PM Share

Ridiculous WSJ Article on 'Need' for More College Grads   [George Leef]

The higher-education establishment would love to see its market saturation increase, and it resorts to weak arguments to persuade people that what's good for Ohio State is good for the country. Saturday's Wall Street Journal included this piece pitching the line that the economy will improve if we manage to get more people through college.

Here is my letter in response:

This was one of the least persuasive pieces you've published in many years.

The great success of our economy was never due to the fact that a relatively high percentage Americans obtained college degrees compared with other nations. The U.S. had a more robust and innovative economy than anywhere else in the world long before our post-World War II emphasis on college credentials because our economy was more free of the stultifying taxes, regulations and governmental drag on production and trade found elsewhere. That, not college degrees, was the reason for our prosperity.

McPherson and Schulenberger credulously believe that national economic success is directly tied to the percentage of people who have college degrees and say that we'll underperform unless we get to 55 percent. Nonsense. A large percentage of college students enter with feeble academic skills and graduate without much improvement. Many lower-tier colleges and universities admit almost anyone who applies, then accommodate the weakness and intellectual disengagement of most students with curricula that make it easy for everyone with a modicum of persistence to graduate. When those students enter the labor market, many find that the best they can do is to compete for mundane jobs that call for nothing more than simple trainability.

We already have lots of bartenders, pizza delivery drivers, and aerobics instructors with college credentials to their name. Why do we need to devote additional resources to producing more of them?

There's a central planning mindset on display in this article — that experts know the ideal percentage of people who should have college degrees. We'd be much better off if we stopped subsidizing higher (or more accurately in most cases, "longer") education and left it to individuals decide whether their expected benefits are worth the cost. 

George C. Leef
Director of Research
Pope Center for Higher Education Policy
Raleigh, NC

06/22 12:20 PM Share

The High-School Exit Exam   [Robert VerBruggen]

California Dems want to end it, their reasoning being that due to budget cuts in the education field, the state can't expect its students to do as well as they did before. I'm not sure that's the message the state wants to send to out-of-state colleges considering its students.

06/22 11:23 AM Share

Economic Slings and Arrows   [Jane S. Shaw]

As a higher-education reformer also committed to the promotion of free markets, I recently discovered that I had neglected a constructive solution right before my eyes.

Academic economists are not the worst source of hostility to markets, but many disdain capitalism. They also fill their top journals with mathematically complex irrelevancies (financed by the taxpayer).

Economist Dan Klein started Econ Journal Watch to call the profession to task. The online, peer-reviewed journal pricks the self-importance of the economic establishment. Addressing specific journal articles, it challenges the assumption of “market failure” that leads to so much regulation. (Disclosure: I am an editorial adviser, although mostly inactive.)

Now in its fifth year, the journal appears to be a success. Its citation record exceeds that of the Southern Economic Journal and is slowly creeping toward the well-ranked Journal of Political Economy. Downloads of articles typically number around 1,000; one analyzing the New York Times columns of Paul Krugman has had 19,000 hits.

To me, EJW exemplifies one way of countering the left-wing bias of our campuses. (I understand that the discipline of history has Historically Speaking, which offers at least some challenges to the status quo.)

For higher-education reformers, the question is: How can these journals have more impact?

06/22 11:00 AM Share

Friday, June 19, 2009

How To Lose Your Job as Chancellor   [George Leef]

My Pope Center colleague Jay Schalin comments here on the recent ouster of North Carolina State's chancellor, James Oblinger. The basic problem seems to be that the system for choosing top-level university officials in the state is dominated by politics, and then those who are chosen can't say no to the bigwigs who anointed them.

06/19 02:28 PM Share

Enforcing Title IX on Campus   [Allison Kasic]

Proportionality's stranglehold on campus just got a whole lot tighter.

06/19 10:54 AM Share

Thursday, June 18, 2009

"Manufactured Controversy:" The New Talking Point   [David French]

I loved Free Exchange on Campus's response to ACTA's excellent new report (thank you, Jane and George, for pointing it out). By sheer coincidence FEC has not only called ACTA's report a "manufactured controversy," FEC itself has put out a new report called . . . "Manufactured Controversy."

In a post last week, I discussed the FEC report in the context of campus litigation, but I suppose it is sometimes useful to go farther afield — to point out the overwhelming evidence that our campuses are ideological monocultures, hostile to conservatives (especially conservative Christians), and full of professors that are highly likely to force their politics down students' throats. Students leave these campuses significantly liberalized on social issues and much less likely to maintain traditional religious practices.

Of course, this occurs in an alcohol-soaked environment dominated by speech codes and other unconstitutional policies. Students sometimes graduate with less civic knowledge than they had when they entered, and college costs are increasing at a rate far exceeding cost increases in medical care, the consumer price index, or increases in family income.

But I suppose all of those things are a distraction from the "real issues," whatever they may be.

06/18 05:26 PM Share

A Reader Comments on Faculty Conformity   [George Leef]

A reader from Canada wrote to me with some comments on my Clarion Call piece yesterday. His note also skewers the Free Exchange assertion that the idea of faculty indoctrination is imaginary:

I read with interest your June 16 article on conformity in higher education and couldn't agree more: as a former graduate student at an otherwise nondescript Canadian school (University of Western Ontario) I discovered early on that there was a full-court press present that essentially demanded that students act and think as their liberal professors acted and thought; if you elected not to buy into this blinkered mind-set, you faced various complications — icy relations with faculty members, difficulties with uncooperative supervisors — that could derail your future hopes and aspirations. Furthermore, everything you said about the tendency for academics to perpetuate certain views, certain ideologies and (in my experiences) the hiring of certain groups is absolutely true: at UWO's women's "studies" department, the faculty is overwhelmingly white, female, embittered and left of center — even though the department has now been around for 22 years. It's sad, but one of the most close-minded environments you will ever encounter is a typical social sciences department on a Canadian university campus: Here, you get the obligatory steady diet of anti-male, anti-American, anti-Western, "anti-patriachy," and anti-capitalist (as well as anti-globalization) nonsense. This might explain, ultimately, why a university social sciences degree at your typical Canadian university is scarcely worth the paper it's printed on. In any case, thanks for a thoughtful article.
 
Sincerely,
 
Blaine Hislop   



06/18 03:59 PM Share

Re: Affirmative Action at the Naval Academy   [Roger Clegg]

Kudos to the courageous Professor Fleming, who has blown this particular whistle before — for example, in a 2003 Washington Post op-ed. He’s right that this scandalous two-track system is illegal. And he’s right as well that the high costs include not only the obvious ones for the Navy and the country, the waste of the taxpayers’ money, and the unfairness to those discriminated against, but the fact that the purported beneficiaries of this discrimination are significantly less likely to graduate.

I should note that the Center for Equal Opportunity documented strong evidence that such discrimination was occurring at the Naval Academy (and, to a lesser extent, at West Point) in a 1998 study, available online here.

06/18 12:37 PM Share

Affirmative Action at the Naval Academy   [Robert VerBruggen]

A professor there blows the whistle:

Midshipmen are admitted by two tracks. White applicants out of high school who are not also athletic recruits typically need grades of A and B and minimum SAT scores of 600 on each part for the Board to vote them "qualified." Athletics and leadership also count.

A vote of "qualified" for a white applicant doesn't mean s/he's coming, only that he or she can compete to win the "slate" of up to 10 nominations that (most typically) a Congress(wo)man draws up. That means that nine "qualified" white applicants are rejected. SAT scores below 600 or C grades almost always produce a vote of "not qualified" for white applicants.

Not so for an applicant who self-identifies as one of the minorities who are our "number one priority." For them, another set of rules apply. Their cases are briefed separately to the board, and SAT scores to the mid-500s with quite a few Cs in classes (and no visible athletics or leadership) typically produce a vote of "qualified" for them, with direct admission to Annapolis. They're in, and are given a pro forma nomination to make it legit.

Minority applicants with scores and grades down to the 300s with Cs and Ds (and no particular leadership or athletics) also come, though after a remedial year at our taxpayer-supported remedial school, the Naval Academy Preparatory School.

By using NAPS as a feeder, we've virtually eliminated all competition for "diverse" candidates: in theory they have to get a C average at NAPS to come to USNA, but this is regularly re-negotiated.

06/18 11:39 AM Share

Re: How to Promote Intellectual Diversity   [George Leef]

In the USA Today story on ACTA's report, we find the expected dismissal from the folks on the left who think the status quo is just fine. The piece quotes Megan Fitzgerald of Free Exchange on Campus Coaltion, who calls the criticism of intellectual imbalance "a manufactured controversy that distracts from the real issues affecting higher education." I don't know what Free Exchange regards as the "real issues" (not enough government subsidies, I suppose), but the paucity of professors who will give a fair hearing to classical liberal, conservative, or libertarian critiques of the dominant collectivist/mega-state philosophy of the professoriate is not "a manufactured controversy."

If Free Exchange wants to turn a blind eye to the fact that most college students get saturated with leftist notions throughout their years on campus and hardly ever hear anything favorable to limited government, private property, and spontaneous order, it has all the credibility of flat-earthers.

06/18 11:39 AM Share

College-Bubble Idea Goes Mainstream   [George Leef]

Chicago Tribune writer Greg Burns has a piece on the prospect of a college bubble — the notion that costs have raced so far beyond the now-much-more-limited ability of many families to pay that some schools are in jeopardy.

The story is good as far as it goes, but Burns only sees the obvious cost aspect of the problem. He misses the value aspect, namely that many college graduates are now finding that their degrees don't necessarily get them anywhere in the labor market. Burns repeats the conventional wisdom that a degree "translates into higher lifetime earnings." As I've often written, that's not always the case. The labor market is glutted with people holding college credentials, and many of them end up competing for "high school" jobs.

06/18 10:53 AM Share

How To Promote Intellectual Diversity   [Jane S. Shaw]

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni takes an upbeat approach in a new study featured in USA Today. ACTA identifies schools from the University of Missouri to Dartmouth that have taken initiatives to avoid or fix instanees of discrimination against students who question prevailing ideologies. ACTA offers trustees a list of "best practices," such as campus surveys and the inclusion of intellectual diversity as a qualification in job searches.

06/18 10:52 AM Share

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Why So Much Conformity in Academia?   [George Leef]

In this week's Pope Center Clarion Call, I comment on a recent article by Daniel Klein and Charlotta Stern that seeks to explain why most professors in academic fields all tend to think alike.

06/17 05:28 PM Share

Bruce Gans Extols One of the Greatest Books   [George Leef]

In an EdNews interview, Prof. Bruce Gans, a proponent of having students read great books, discusses one of the greatest, although one not usually thought of in this context — Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.

I don't think that Gans is an economist by formal training, but he really grasps what Smith was all about. Gans writes, "He has been falsely characterized as an enemy of the poor. In fact, he is the greatest voice for creating actual real life opportunities for poor people who ever lived."

Does Smith have relevance today? Absolutely. Gans points out that the vast waste and wreckage caused by the collapse of the housing bubble was caused by exactly the kind of government meddling that Smith warned about.

So why is he ignored? Because "he does not present a utopian pipe dream of reality that academics and school teachers subscribe to. Smith considers government to be a burden and a drag on efforts to earn a good and better living because it takes the money people have earned and wastes much of it on activities that produce nothing and do either little good or actual harm."

06/17 12:51 PM Share

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

We Only Want Insiders, Thank You   [George Leef]

Harvey Silverglate reflects on his failed effort to be elected a Harvard Overseer in this this essay.

Like Dartmouth, the establishment at Harvard is evidently happy with supervision only from collegial insiders and will go to some lengths to keep it that way.

06/16 03:06 PM Share

Does Michigan Need More College Grads?   [George Leef]

In his WSJ column today, William McGurn looks at the economic woes of Michigan, a state that has been sinking for several decades and now tops the nation in unemployment. The problem I have with the piece is that it gives too much aid and comfort to those who keep saying that the thing a sagging economy needs is more college graduates so that "knowledge industries" can grow. 

McGurn writes, "The more open a state's economy is to investment and entrepreneurship, the more employers there will be." No argument there. Gov. Jennifer Granholm's philosophy of super-sizing state government is a big reason why employers and workers are leaving. But here's his next sentence: "And the more education a state's citizens have, the more advanced the industries they can support."

I can't agree. Even in "knowledge industries," most of the jobs don't require advanced academic preparation (although employers may insist on college credentials as a screening device for some of them) and for those that do, we have a national labor market. Michigan doesn't have to produce its own business professionals any more than it has to produce its own oranges.

Michigan needs to become a low-tax, low-regulation state that looks attractive to investors, who will train or recruit the workers they need. Putting the cart before the horse and trying to revitalize the economy by putting more students through college won't help.

06/16 03:03 PM Share

Every School is a Party School   [David French]

Inside Higher Ed reports today on the "surprising finding" that despite university efforts to decrease binge drinking and other risky behaviors, the number of drinking-related deaths of college-age young people rose substantially between 1998 and 2005. At the same time, the rate of binge drinking itself rose from 41.7 percent to 44.7 percent.  

While there is (justifiably) much hand-wringing about these stats, very few people seem to understand the ultimate cause. Colleges say they need more money and resources to educate students as to the consequences of excessive drinking. Commenters blame parents who "demonize" alcohol consumption. (Yes, that's our problem — excessive parental disapproval of alcohol — when almost any high-school principal can tell you legions of tales of parent-hosted drinking parties.)

The real culprit, of course, is culture. Colleges have developed a culture of nearly unrestrained hedonism. Binge drinking isn't an accident, it's the entire point of the Thursday (or is it now Wednesday?) to Sunday party circuit. For the college hedonist, binge drinking facilitates the so-called "hookup culture." And when it comes to sex, the university message is, shall we say, mixed. Do it! (but safely) is the college theme. One university, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, apparently believes that providing student-fee funding to the Roman Catholic Foundation somehow threatens the Republic, yet will throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at a student group called "Sex Out Loud."

Do it! (but safely) is a losing message, especially when combined with a concerted effort to demonize those private religious voices that may offer alternatives to a culture that dominates campus. From the more "staid" schools like Harvard to the national champions of the party lifestyle at Florida, "do it" dominates "safely," and the one ultimate answer — a different moral code — is simply not an option. After all, some of the same people arguing for a better path may — in their heart of hearts — not support same-sex marriage. And we can't have that kind of voice on campus, can we?

06/16 03:03 PM Share

Peter Berkowitz in the WSJ   [George Leef]

On Saturday, Peter Berkowitz had an excellent article, "Conservatism and the University Curriculum," published in the Wall Street Journal. In it, he laments that few American undergrads ever hear anything (except perhaps off-the-cuff ridicule) of thinkers who dissent from the notion that expanding governmental power is necessarily good.

I have just sent this letter to the editor in reply:

Peter Berkowitz makes a good point. Few American students in political science departments are apt to hear anything but snide remarks and disparaging caricatures of thinkers who take issue with the conventional wisdom that the growth of government is necessarily beneficial.

He's right that when pressured on this great omission, professors are apt to dodge the issue by remarking on how strange it is for conservatives to be seeking "affirmative action." Another red herring sometimes used is to say that demands for curricular changes from outsiders amounts to an attack on the academic freedom of the faculty, which has arrogated to itself plenary control over the curriculum.

Those are weak excuses for the unwillingness of most professors to get out of their academic niches and learn something that's new (to them) and possibly unsettling. The hallmark of the academic world these days is hyper-specialization, with professors teaching narrow courses that reflect their own research interests. Few professors who have made a career out of the alleged need for a politics of redistribution, for example, are interested in taking the time to digest any work arguing the contrary case, such as Hayek's Law, Legislation, and Liberty.

Despite the lip service they usually pay to intellectual inquiry, many professors prefer to live in tiny but familiar academic cocoons. The education of college students suffers as a result.

George C. Leef
Director of Research
Pope Center for Higher Education Policy
Raleigh, NC

06/16 02:58 PM Share

Stigma Beats Dogma   [David French]

Late yesterday afternoon, I happened to catch a short-but-insightful lecture by one of my favorite Christian apologists, Ravi Zacharias. In the midst of an interesting discussion about the allure of Eastern mysticism in Western culture, he made a fascinating statement (I'm paraphrasing): In the battle of ideas, stigma always beats dogma. In other words, through stigmatization, one can defeat a set of ideas or principles without ever "winning" an argument on the merits.

I was instantly reminded of not just my own experiences in secular higher education, but also the experiences I see and hear every day while defending the rights of students and professors. Why convince when you can browbeat? Why dialogue when you can read entire philosophies out of polite society? That's not to say there aren't intense debates on matters of public policy, but all too often we see social conservatism not so much engaged as assaulted.

I fear that we like to comfort ourselves by saying something like, "kids see through this heavy-handed nonsense." This is simply wishful thinking. Most people don't like to be labeled as "bigots," and they often assume that such overwhelming ideological consensus is the product of considered thought. If "everyone" seems to believe something (especially when "everyone" includes all of your professors and other academic authorities), then mustn't it be true?

Here's a question for conservative parents and teachers: Are we really equipping young people to face the challenges of college if we teach them arguments? Or should we instead be primarily preparing them to face scorn and hate with inner toughness and good cheer? After all, when a professor calls you a "fascist bastard" for defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, what is he doing if not trying to defeat dogma with stigma? 

06/16 02:55 PM Share

Monday, June 15, 2009

Peter Wood on Proposed Expansion of Higher Ed   [George Leef]

Peter Wood has written an excellent analysis of the latest justification being offered by the higher-ed establishment for federal help in expanding the number of kids in college, namely that we're losing our edge in competition and innovation.

Innovation and enhanced economic competitiveness won't come from luring more marginal students away from careers as electricians, insurance adjusters, truck drivers, etc., to go to college and earn a degree of some sort. The notion that there's a direct relationship between the amount of formal education people have and their innovativeness is erroneous. America beat the heck out of the rest of the world in that regard back when it was rare for Americans to go past high school. They kept right on learning, of course, but not in classrooms.

The key is not the number of seat-hours in front of teachers and professors. The key is the freedom to try new ideas and the prospect of reward if you come up with something good. The old Soviet Union had a lot of highly educated people, but little freedom to try new things and scant reward for those who built better mousetraps. As we regulate business more and more, we're moving toward the Soviets; ditto for our tax system, which increasingly punishes success in the marketplace. To those clamoring for more federal subsidization of higher education because we need to become more economically competitive and innovative, I say: Come back when you're serious.

06/15 02:28 PM Share

Embarrassment at NC State   [George Leef]

My Pope Center colleague Jane Shaw writes here about the embarrassment at NC State. Heads are rolling, and people are taking a close look at the too-cozy relationship between the UNC system and the state's Democratic party. At the very least, the carefully cultivated image of higher-education leaders as interested only in the good that education can do has been badly tarnished. It is evident that higher education is an excellent cover for politically connected liberals who want to line their pockets at taxpayer expense.

06/15 12:07 PM Share

SoSo’s So-so Scores   [Fred Schwarz]

Regarding Sonia Sotomayor’s remarks that she benefited from affirmative action when she was admitted to Princeton, I think she may be selling herself short. She was the valedictorian of her high-school class, and while I don’t know what Princeton’s policy was on that, I do know that it counts for a lot in some places. At the Ivy League college I attended in the 1970s, the admissions director once told me: “We have a policy of admitting valedictorians. In many cases, if they had finished second in their classes, they wouldn’t have gotten in.”

So I think it’s quite likely that a white male who, like Sotomayor, was the valedictorian of an academically rigorous Catholic school would have been admitted to Princeton, even with mediocre board scores. Sotomayor’s narrative suggests that (1) colleges base most of their admissions decisions on test scores, (2) the tests are “culturally biased,” and therefore (3) racial preferences are necessary. In fact, none of these things are true (though I personally think we could use a little more of (1)), but to justify her bean-counting proclivities, she has to pretend that they are, even at the cost of a little self-deprecation.

06/15 12:06 PM Share

College to Specialize Only in History   [George Leef]

Inside Higher Ed has a story today about the plans for a college to be located in New Hampshire that will specialize only in history.

The man behind this is Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, an institution that has fought the American Bar Association over its needlessly expensive and restrictive accreditation standards. (MSL has had to "settle" for accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, but not having ABA accreditation means absolutely nothing with regard to the competence of instruction in the law.)

The story doesn't tell us much about the proposed curriculum. Most of the history profession has fallen under Marxian views — hostile to capitalism, entranced by the supposed goodness of government (in the hands of political progressives, at least) — but Velvel is enough of a free thinker that he might want to include some non-statist historians and courses that don't exclusively sing the praises of the welfare state.

More academic competition can't hurt. I hope Velvel's project succeeds.

06/15 11:00 AM Share

Friday, June 12, 2009

Education and Inequality   [Robert VerBruggen]

There's been a good deal of research on the link between them lately, and my fellow NR-nik Stephen Spruiell has the highlights.

06/12 04:21 PM Share

The Audacity of College Students   [Robert VerBruggen]

Those interested in the lives of college-age interns (okay, those interested in mocking college-age interns) should check out the new blog of DC intern stories. Lots of good stuff, but here's a recent post:

GChat conversation with one of my friends in DC...

Staffer: Dude, great news over here. Just great stuff.

Me: What happened?

Staffer: My intern just signed off on the idea of [random item]. She told me it works, and she knows because she "researched it freshman year in college." So I'm all in. I was on the fence before, but now I'm good to go.

06/12 02:39 PM Share

At Least They're Doing Something Constructive   [Robert VerBruggen]

at North Carolina State University.

06/12 02:18 PM Share

Where to Go to College?   [George Leef]

The Pope Center's intern this summer, Britney Wasserman, writes here about the decision she faced a few years ago when she was choosing which college to attend. Living in Florida at the time, she had been accepted at Florida State, but instead decided on the University of North Florida — for personal rather than academic reasons. That was a mistake, she soon found out, since the courses there were easier than her high-school courses had been, and few of the students took college seriously.

She doesn't say this, but I think that implies that the faculty and administrators at UNF had made their peace with a largely disengaged student body and allowed academic standards to decline to a level matching the students' interest in learning. That's the case for a wide swath of American "higher education." As Steve Balch says, we mostly just have longer education rather than higher education.

06/12 11:21 AM Share

Jim Leach   [Carol Iannone]

The nomination of Jim Leach to head the National Endowment for the Humanities is welcome news. His comments reveal that he has an appreciation of the importance of culture to society in general and to our society in particular:

America somehow thinks that leadership relates to governance, and it certainly does. But society is much bigger than governance, and some of the truly great leadership of our society is outside the governance arena. Our culture is more shaped by the arts and humanities than it often is by politics. And in a difficult times the arts, sciences and humanities vastly increase in significance. And this is one of these times.

06/12 11:19 AM Share

Madeleine Albright   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

gets a school at Wellesley.

06/12 08:44 AM Share

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Free Speech at Bucknell   [David French]

Today, FIRE breaks the story of Bucknell's censorship of the Bucknell University Conservatives Club. Apparently, the Bucknell administration was not pleased when the group protested Barack Obama's fiscal policies. My favorite part of FIRE's release follows:

Bucknell's recent forays into censorship began on March 17, 2009, when BUCC members stood at Bucknell's student center and passed out fake dollar bills with President Obama's face on the front and the sentence "Obama's stimulus plan makes your money as worthless as monopoly money" on the back. One hour into this symbolic protest, Bucknell administrator Judith L. Mickanis approached the students and told them that they were "busted," that they were "soliciting" without prior approval, and that their activity was equivalent to handing out Bibles.

Aside from the total absurdity of an administrator calling out "busted," her comparison of the student protest to — gasp — "handing out Bibles" is rather telling.  

It is remarkably common for university administrators (and virtually any other form of government or private official) to view religious speech as "special" — and not in a good way. Decades of school-prayer litigation and other Establishment Clause cases have led to a mountain of misinformation that can lead even well-meaning individuals to suppress private religious speech in public contexts. In fact, something like this just happened at UCLA, when it finally allowed a student to thank Jesus Christ in a personal graduation statement after initially refusing on "separation of church and state" grounds.  

But ignorance is often supplemented by malice. Long-running cultural battles have led others to believe that religious speech is uniquely offensive (though somehow not secular speech on the same topics).  

While we can't get inside the Bucknell administrator's head, it is disturbing that her choice of an analogy for a clearly inappropriate activity was "handing out Bibles." What was her expectation? That the BUCC would immediately respond, "Oh no! Not Bibles! We're not like those people."

06/11 04:33 PM Share

Sotomayor and Proportionality   [Carol Iannone]

It is being said that Sotomayor's judicial decisions are mainly the same as her colleagues' and show no special race or gender consciousness, except perhaps for a few. But then one has to ask why, in her speech at UC Berkeley School of Law, she so obsessively promoted the pretense that there is some special  female or Hispanic point of view that can only be heard by having females and Hispanics on the bench.

Is she being dishonest? Or is she just using identity politics and talking about the "Latina soul" as a ploy to gain more judicial appointments for women and Hispanics — roughly proportionate to their share of the population, a concept that violates individual equality before the law? Proportionality was clearly the standard for her decision in the Ricci affirmative-action case: Since no blacks and only one Hispanic passed the test, the whites who passed it had had to be denied what they had earned.

So her Latina rhetoric is not innocent, regardless of the nature of the majority of her decisions. It can be used to deny justice to whites and to encourage ongoing minority grievance when proportionality is absent.

06/11 02:21 PM Share

College Grads Swell Ranks of Tax Consumers   [George Leef]

That isn't exactly the way Reuters headlines the story, but that's what is going on.

With a substantial part of the private sector in turmoil, a lot of college grads are looking for and finding jobs with the federal government. Probably a good move for many, but this means that more of the relatively bright people will become paper shufflers who do not produce, but merely consume taxes paid by those who do.

The new fad on college campuses these days is "sustainability." Well, how about that? Is is sustainable for a society to keep luring more and more potentially productive people into that black hole known as Washington, D.C.? No.

06/11 12:02 PM Share

Many Students Should First Go to a Community College   [George Leef]

In an op-ed published in today's Raleigh News & Observer, my Pope Center colleague Jay Schalin argues that North Carolina (and why not other states as well?) should steer many college students into community colleges first. Those who either can't handle college work or simply don't want to can find that out with much less expense than if they go to a four-year school right away.

I would add that in a community college, academically marginal students are apt to realize that there are training programs available that would do them a lot more good than almost any BA degree.

06/11 12:01 PM Share

Re: Sotomayor and Racial Preferences   [Robert VerBruggen]

This is all over the Internet already, but apparently she's admitted she benefited from affirmative action. The NYT has the scoop, complete with Sotomayor spouting the usual garbage about "cultural bias" in testing, which "statistics" have proven.

I also really liked Todd Zywicki's post on the "wise Latina" remark, which puts the underlying sentiment in its academic context. The last sentence in this quote is the best:

That idea — that your background can make you a "better" judge — is, in my personal opinion, a silly idea that mischaracterizes the proper view of a judge. Nonetheless, it is a perfectly mainstream view in the academy and legal profession today — which I suspect accounts for how uncontroversial her statements seemed when they were uttered at places like Berkeley. Anyone who has attended a faculty workshop in the past decade at least wouldn't bat an eye when someone says something like she said. It is sort of lowbrow legal realism, perhaps tinged with a bastardized critical race studies view of the law, taken to its extreme.

06/11 11:53 AM Share

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Women and Science   [Allison Kasic]

Claims of bias against women in academic science have been greatly exaggerated.  Christina Hoff Sommers has details over at The American.

06/10 04:55 PM Share

A Tough Lady   [Jane S. Shaw]

David, I agree absolutely with your post. Bonnie Ashley, wife of the president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, deserves respect. The astounding thing is that the media (in this case, Inside Higher Ed) see “moral equivalence” between Ashley, who is simply outspoken in her effort to save money (for the university), and the administrators at  N. C. State, who have placed political sheepishness and costly finagling above any recognition of their obligation to the taxpayers who pay their bills.

06/10 03:01 PM Share

Reader Mail re: Worthless Crap   [NRO Staff]

And to what degree is college/university about learning for the sake of learning, versus training for getting a “real” job, a “real” career? Or should be?

I have two BA’s and two MA’s. The BA’s, it could be argued, are “worthless”: One is in Theater and one is in Hebrew. But I value the education that both gave me, some of it practical (I can operate an industrial sewing machine, I can do basic electrical wiring, my carpentry skills are not too shabby) and some of it seemingly less so (thanks to multitudinous classes in theater lit and theater history, I have a much better sense of world history and literature than the average bear).

I think one of the real problems with higher education is that we have hit a point where if Pizza Hut wants to hire someone, they need a degree in pepperoni slicing. So, we are churning out people with degrees in pepperoni slicing: overly narrow and overly specialized. And "underly" necessary as an academic discipline. Plus, as an added bonus, we are getting people who really are not particularly well-educated. That is to say, they have bad writing skills, poor grammar, little knowledge of much outside of their field, and next to no knowledge of what once basically was the hallmark of an “educated” person: familiarity with world and American history, world and American literature, the Western music canon, and Western art; and a basic knowledge of math and science. Who graduates with a degree in human resources and has any idea about what makes Bach so special?

Once upon a time, there was the theory that if you were intelligent enough to get a degree, you were intelligent enough to learn the job. (In the “fuzzier” fields, like, oh, say, journalism or publishing, a degree in English Lit was the way to go. Obviously, if you wanted to be a mechanical engineer, well, a BA in English wouldn’t help you much. Though, once upon a time, people didn’t go to school to become engineers, they apprenticed to do so.) There were basic requirements for any degree, which have now devolved into “distributional requirements” that can be fulfilled by taking the most mindless of classes.

I am also not sure how “worthless” it is to study things like ancient Near Eastern philology. Sure, there aren’t scads of Mesopotamians in need of translators these days, but I think studying some of the more abstruse things is a worthwhile endeavor.

Loretta E. Sheridan

06/10 10:52 AM Share

Black Studies Departments Could be Worthwhile   [George Leef]

In this week's Pope Center Clarion Call piece, Prof. John McWhorter argues that black-studies departments could be intellectually worthwhile, but often are not. He suggests three touchstones for academic quality.

I would like to see individual departments analyzed with Professor McWhorter's criteria in mind.

06/10 10:36 AM Share

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

So, How Soft Are We?   [David French]

When it comes to higher-ed stories, following links is always fun. Jane, I want to thank you for your post today on college scandals. Following the first commandment of intelligent blog reading (always click through), I stumbled not only on the story of the UNLV's president's wife's alleged "rudeness" but also the e-mails that created the controversy.

I laughed out loud. Why on earth did Bonnie Ashley apologize? Please, read the e-mails and tell me if I'm off base, but it seems that all she did was speak firmly (using — gasp — CAPS LOCK to make her point) to employees who had made mistakes. She seems actually zealous in making sure social events meet budgetary guidelines. Isn't that a good thing?

Are we so soft that we can't even be "caps locked" when we make mistakes? Either this is an astounding commentary on the breakdown of our collective backbone, a commentary on the moral meltdown of weak-willed university employees, or nothing more than a story for Reuters's "Oddly Enough" file.  

But I've probably got it all wrong. So . . . to any member of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom team whom I've caps locked in the past (or may caps lock in the future), I am sorry. And to the young soldier who was slow in repairing the air conditioner in Sabre Squadron's detention facility in Diyala Province (back in August 2008), words cannot express the remorse I feel at my, ummm, tirade.

06/09 04:57 PM Share

Conservative Paranoia in Liberal Institutions   [Robert VerBruggen]

David and I have blogged about this before — the point being that whatever liberal bias there is in academia, conservatives need to man up and state their views (and stop exaggerating the consequences for doing so). Over on the Corner, David Kahane makes a similar point about Hollywood:

While I don't go out of my way to start political discussions, my sentiments are freely shared with those I work with (mostly producers and agents) if and when the subject comes up. Sometimes, true, they'll stop a dinner party conversation in its tracks, as happened one memorable evening in the Hollywood Hills with a once-famous but now has-been TV and movie star, but they're generally regarded as a kind of weird affectation, like Wiccanism, that can be overlooked if said producers and agents want to get their hands on the story material. Plus, it's amusing to see how many conservative sentiments you can sneak into a script before the producer starts to notice.

06/09 04:07 PM Share

How to Manage a Crisis   [Jane S. Shaw]

Our little North Carolina scandal has caused the resignation of North Carolina State’s chancellor, provost, and chairman of the board of trustees, and the termination of the employee whose hiring started it all, Mary Easley, the wife of the former North Carolina governor. With the bodies strewn on the battlefield, the story finally caught the eye of the national press.

Inside Higher Education lumped together three "case studies in college crisis" — ours, the one over politicized admissions at the University of Illinois, and one I hadn’t heard of, a brouhaha over the bad manners of the wife of the president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

This story, "Survival Tactics," is about negotiating through "troubled waters," and it consists of crisis-management advice from the likes of Gordon Gee and other seasoned administrators. It is a "how to" story.

IHE chose not to write about the ethical issues that underlie this scandal. Yet there are plenty: the university’s automatic obeisance to the state’s governor, the attempts to cover up that slavishness, and the lavish financial arrangements given to administrators who resigned under pressure. Only near the end of the article is there a suggestion that sometimes presidents under fire can’t survive and still "keep their integrity intact." The attitude of entitlement that pervades higher education seems to have infected even this promising member of the watchdog press.

The assumption that the university is above the rest of us came clear as the N.C. State scandal unfolded. My favorite example is from the chancellor’s resignation announcement: "I am [resigning] because that is what leaders do when the institutions they lead come under distracting and undue public scrutiny."

Undue public scrutiny of a system that state taxpayers support with  $2.7 billion a year? What, I wonder, would he consider appropriate scrutiny? Perhaps he would agree with the new chairman of the board, who said to the media that the whole thing was just "nitpicking."

06/09 03:50 PM Share

Re: Worthless Crap   [Robert VerBruggen]

Just a quick note: That post takes a pretty liberal view of which degrees are "worthless."

Given that journalism, fashion marketing, broadcasting, general business, HR, marketing, and communications are all the names of specific fields that require learned skills and provide people with paying jobs, I think it's pretty absurd to label the corresponding degrees "worthless." You can say (and I would likely agree) that shorter, cheaper training programs could replace these degrees most of the time, but "bloated" is a far cry from "worthless."

With some of the others, I'm just not sure. Do people major in foreign languages to become translators / businesspeople who work with foreign countries, or just to waste time in school?

Also, what percentage of the "worthless crap" degrees earned are second majors, done to buttress a core major in a useful way? A political-science degree isn't of much use on its own, but when you, I don't know, pair it with a journalism degree and end up working at National Review, it kind of makes sense.

06/09 03:35 PM Share

Why We Have Bad Government   [George Leef]

The writer of this blog post says it's because most people who wind up in politics have majored in fields that are "worthless crap."

Does the Democrats' desire for universal college have anything to do with this?

06/09 03:22 PM Share

We Don't Need Central Planning in Education   [George Leef]

In this article in the current issue of The Freeman, I contend that it makes no more sense to talk about our "national educational level" than it would to talk about our "national fitness level." Unfortunately, many people (including Obama) do, and that leads to a harmful push for educational central planning.

06/09 03:21 PM Share

Do Academics Intentionally Mislead Journalists?   [Robert VerBruggen]

Stephen Spruiell and Megan McArdle give recent examples where this likely happened.

A while back, I pointed to one as well. It was about a less crucial topic, but the co-author of the study flat-out lied to the media about what she found.

06/09 02:49 PM Share

Brooks on the History of Campus Identity Politics   [Robert VerBruggen]

In his new column he writes:

Sonia Sotomayor had bad timing. If she’d entered college in the late-1950s or early-1960s, she would have been surrounded by an ethos that encouraged smart young ethnic kids to assimilate. If she’d entered Princeton and Yale in the 1980s, her ethnicity and gender would have been mildly interesting traits among the many she might possibly possess.

But she happened to attend Princeton and then Yale Law School in the 1970s. These were the days when what we now call multiculturalism was just coming into its own. These were the days when the whole race, class and gender academic-industrial complex seemed fresh, exciting and just.

There was no way she was going to get out of that unscarred. And, in fact, in the years since she has given a series of speeches that have made her a poster child for identity politics. In these speeches, race and gender take center stage.

Now, I'm too young to say from experience whether this overall trend — assimilation, identity politics, identity politics lite — took place, but it squares with what I've read elsewhere. Therefore, I think it's fair to say that any given student was less likely to become obsessed with her group identity if she attended college after the '70s (relative to during that decade).

But I'm a little bit skeptical that Sotomayor herself would be much different had she attended college later (an assertion Brooks doesn't quite make, but I think implies). I graduated in 2006, and there were still plenty of students like her around, and plenty of race-based student groups and ethnic-studies classes to support them. Given how fervently Sotomayor was tied to this cause — and given that decades later, she's still on a tear about it — would a campus where other students' fervor has died down a bit have tempered her enthusiasm? Again, I'm skeptical.

Another interesting question: Did the identity politics I saw represent a resurgence since the '80s, roughly the same thing that was happening in the '80s, or a continuation of the downward trend between the '70s and the '80s?

06/09 02:10 PM Share

What Would We Do Without Earmarked Education Grants?   [George Leef]

Remember when Obama assured us that all the "stimulus" money would be spent wisely?

Andrew Coulson, writing at Cato's blog, brings up the inconvenient case of Dr. Robert Felner, recently fired from his deanship at the University of Louisville ed school and now under federal investigation. (He includes a link to the longer story on this in the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Through Bernie Madoff-like chicanery, Felner managed to pocket much of a $694,000 earmarked federal grant over a span of three years. Coulson says, "Given that officials couldn't stay on top of millions of dollars in taxpayer's money under normal circumstances, it's unsettling to think what is going on right now as the system is suddenly flooded with billions of new dollars."

06/09 01:49 PM Share

A Scalpel or a Knife?   [Jane S. Shaw]

Bruce Benson, who has been president of the University of Colorado for a year or so, may not be able to permanently rid his university of Ward Churchill, but he erased the job of Michael Poliakoff — one of the few people trying to restore respect for traditional education in that system. Poliakoff held the position of vice president for academic affairs and research. Benson eliminated the job in favor of a “team approach,"  according to a university news release. (The announcement was made May 1; I just learned about it from an Independence Institute paper, "An Academic Arms Race," which otherwise praises Benson for his cost-cutting moves.)

Poliakoff, who has a Ph.D. in classical studies from the University of Michigan, worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities and has held faculty positions at a number of schools. He had successfully introduced a freshman reading program at the Colorado Springs campus that included Socrates’s Apology and Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

06/09 01:48 PM Share

About This 'National Conversation on Race' Thing   [Roger Clegg]

On his Chronicle of Higher Education blog, John L. Jackson Jr. says he kind of agrees with our own Jonah Goldberg’s lament that liberals don’t really want the honest conversation about race that they say they do.  

I certainly agree with Jonah and Professor Ford on that point, but it also seems to me that, with regard to a national racial conversation generally, there’s really not much to discuss.

1. Yes, America has a long, sad history of racial discrimination, and its effects are still with us. The past is never really past and all that. No one disputes this, and it should be part of the history that we teach. Moreover, some discrimination still exists — will always exist, with some victims from every racial group — and we should continue to enforce the laws we have against it.

2. But there’s no point in obsessing over it, and our recent history is celebratory: The good guys won, and we have made enormous progress. Anyone who says that discrimination has not diminished, but only disguised itself better or some such nonsense, is delusional.

3. The principal problem facing African Americans today is not about discrimination but about culture, and in particular the fact that 7 out of 10 of them are born out of wedlock. Raising children successfully is a lot easier with two parents (and both of them need to disabuse their children of any notion that studying and working hard are “acting white” and similar rubbish). Bill Cosby is right, and Barack and Michelle Obama are role models.

4. In an increasingly multiethnic and multiracial society, we cannot have a legal regime that sorts people according to skin color and national origin and treats some people better and others worse depending on which box they check. The government cannot treat different groups differently, and it cannot have one set of private-sector antidiscrimination laws protecting some groups and another set of prohibitions when there is discrimination against other groups.

Now, really, who can reasonably deny any of that and what else is there to say? One last thing: In my view, most Americans of all colors do in their hearts agree with all this, and that’s why race relations in the United States are really just fine, thanks very much.

06/09 09:16 AM Share

Praise for Christopher Newport University   [Roger Clegg]

I'm biased, of course, since my son was part of it, but I still want to put in a good word for the graduation ceremony at Christopher Newport University last month. There was the standing ovation given the students who were not only graduating but receiving their officer commissions in the military. And there was the commencement address that extolled freedom and the United States, quoted Shakespeare to the terrorists, and cited the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and a Bradley Foundation study, for Pete's sake. The speaker, Douglas Gordon, says he reads NRO and fondly remembers a visit to CNU by our own Victor Davis Hanson (and cited NRO and Hanson in the address!). Here's his address, just recently posted.

06/09 09:13 AM Share

Monday, June 08, 2009

Columbia Holds Firm, for Once   [Candace de Russy]

A panel of Madonna Constantine's erstwhile colleagues at Columbia has upheld the university's decision to fire her for serial plagiarism. This ought not to be so remarkable — stealing other people's scholarly work should be a cut-and-dried offense in academe — but Columbia has bowed to villains so egregiously in the past that this verdict is making the news.

Recall that in recent times, the university long procrastinated before taking unpublicized actions against students who attacked an anti-illegal-immigration speaker in a public forum. The school also graced the infamous president of Iran with a prestigious speaking engagement and granted tenure to Joseph Massad, a Middle Eastern-studies professor with a virulent bias against Israel and a record of bullying students who do not share his prejudice.

Thus, it has become newsworthy when Columbia does the right thing. The caustic use of italics in the following excerpts from a New York Post editorial on the Constantine affair underscores this perception:

Embattled educator Madonna Constantine has a one-of-a-kind distinction: She's the professor that not even Columbia could stomach.

And:

If Columbia University wasn't cowed into backing down, you have to figure the charges against Constantine are pretty solid.

06/08 05:58 PM Share

Free Exchange on Campus Swings and Misses   [David French]

Following a link at Inside Higher Ed, I stumbled across a new report from a group called Free Exchange on Campus (FEC), an umbrella organization of academic establishment groups and their allies (including the AAUP, the ACLU, and the American Federation of Teachers) that in practice seems dedicated not so much to "free exchange" but to opposing conservative critics of higher education.  

Their new report, which purports to expose the tactics and funding of conservative critics of higher ed, and which also attempts to make the larger point that our critique of higher education as a home of censorship, intolerance towards Christians and conservatives (especially when the two are combined), and all-too-common partisan quackery is overblown and "manufactured."  

Because this is a blog post and not a longer article, I'll focus my critique of the report on their description of the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom's work and cases. (First, however, I'd like to thank Free Exchange on Campus for lumping us together with such esteemed individuals and organizations as David Horowitz, ACTA, and many other members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. It's not often that members of the "religious right" get included in the cool-kids club.)

While I don't have any quibbles with their description of our work (they say we "support Christian students on campus in their fights against bias and discrimination"), they dramatically minimize its scope by focusing on two cases (mentioning a total of only five cases) and making the completely baseless charge that we essentially stampede into litigation for public-relations purposes before the internal university appeals process has a chance to work itself out. (In fact, our longstanding policy and practice is to exhaust administrative appeals before pursuing litigation, and that is clear from reading our complaints — which are available for viewing on our website.)

Keep reading this post . . .

06/08 05:54 PM Share

College Summer Reading in NC: Disappointing as Usual   [George Leef]

My Pope Center colleague Jenna Robinson writes here about the books chosen at numerous colleges and universities in North Carolina as summer reading assignments (although "suggestions" is a more accurate way of putting it) and finds that, as usual, students aren't getting much value.

06/08 04:20 PM Share

Re: Sotomayor and Racial Preferences   [Robert VerBruggen]

As I alluded to before, one of the worst things about affirmative action is that it makes minorities' credentials worth less — there's often the lingering question of whether they could have achieved the same thing had they been held to the same standard as everyone else.

In a great post at The Weekly Standard's blog, Michael Goldfarb explores one of the lesser-known ramifications of this:

Sotomayor's supporters — most of whom support racial preferences — insist that Sotomayor is so smart and capable she would have succeeded regardless of any affirmative action policies. And maybe she would have, but it's clear she never got the chance. Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court is precisely the kind of outcome liberals were hoping for when they set up a system of preferences. And it is precisely the outcome [then-Princeton president] Bowen was hoping for when he implemented a system of preferences. But now that that outcome has been achieved, liberals don't want to take any credit for their success. It's a very odd thing to see a social policy become orphaned at the moment of its greatest triumph.

06/08 03:45 PM Share

Scandal Dogs Hi Ed in Alabama   [Candace de Russy]

There is likely a goodly amount of financial chicanery going on in public higher education, but the Alabama system must be said to take the cake.

Remember some time back that a slew of community-college officials there were convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to money laundering, and that former chancellor Roy Johnson pleaded guilty to 15 corruption charges? Demonstrating anew how slowly the wheels of justice turn in academe, Inside Higher Ed reports: "Nearly three years since Johnson’s firing, the scandal still hangs over the system, and the former chancellor is still awaiting his July 1 sentencing."

Moreover, critics of the appointment of the current (and departing) chancellor of the state community-college system, Bradley Byrne, asserted that not only was he unqualified for the post but also that no formal search was held, leaving him the sole candidate.

Evidently there is a movement afoot to increase transparency in the system. About time, n'est-ce pas?

06/08 11:31 AM Share

Zaytuna Watch   [Candace de Russy]

A proposal for an Islamic college in Berkeley is being floated, notes Inside Higher Ed. The proposed institution, Zaytuna College, would be the first four-year accredited Islamic college in the U.S.

One wonders how the traditional liberal arts would fare at such a college. Would students there receive an education that gives Western civilization its due? Should Zaytuna materialize, its intellectual direction will be worth following.

06/08 11:30 AM Share

Appealing to the College Crowd   [Carol Iannone]

When I was a student, a friend's father took her and me to a rally for a politician who was running in a local race. It was held in a huge gymnasium in Queens, packed with a large range of people, children to seniors, couples and families, probably mainly from the lower and middle ranges of the middle class. When the tall, handsome mayoral candidate emerged, the house grew electric and wild cheers and jubilation filled the air. My friend, normally a serene and sedate young lady, screamed in joy as if at a Beatles concert and turned to me with bright, shining eyes. I was surprised at the reaction all around, for this mayoral candidate was in my mind an intellectual, and wealthy besides, known for wittily deploying polysyllabic words. But he had an obvious connection to this crowd of ordinary folks who just loved him, and he knew how to address them and return the feeling without losing the above-the-crowd patrician dignity he was famous for.

I'm thinking you've guessed that this was Bill Buckley running for mayor of New York City in 1965. There has been a lot of advice given to conservatives and Republicans in the wake of the '08 defeats that they must sharpen their appeal to young people and others. They could begin by asking what made Buckley such a draw for that audience. Granted, he did not win the race, and he didn't intend to, but he did make his candidacy a chance to define conservative ideas and to ignite a fire in people who both instinctively and rationally responded to them.

This is how I'll always remember Bill Buckley, and this is how I'll always think of the way conservatives ought to be — smart, witty, vital, and, let's face it, sexy!

06/08 11:06 AM Share

Back to Liberty   [David French]

As a regular reader of FIRE's blog, I was a bit surprised to read a lengthy entry from Greg Lukianoff defending FIRE's decision not to publicly condemn Liberty University for de-recognizing the campus chapter of College Democrats (I wrote about the controversy here). It's not that I'm surprised by FIRE's stance on the case. Instead, I'm surprised that even some who follow FIRE closely still don't get its mission or its purpose.

I'll put this very clearly and simply. FIRE defends civil liberties in higher education. It defends free speech and free association — and not just the free speech and free association of those groups it likes. (Such an approach would actually cause an internal meltdown at FIRE since the staff spans the entire ideological spectrum. Universities talk about diversity. FIRE lives it.)

As a faithful defender of civil liberties, FIRE respects the civil liberties of private organizations. As a faithful defender of the rights of students, FIRE protects students from broken promises. When a private university, however, acts in a manner that is consistent with its stated mission and purpose, it is exercising its own civil liberties, not violating student rights. As faithful defenders of liberty, FIRE recognizes (and protects) the right of private organizations to not just advance a particular message but to also exclude those who don't agree with that message.

As Greg rightly notes, private religious colleges can pay a rather high price for adhering to their mission (which is one reason why so many religious colleges abandon that identity as they try to, for example, race up the U.S. News rankings). The pool of potential students is smaller, and secular respect can be hard to achieve.  But as a graduate of a similar school (I had chapel five days a week, not three . . . get with the program, Liberty), I suspect that Liberty's ultimate hope and trust for its future and its reputation is found somewhere other than in the pages of the Washington Post.

06/08 11:00 AM Share

Anonyprofs   [Robert VerBruggen]

Should law professors blog anonymously? Is it wrong to out one? Is writing under a fake name "cowardly" or "sinister"?

I don't know, but check the Corner for some thoughts from around the web on the Ed Whelan-Publius uproar.

06/08 10:56 AM Share

Friday, June 05, 2009

The College Grant as Entitlement?   [Robert VerBruggen]

Reason reports.

06/05 03:53 PM Share

Re: World of Entitlement   [George Leef]

Jane's post regarding the creation of a high-paying position for the wife of the governor reminds me (as do many other things these days) of one of the lines in the Declaration of Independence:

He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

Higher education is loaded with new offices, and while they don't usually involve harassment of the people, the taxes that have to be collected to pay the hefty salaries certainly do eat out our substance.

In the 18th century, it was clear to most Americans that they were being forced to give up some of their hard-earned income so that royal officials could live high on the hog. The same thing is going on now, but on a far greater scale. Time to rekindle the Spirit of '76.

06/05 02:25 PM Share

Re: The Blame Game   [George Leef]

Candace raises a couple of interesting points.

First, sometimes it is true that a diligent student can't take a course he needs because it isn't being offered or all the sections are full, or for some other reason. But we're talking about graduation rates within six years. I should think it very, very rare that a student who needs Course X to complete his major can't get into it in his fifth year in school, much less his sixth. And how many schools are there that say to such a student, "You've been around for five years and have tried to get that last course you need to graduate, but because we didn't offer it, you can't have your degree." Few schools, I think, have that sort of Post Office inflexibility.

Second, it's unquestionably true that many lower-tier institutions admit students who have woeful academic abilities. But the schools usually have woefully low academic standards to match and bend over backwards to retain even the most disengaged and hapless students. Some of the students admitted at open admission schools manage to graduate; why not the others? Is it that they simply can't handle even the watered-down coursework where it's hard to get less than a C? Or is it not more often that they just don't try?

06/05 01:52 PM Share

Just Another Greedy, Demanding Interest Group   [George Leef]

That would be the members of North Carolina's AAUP. As my Pope Center colleague Jane Shaw writes here, they're pleading with the members of the state's General Assembly to raise taxes (but "progressively," of course) so as to avoid budget cuts that would "gut" higher education. The organization's letter begs that the politicians not cut the budget so that programs that took 25 years to build up don't have to suffer.

The more realistic way of putting the same sentiment is, "Prior to this recession, the state larded up the UNC system with lots of plums we like, and we don't want to give anything up." Labor unions follow that same strategy — whatever is gained during good business times becomes untouchable when times turn bad.

06/05 01:45 PM Share

A World of Entitlement   [Jane S. Shaw]

The drama continues at North Carolina State University, one of the state’s two flagship universities. To understand these events, keep in mind that the school is located in Raleigh, the capital of a somewhat-corrupt state government. (The previous speaker of the house went to prison.)

In 2005, Mary Easley, wife of North Carolina governor Mike Easley, was hired as executive-in-residence and senior lecturer. On July 1, 2008, her salary jumped from $90,300 to $170,000 (or $850,000 for her five-year contract). This 88 percent increase created a stir.

But only when the chairman of N.C. State’s Board of Trustees, McQueen Campbell, admitted that he had recommended Easley did her job become more than an embarrassment. Campbell was a close pal of the governor who had flown the Easleys on many trips in his plane, probably violating ethical laws, and who gave the governor a sweetheart deal on waterfront property.

At that point, Campbell resigned. Larry Nielsen, the N.C. State provost, who had hired Easley, also resigned under pressure. The president of the UNC system, the chairman of the system Board of Governors, and even the chancellor of N.C. State called on Easley to resign. But she hasn’t. She held a press conference to say that she was staying on, and (in spite of her own prowess as a lawyer) let her attorney do all the talking.

Oh yes, and Larry Nielsen, the provost who resigned, will receive his $298,700 provost’s salary for six months. Why? His contract allows him up to a year to plan what research he’ll do when he goes back to being a mere professor (and paid a mere $156,000). 

The press is rightfully harumphing. Meanwhile, the legislature, emboldened by the fact that Mike Easley is no longer governor, is chipping away at Mary Easley’s job. It is eliminating state support for the speakers’ series she manages and the center for public safety that she was supposed to manage once it was created.  The legislature, at least, realizes that with the state in a fiscal free-fall, even privileged faculty-administrators need some restraint.

I wonder how long the public will tolerate taxpayers’ money being lavished on these entitled university bureaucrats — all in the name of  “higher education.” It won’t be forever.

06/05 12:12 PM Share

More on Women in Science   [Robert VerBruggen]

Ray Fisman has a very interesting Slate article about a study of some students at the U.S. Air Force Academy, in which women performed better in their courses under female professors. The gender gap almost disappeared under female professors, but was fairly pronounced under males. Men performed better under male professors as well, but the effect was much smaller — that is, the gap disappeared mainly because the women got higher scores, not because the men got lower ones.

What troubles me about the piece is that it seems to assume that all grade differences are earned — that is, student performances exclusively, with no role for the biases of professors, lead to the grades. Therefore, female profs deserve credit for eliminating the gap.

Isn't it possible that in this school, female professors go easy on women, or male professors go hard on them? One thing I'd like to know is how subjective the grading is. Fisman mentions a "rigid curriculum" and the fact that everyone takes the "same exams," but doesn't mention whether these exams have strict right and wrong answers.

Also, there's a pretty serious "rats and sophomores" problem. Even if we're limiting the discussion to higher education (and leaving out gender gaps elsewhere), the U.S. Air Force Academy does not have a representative sample of male college students, much less females.

06/05 12:08 PM Share

The Blame Game   [Candace de Russy]

George objects that colleges should not be blamed for the failure of a large number of students to graduate within six years. Then again, colleges often knowingly admit students who are unprepared for true college-level work and bound to fail.

In addition, many students have been known to complain, in vain, that the courses they need to graduate are not available because they are not offered frequently enough or are closed due to heavy enrollment.

George is of course quite right that some students simply are too lazy or frivolous to bother earning enough credits to graduate sooner rather than later, if at all. And, as he says, many cannot — that is, lack the skills and background knowledge to — meet their credit requirements. 

But whose fault is the latter? Many students have been failed, scandalously failed, by an incompetent and self-serving K-12 system that leaves them unprepared for college education. How may higher educators, in particular the leaders of teacher colleges, have over the last several decades abetted K-12 failure by not protesting it loudly and taking the lead against it?

Too few, for they were busy protecting the status quo — notably their own self-interest.

06/05 12:06 PM Share

Thursday, June 04, 2009

College Graduation Rates   [George Leef]

In its piece on the new AEI study on college graduation, USA Today says that "hundreds of colleges are failing to graduate a majority of their students within six years."

Why is it a failing of the college if a student doesn't do what he needs to in order to graduate? A more accurate way of stating the matter would be to say that a large percentage of students who enroll in college find out that they can't or don't want to complete the work (minimal as it often is) to earn enough credits to graduate. They're the ones who failed to do something, not the schools.

06/04 02:26 PM Share

Is There an American Mind?   [John J. Miller]

Allen C. Guelzo's essay from the May 25 issue of NR has penetrated the firewall that normally separates our magazine and our website. Here's an extract:

For many other conservatives, populism is a dance with the devil, and American mindlessness is precisely what makes us prey to demagogues and pundits. They argue that it was ideas, not personalities, that fueled the Reagan Revolution, and the future must lie in developing a new constellation of ideas to replace the used-up ones of the 1980s. But they are not optimistic. They are not NASCAR dads or hockey moms; they sit alone at the ballet, and listen guiltily and angrily to NPR. They are the party, not of Lincoln, but of Cassandra, convinced even before they speak that, in America, they probably won’t be listened to anyway.

They are also wrong. As are the populists. America has always been the nation of theory, not practice; it was built around ideas (even upon a “proposition”) from the moment the first idea-haunted Pilgrim stepped off onto Plymouth Rock. And it is the stupendous conceit of the Left, not of conservatism, to believe otherwise, or to despair otherwise.

06/04 11:42 AM Share

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Yikes   [Robert VerBruggen]

Mother Jones, of all outlets, has an entire article putting down Sotomayor's writing ability. From it I learned this:

But writing has apparently plagued Sotomayor since college, when, the Wall Street Journal reports, she nearly flunked out of her first year at Princeton because her writing skills were so poor.

06/03 06:14 PM Share

An Excellent Summer Program   [George Leef]

If you have a high-school or college student who wants an intellectually challenging program this summer, here is one to consider — the Reason, Individualism and Freedom Foundation's program in Chicago.

One of our foremost problems is that most young people are brought up in an educational environment of wishful thinking, collectivism, and servility to the state. RIF is trying to counter that. Spread the word.

06/03 05:48 PM Share

More on Sotomayor   [Carol Iannone]

Supporters of Sonia Sotomayor are now saying that she made a poor choice of words when she posed the idea in a speech at a symposium of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2001 (and subsequently published in that journal in 2002), that a "wise Latina" would be a better judge than a white male without her life experience. But her remark is the kind of thing said all the time in the academy and law schools. Or, if it isn't openly said, it is certainly assumed, and is part of what is meant by diversity, namely that there is no objective standard of law or justice, only points of view, and that the point of view of a "wise Latina" would convey more "empathy" than that of a cold-blooded white male. The implication is that the empathy would be toward poor, disadvantaged, and minority individuals, with which the white male — given the enormous wealth and inherited privilege from which white males generally come — could not sympathize.  

 

But it is good to know that the American people are not so propagandized to servility toward minorities that they didn't see the egregious violation of American ideals in that remark, and that Judge Sotomayor and President Obama and Senator Feinstein have been forced to backtrack at least a little in honor of the values they are sworn to uphold. Sotomayor could make such a remark with ease and even arrogance in an academic setting, but outside of that setting, there are still people who find it objectionable.    

 

Looking more closely at the Berkeley speech, I see that Judge Sotomayor underscored the idea more than once and quite explicitly, and that she is as saturated with identity groupthink today as she was as an undergraduate. This is obvious in practically every sentence of the speech. For example, she disagrees with various individuals, among them women, who have said that we can transcend our prejudices and gender, racial, and national backgrounds in order to rise to a more objective standard of judgement. Instead, she quotes Prof. Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, who states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives — no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging,"

 

Judge Sotomayor continues: "I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that — it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others."

 

As a result of this view, she believes that it is important for more women and minorities to receive high-level bench appointments in order to reach a statistically substantial number for the differences in their judgments to have an effect on society as a whole. She claims that "enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging." 

 

Also from her speech it is clear that she holds categorically that the proportion of Hispanics in any professional endeavor should be proportional, or at least more proportional, to their share of the population. She does not consider the fact that Hispanics have a high dropout rate and do not attend or graduate from college in proportion to their numbers.   

 

In addition, she suggests that the different judgments on the part of Hispanics or Latinos may arise from "experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences." She goes on to say that the idea of "inherent physiological or cultural differences" is "a possibility" that she does not "abhor" or "discount," as do many others, and she emphasizes again that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging." So Judge Sotomayor believes that there may well be "physiological or cultural differences" in Latinos and I guess women that set them apart from whites and from men, and that will make a difference in their judgments.   

 

(BTW, in the Berkeley speech Sotomayor refers to her parents as immigrants, an error that was picked up by the New York Times and then corrected. Is it possible that she didn't know her parents were citizens?  Or is the Hispanic/Latino consciousness of recent decades so forceful that she turned her citizen parents into immigrants out of sympathy with her group?)  

Now, Judge Sotomayor does admit that white-male justices have often ruled in favor of minorities and  women, and she does admit there is always a danger in "relative morality," but she sticks to her general view that there is no objective truth and that the aspiration to impartiality is only an aspiration and not possible in all or most cases. This raises serious questions about her ability to be a justice on the Supreme Court. It also suggests that affirmative action is not producing an integrated society, but a society of group consciousness much deeper and more profound than anything I have encountered before.

06/03 05:40 PM Share

Acceptable Bias -- Against "Dull Students Who Study, Study, Study"   [George Leef]

Ward Connerly contributes an excellent essay to Minding the Campus, in which he discusses the policies of the University of California meant to increase "diversity." UC officials don't want their top schools to have too many of those dull Asian students who just "study, study, study." So they have to contrive to find ways of excluding some of them but without coming right out and saying, "we'd rather have diversity than educational excellence."

One wonders, why do they do this? The good Asian (and white) students excluded from the likes of Cal and UCLA will go to college somewhere else. They will graduate with honors and will find successful careers despite having gone to "lesser" institutions. Conversely, the weaker students admitted to top schools won't be miraculously changed by that. They won't be better educated and better prepared for the working world simply because their degrees are from a UC school rather than a Cal State school or some other. The "diversity" game of shuffling students around doesn't change the underlying reality that some are more adept and determined than others.

I suppose that the answer is that it's all political theatrics. UC officials need to pretend that they're doing something to advance "social justice" because they don't want to be harassed by the "civil rights" industry. Just admit politically correct percentages and they're safe. Let someone else worry about the effects of letting ancestry trump personal capability.

06/03 05:33 PM Share

Shocking News   [Robert VerBruggen]

The National Academy of Sciences once again set a team to work on the task of finding that there are no gender differences in math ability, and once again, the team delivered. And once again, there was little male involvement in the article's authorship (last time: 1 of 18; this time: 0 of 2).

I'm not saying the article is bad, or that it shoudn't have been published. What I'm saying is that as a supposedly objective organization, NAS is doing a horrendous job of representing both sides of this debate.

06/03 12:54 PM Share

How Clemson Boosts Its Rankings   [Jane S. Shaw]

Even Inside Higher Ed was shocked by a Clemson University official's straightforward description of how the school manipulated its U.S. News rankings. 

06/03 12:18 PM Share

Term Paper Corruption   [Robert VerBruggen]

This is an insanely clever idea — basically, a website sells corrupted files; when you have to submit a paper via e-mail, you submit the corrupted file. It takes the professor a day or two to notice the problem, at which point he asks you to resubmit. You've just extended your deadline.

All profs have to do to stop it, however, is to require that in addition to an attachment, students paste the text of their papers into the submission e-mails. Or, profs could open the attachments right away to make sure they're okay, and immediately request re-submissions.

06/03 11:27 AM Share

Who Says Business Degrees Are Overrated?   [George Leef]

Entrepreneur and teacher Jeff Sandefur, for one. In today's Pope Center Clarion Call, he discusses the serious weaknesses of undergraduate business majors and MBA degrees. Perhaps most surprising, Sandefur points out that many business professors are not much in favor of capitalism. Most of them come from the academic world where competition and profit are viewed with nose-in-the-air hostility.

06/03 11:11 AM Share

Harvard Watch   [John J. Miller]

NYT:

Harvard University will endow a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, a position that, it believes, will be the first endowed, named chair in the subject at an American college.

06/03 05:23 AM Share

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Fie on Student Loans!   [Jane S. Shaw]

Economist Rich Vedder rightly warns against President Obama’s federal takeover of college loans. But Jenna Robinson of the Pope Center says that the current program is often a bad deal, not just for taxpayers but for students.

06/02 09:59 PM Share

Graduating in Groupthink   [Carol Iannone]

Reading of Sotomayor's undergraduate activities, I find it hard not to notice that many minority students admitted to Princeton in the 1970s, possibly under affirmative action, seemed to spend most of their time complaining about their groups' victimization. It would be nice to know that minority students did something else at such an excellent school than complain. What a lack of gratitude, and what an unseemly sense of entitlement. (Recall Michelle Obama's senior thesis on her experience as a black woman at Princeton.)

 

Moreover, the letters Sotomayor wrote to the Princetonian were utterly saturated in groupthink and the unthinking assumption that proportional representation of groups according to their share of the population should be the object of American political and cultural life. Finally, her present-day designation of herself as "Latina," a totally artificial and politicized nomenclature, indicates that she may not have come that far from her salad days.

 

The awful thing about her "wise Latina woman" remark (aside from its use of the disdainful feminist designation "white male") is that it shows how multiculturalism has affected even native-born Americans to think of themselves as belonging to a separate tribe. Sotomayor's parents were American citizens via Puerto Rico, and she was born on the mainland and grew up in the Bronx, and had many advantages, yet multiculturalism and Hispanic identity activism, fed in part by large-scale Hispanic immigration after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, encourages her to think of herself as coming from a separate culture. 

 

In their long biographical article on the judge, the New York Times  wrote of young Sonia using her college summers to catch up on classics and grammar books that her Princeton classmates from places like Choate and Exeter had already absorbed. I don’t know if this isn’t some kind of Marxist class-division fantasy. The Catholic high-school system of those days encouraged a lot of reading and was very strong on grammar. Be that as it may, it seems ironic that once at Princeton, instead of taking all the courses she could in the great works, she agitated instead for courses in Puerto Rican and Chicano culture.

06/02 02:18 PM Share

Illini Application Process   [John J. Miller]

Want to go to the University of Illinois? All it seems to take is the right kind of letter of recommendation:

The Chicago Tribune has prompted an outcry in Illinois with a series of articles reporting that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign bowed to political pressure in admitting several unqualified students. ... Most notably, the university admitted a relative of Antoin (Tony) Rezko, the now-convicted influence peddler tied to the scandal-tarnished former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who had recommended the student. The relative was accepted even though admissions officials had determined that his academic credentials were “pretty low” and had written that they planned to deny him admission, according to the Tribune.

06/02 05:41 AM Share

Monday, June 01, 2009

Gender Equity in a Slumping Economy   [Allison Kasic]

Citing the bad economy and need for cost savings, schools have been busy cutting athletic programs this spring. Over in the Cedar Rapids Gazzette, I try to explain the role that Title IX plays in such decisions. The Cliff Notes version is that cutting a women's team simply isn't an option for most schools, so male athletes will unfortunately bear most of the costs of the economic downturn.

06/01 05:38 PM Share

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Sotomayor's Youthful Writings   [Jane S. Shaw]

Undoubtedly, Sonia Sotomayor’s writings as a student at Princeton would make good reading, as would Hillary Clinton’s senior paper at Wellesley (which is closed to the public). But Sotomayor is now 54 years old. If I may paraphrase Wordsworth, the child may indeed be mother to the woman, but surely the woman's activities over the past 30 years, especially her judicial decisions, are much more relevant.

05/31 01:18 PM Share

Friday, May 29, 2009

Reader Mail re: Gitmo and Army College   [NRO Staff]

Mr. Peters is correct when he says that many nations send their officers (each nation sends one of their top majors per year) to Ft. Leavenworth to attend the Intermediate Level Education (ILE) course at the Command and General Staff College. What he does not cover in his article is that the Air Force and Navy also offer this instruction at their own installations.

Although Ft. Leavenworth is the Army's CGSC home, it also offers an abbreviated ILE course at satellite campuses Ft. Belvoir, Ft. Gordon, and Ft. Lee. For anyone looking for reasons to prevent the closure of Gitmo or the re-location of terrorists to Ft. Leavenworth, this concern may not be all that difficult to address. A solution for future classes, once logistical and adminstrative hurdles are cleared, may just be to send the foreign students to one of the other locations.

For further information, please click one of these:

http://www.almc.army.mil/ALOG/issues/JanFeb06/ile_cgsc.html
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/

V/r,

James Rae

05/29 04:55 PM Share

Sotomayor and Racial Preferences   [Robert VerBruggen]

Matthew Yglesias writes, about some conservatives who raised the question of preferential treatment Sotomayor may have received at Princeton:

Beyond the simple observation that conservatives really and truly are fanatical in their defense of the prerogatives of white people, the obvious observation to make is that everyone in life has been treated preferentially by someone at some point. Sometimes if you face a lot of disadvantages in life, people recognize that and extend you an extra helping hand. Or maybe, like John Roberts, you were educated at a private boarding school before attending Harvard. Or maybe you’re Irving Kristol’s son. Or maybe because your ideology pleases Rupert Murdoch, he agrees to cover the losses of the magazine you work at. The only reasonable question to ask about someone like Sotomayor is whether or not you think it’s reasonable to conclude that, on balance, poor minority women benefit from more special advantages in life than do middle class white men.

Yglesias completely misunderstands the question being debated. The issue isn't whether Sotomayor might have been treated preferentially "at some point," or whether she was more or less advantaged than anyone else "in life." The issue is whether she received preferential treatment in the awarding of a credential.

They're two very different things. When someone is privileged in life — for example, by going to an elite boarding school — he can leverage these privileges to make himself more qualified for various positions. When someone is privileged in the awarding of a credential — such as by receiving a degree for less or lower-quality work than others had to do — this makes the credential less valuable. In other words, it papers over a lack of qualifications.

This strikes to the heart of the affirmative-action debate. No one, not even white-folks-lovin' conservatives, disputes that minorities get fewer "special advantages in life than do middle class white men." The issue at hand is whether that fact mandates we hold minorities to a lower standard when it comes to hiring and university admissions — and then, apparently, forget they were held to a lower standard when they're nominated to the Supreme Court. One can quite reasonably conclude that it doesn't, and failing to reach a given conclusion from a fact is not the same as denying the fact itself.

Finally, the debate itself is evidence for one of the more important arguments against affirmative action. If universities didn't treat minorities preferentially, there'd be no question about whether Sotomayor's graduation from Princeton with honors means anything less than anyone else's.

05/29 03:23 PM Share

Sotomayor, Identity Politics, and Civil Liberties on Campus   [David French]

When it comes to civil-liberties cases — especially civil liberties on high-school or college campuses — it is not always easy to predict outcomes based on ideology. (For Exhibit A of how conservative justices can get to the wrong answer, witness the otherwise-excellent Chief Justice Roberts's Shakespearian love-sonnet to school administrators in the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case). There is, however, a great and overriding concern regarding Judge Sotomayor, and Wendy Long hits the nail on the head in today's Bench Memos.  The concern is identity politics.

Speech codes are born out of identity politics. Christian student groups are thrown off campus because of identity politics. Even due process falls before identity politics as administrators often race each other to see how quickly they can vindicate the grievances of the student group du jour. Identity politics present arguably the central threat to core First Amendment values. How would Judge Sotomayor rule when a plaintiff's free-speech or free-association rights offend or exclude a particular victim group?    

One final note . . . my first major federal case (as a young associate in New York) was before then-district judge Sotomayor. She was exactly as advertised — extremely well-prepared and very aggressive in her questioning. One got the feeling that she did not suffer fools lightly.

05/29 02:29 PM Share

Educational Luddites Unite!    [Jane S. Shaw]

Writing on the Pope Center Web site, entrepreneur Michael Strong expresses amazement at academia's adulation of Marxists, whose teaching about globalization is as up-to-date as the slide rule.

05/29 10:26 AM Share

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Gates's Words of Wisdom at West Point   [Candace de Russy]

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a stirring address at West Point's commmencement. Among the advice he gave to graduates is this:

The hardest thing you may ever be called upon to do is stand alone among your peers and superior officers. To stick your neck out after discussion becomes consensus, and consensus ossifies into groupthink.

Would that all students on today's PC campuses could absorb this message about the nation's urgent need for leaders capable of independent and courageous thought.

(Tip: Michael Filozov)

05/28 04:34 PM Share

Fired for Doing His Job   [Allison Kasic]

Phi Beta Con's and ACTA's Anne Neal had a nice piece in yesterday's Examiner on the Dartmouth/Todd Zywicki kerfuffle. Zywicki, PBC readers may remember, was elected to Dartmouth's Board of Trustees four years ago on a reform platform. His ideas included hiring more faculty in popular departments, putting the brakes on administrative spending, and emphasizing teaching over research. When he saw a problem at Dartmouth, he brought it up. He wasn't afraid to ask tough questions. In other words, he acted like a trustee should. But, in a baffling turn of events, Zywicki was recently booted from the board. Apparently, tough questions are not welcome in Hanover.

05/28 04:33 PM Share

Satirist Stein Takes on Academe   [Candace de Russy]

Here's an excerpt from Harry Stein's justifiably acerbic "On the Right In the Land Of The Tenured Left," posted at Minding the Campus:

 

What acid rain is to our irreplaceable forests, lakes and streams, leftist dogma is to American higher education. In every corner of the land, it has turned once-flourishing departments of English and history into barren wastelands where only the academic equivalent of cockroaches can thrive. Its corrosive poison - infantile anti-Americanism, hatred of capitalism, scorn for ideological pluralism - spreads far beyond the narrow confines of its source, polluting popular culture, public education, the very laws under which we live. Absorbed in sufficiently high doses, it is morally and intellectually fatal.

The article is a modified chapter from Stein's book, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican, due soon from Encounter Books. 

05/28 04:32 PM Share

Prelude to a Crash?   [Jane S. Shaw]

David Frum makes a short-but-persuasive argument that higher education is facing a crisis. Building from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggesting that higher-education prices may be forming another "bubble," he observes that the value of a college degree is beginning to decline as costs keep going up. 

05/28 03:16 PM Share

Sotomayor the Sophomore on Statistics   [Robert VerBruggen]

Perhaps the biggest problem in current civil-rights law is the "disparate impact" rule — the policy that, if group X is underrepresented among a company's new hires, the burden of proof rests on the employer to disprove discrimination in its hiring process. This flies in the face of an entire human history in which groups have shown varying abilities for and interest in different pursuits. Underrepresentation does almost nothing, in and of itself, to evidence discrimination.

In 1974, as a Princeton student, current Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor took up the "disparity equals discrimination" line. Here's a letter to the editor she wrote:

On April 18, 1974, the Puerto Rican and Chicano students of Princeton filed a complaint . . . charging the university with an institutional pattern of discrimination.

The facts of the complaint are these: 1) There is not one Puerto Rican or Chicano administrator or faculty member in the university; 2) There are two million Puerto Ricans in the United States and two and a half million more on the island itself. Yet there were only 66 Puerto Rican applicants this year, and only 31 Puerto Rican stuents on campus. While there are 12 million Chicanos in the United States, there were only 111 Chicano applicants and 27 students on campus this year; 3) Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.

Self-evident lack of commitment

The lack of commitment on the part of the university to the Puerto Rican or Chicano heritage seems self-evident from these facts. Yet statistical evidence is not the total concern or complaint of the Puerto Rican or Chicano students — what is terrifying to us are the implications. The facts imply and reflect the total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture. In effect, they reflect an attempt — a successful attempt so far — to relegate an important cultural sector of the population to oblivion.

There is no "statistical evidence" here, and the "implications" do not follow from the numbers she presented.

Is there any evidence that she's figured this out in the intervening years?

05/28 02:15 PM Share

Ed Schools' Freirian Follies   [Candace de Russy]

Writing in City Journal, Sol Stern gives one more reason why U.S. teacher colleges are so dreadful: the entrenched influence of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire and, in particular, the pervasive assigning to students of his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Stern shows how leftist professors latched on to Freire's proclamation that there can be "no such thing as a neutral education," using it to vindicate their indoctrinating of students in anti-American radicalism and, as one follower of Freire advocated, transforming youth into "'actors in the struggle for social justice.'"

Set against the current political palaver about the need for quality of teaching in K-12 classrooms, it is all the more discordant to learn of the place of honor accorded to Freire's retrograde Marxist bromides in today's schools of education.

05/28 02:02 PM Share

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor the Sophomore   [Robert VerBruggen]

Well, she was actually a senior when one of these articles ran, but it's hard to resist that much consonance alliteration. The Princetonian has gone through its archives and begun posting the pieces that mention (or were written by) the Supreme Court nominee.

There are four so far. It seems Sotomayor was quite involved in identity politics on campus.

05/27 08:52 PM Share

Fallout of Closing Gitmo at Army College?   [Candace de Russy]

A vast federal penitentiary abuts the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which hundreds of elite foreign officers attend each year. If and when President Obama shuts down Guantanamo — as he remains committed to doing — what Ralph Peters calls "one Washington-isn't-thinking proposal would park the terrorists right there in the Big House."

What would be the repercussions of such an arrangement?

At CGSC, our officers build international relationships that benefit our country for decades to come, while allies and partners learn how to work together. But with Islamist terrorists confined next door — hardly a mile as the crow flies from the Staff College — Muslim countries would withdraw their students from the program under pressure from Islamist factions at home — who'd claim that Ft. Leavenworth was the new Gitmo.

Have the president and his allies who have made of Gitmo a symbol of evil envisaged this consequence? Peters and the American public deserve an answer to his questions:

Do we really want to sacrifice our chance to educate officers from the troubled Muslim world? Do we want to destroy an educational program that's been of tremendous benefit? One that's advanced the rule of law and human rights?

05/27 05:40 PM Share

In Defense of Liberty (University)   [David French]

John, I have to take limited exception to your brief note regarding Liberty University's decision to de-recognize its campus chapter of College Democrats. I think one needs to back up a bit and ask why we affirm (and vigorously protect) the right of individuals, churches, and other organizations to found and maintain private universities. Obviously, these universities don't exist to merely mirror public colleges (imagine that sales pitch: "same experience, but more debt!").

In general, I would say that most administrators of private colleges aspire to use their academic freedom and vastly greater autonomy to create a better campus environment, however they define it. Whether the emphasis is on research, "diversity," teaching, tolerance, religion, or some combination of the above, the goal is to advance an institutional purpose.

In my experience, private colleges — especially religious private colleges — run into problems when they try to be all things to all people, when they promise freedom but impose speech codes, when they try to advance a religious mission but crave approval from an overwhelmingly (and aggressively) secular academic culture, and when they try to "broaden their appeal" while still telling donors that they have retained their "religious roots."

In recent years, we have seen some sad spectacles from some of America's finest religious institutions — situations where they have directly violated their own promises to their students and, in some cases, turned their backs on their founding religious principles. Whether it's the recent debacle at Notre Dame, DePaul firing a conservative professor without a hint of due process, Gonzaga University refusing to recognize a pro-life club, or the sad and sordid separations as schools (like Belmont University in Nashville) disaffiliate from their traditional religious roots, the story of modern Christian higher education is all too often one of dilution and compromise.

Liberty is different. The school could not be more explicit about its mission; from its doctrinal statement to its purpose, to its "Distinctives," Liberty positions itself as not just religiously conservative but politically conservative as well (heck, one of its "Distinctives" is an "absolute repudiation of 'political correctness'").

Standing against these statements is a Democratic party that is officially, doctrinally, and unapologetically pro-abortion. Is it a mistake for Liberty to reject a pro-choice group? I would say that it would be a mistake for Liberty to behave in a way contrary to its stated mission and purpose. I think — in the vast tapestry of higher education, with hundreds of different institutions dominated by, to greater or lesser degrees, the same Leftist dogma — there's room for a school to stand in explicit opposition to this culture.  

No one has to send their kids there. No one has to donate money. But is it a "bad idea" for a university to hold firm on its founding principles? I don't think so.  

05/27 04:18 PM Share

The Princeton Library Responds   [Robert VerBruggen]

To the questions I posed here.

Here's the explanation I received in an e-mail from Princeton University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt:

The University respects copyright and has a permissions process for reproducing items in its archives, and the material removed from the Weekly Standard’s website was copyrighted material for which the Standard did not request permission for republication.

As stated in the University’s permissions procedure for the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (linked below), for most items in our archival holdings, Princeton owns only the physical item, not the property or copyright, and any items reproduced cannot be published without following the appropriate permissions process.

Here is the explanation for requesting permission, which the Standard did not:
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbsc/research/rights.html

This confused me, because the Standard said "links to the original articles," not the articles themselves, had been removed. I followed up and Cliatt responded:

My understanding is that the Standard republished photos of original articles (not links to our website). The images in question are of an independent student publication (the Daily Princetonian is not a Princeton University publication). The photos were obtained at Mudd Library for personal study use only; additional permission would have been needed to publish images. Here is the policy regarding taking photos of archival images for personal use (the policy states that the images cannot be published)
http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/research/RareBooksDigitalCamera-policy-2008.pdf

I'm still waiting to hear back from the Princetonian's editor, who might be able to handle permission (or might want to re-publish the articles himself on the paper's site).

UPDATE: I'm told the Princetonian will soon be re-publishing its Sotomayor-relevant archive articles.

05/27 03:55 PM Share

What's With This?   [Robert VerBruggen]

The Weekly Standard's blog details some of Sotomayor's writings while at Princeton. But at the bottom of the article is this:

Update: Links to the original articles taken down at the request of the Princeton University Library.

One, why would a university library make such a request? And two, isn't the standard journalist response to such a request . . . well, unprintable?

In the meantime, it seems the articles themselves have been either removed or de-indexed from Google. I can't seem to find them by searching for the quoted passages.

UPDATE: I have calls and e-mails in to the Standard, the library, and the Princetonian. I should also note that these are old articles, so they might have been scanned from old newspapers rather than typed as text — meaning they wouldn't show up in Google.

05/27 01:58 PM Share

Ayers, a 'Distinguished' Indoctrinator   [Candace de Russy]

America's Survival, Inc., has published a report by Mary Grabar titled "The Extreme Make-Over of William Ayers: How a Communist Terrorist Became a 'Distinguished' Professor of Education." Rather than teach, Grabar says, Ayers brainwashes.

Quoting Grabar, ASI writes that his "educational philosophy of 'social change' consists of 'recycled Stalinist strategies of undermining American culture and education in order to bring about revolution.'" In addition, Grabar asserts, "Ayers regards testing and grading of students as evidence of an imperialistic culture, one that needs to be overthrown."

The thoroughly damning report is posted here. 

 

05/27 01:28 PM Share

Playthings of the Ruling Party   [Jane S. Shaw]

North Carolina newspapers are expressing shock at a $170,000-per-year sinecure at North Caroina State University for the former governor’s wife. But the Pope Center’s Jay Schalin reports that prominent Democrats, from former governor Jim Hunt to former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, have routinely used the University of North Carolina to pursue their pet projects — and to find a soft landing spot when out of work. In how many states, I wonder, are public universities the playthings of the ruling party? 

05/27 01:26 PM Share

The NAS: Full Speed Ahead   [Candace de Russy]

The venerable organization has just published its 400th article on its new website. And of the highest caliber they are.

05/27 01:26 PM Share

Penn. School Bans Concealed-Carry Literature?   [Robert VerBruggen]

The Volokh Conspiracy has the story.

05/27 01:19 PM Share

Supreme Court Pick   [Jane S. Shaw]

Inside Higher Ed has a fairly nuanced article about Sonia Sotomayor's judicial decisions related to education. President Obama's choice for the Supreme Court favored minority plaintiffs in a controversial case involving New Haven firefighters, a decision that could indicate her views on affirmative action. And she favored accommodation of disabilities in the case of a dyslexic woman taking a bar exam.

05/27 10:21 AM Share

The Wages of Title IX   [John J. Miller]

At Quinnipiac U., men's indoor track is out and cheerleading is now a sport.

05/27 08:01 AM Share

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A Sweeping Agenda for Education Reform    [Candace de Russy]

The NAS's Peter Wood is embarking on an ambitious writing project to hone a policy agenda for the reform of U.S. educational institutions across the board. His purpose is to wrest these institutions from those he calls "transformationists," who reject who we are as a nation and seek to fundamentally change America. Take a look at Wood's "Ten Basic Principles" of reform, which he intends to amplify in the future and offer to politicians with an open mind about ameliorating American education.

05/26 05:07 PM Share

The Culture Project Progresses   [Candace de Russy]

Take hope, ye who despair at the rampant political correctness and meretriciousness within the U.S. entertainment industry. The Culture Project, founded and directed by Mike D'Virgilio, is fighting back on campuses, and students are joining the movement to take revivify our culture. The following is an e-mail update from D'Virgilio:  

I am proud to announce that The Culture Project has established its Campus Program's very first chapter at Sonoma State University in northern California wine country. Our first TCP Campus Coordinator is junior Lauren Ankenman. She is  . . . committed to The Culture Project's mission of encouraging her right-minded fellow students to choose careers of cultural influence ...

Ultimately TCP will have chapters on as many college and university campuses as possible, the purpose of which will be to recruit students into the cultural influence professions and provide them with the principles that will enable them to create and maintain a culture of liberty in the United States. . . . Current models of such work with young people on the political level include the College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom. . . . some people . . . are looking to provide a place and resources to make it easier for young right-minded college graduates and others to make an impact in the entertainment industry. The Culture Project will be in an ideal position to funnel graduates to such programs through its campus chapters.

05/26 05:06 PM Share

Research vs. Teaching: Another Take   [Jane S. Shaw]

Mark Bauerlein recently argued in an AEI paper that faculty should do less research and more teaching. But Geoffrey Vaughan, a political scientist at Assumption College says that Mark has been taken in by the "high-school" mode of teaching.

05/26 05:05 PM Share

Teaching Disabilities   [John J. Miller]

The Onion:

WASHINGTON—A shocking report released by the U.S. Department of Education this week revealed that a growing number of the nation's educators struggle on a daily basis with some form of teaching disability.

The study, which surveyed 2,500 elementary and high school level instructors across the country, found that nearly one out of every five exhibited behaviors typically associated with a teaching impairment. Among them: trouble paying attention in school, lack of interest or motivation during class, and severe emotional issues.

05/26 05:02 AM Share

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Paradox of College Access   [Jane S. Shaw]

Robert VerBruggen notes the paradox inherent in the debate over college access: As a national policy, too many students are going to college, but for the individual, college is often the best option.

The rampant overselling of college (to use George Leef’s term) misallocates resources, both for the nation as a whole and for many individuals who attend. Just look at the low graduation rates at many public universities; often, fewer than half the students graduate in six years. Persuaded that they have go to college, some students borrow heavily and find they can’t make it.

For those who can make it through, however, the degree is a valuable credential, as Robert implies here. This seems to be the case even if the actual learning from college has been slight. Although one does not need a college degree to be an office manager, for example, the degree will open more doors and may lead to higher income. The Griggs v. Duke Power story supports the idea that college degrees have replaced legally risky aptitude tests.

And for those with the talent for intellectually demanding jobs, not going to college can be disastrous. The Pope Center has published a couple of personal stories by highly intelligent people who “weren’t ready” for college at age 18 — and then found themselves underemployed and under-rewarded in the marketplace.

Jay Schalin worked as a freelance newspaper reporter but found the lack of a degree kept him from getting a permanent newspaper job. He writes, “I soured on the low pay, the demeaning story assignments, and being the old guy with no future amidst callow youth who complained about having the very job I wanted and who regarded me as a chump for wanting it.” 

Brian Jackson had heard that plumbers do well. Working for a plumbing firm, he says, “I spent countless long days down in sewage ditches and crawling underneath houses fixing broken pipes. To my great dismay, I didn't earn the money I was hoping I would.”

Clearly, Jay and Brian should have gone to college, and both eventually did. Indeed, as long as the credential is more important than the learning, maybe mediocre students should try, too — although some will lose out and a lot of time and money, theirs and others', will be wasted.

05/23 05:52 PM Share

Friday, May 22, 2009

Annals of Bad Ideas   [John J. Miller]

Remind me: Why do they call it "Liberty" University? Wash Post:

Liberty University will no longer recognize its campus Democratic Party club because its parent organization stands against the conservative Christian school's moral principles.

05/22 04:06 PM Share

Reader Mail re: College Is Useless, Necessary   [NRO Staff]

As a father who is about to send his daughter off to (hopefully) earn a bachelor's degree that will cost approximately $200,000 over the next four years, I read with interest your recent post about the efficacy/necessity of a college degree. I very much agree that there are far too many students going to college in pursuit of degrees that they don't really want, in order to land jobs that "require" but do not really need degrees. Many, many of these students will drop out of college without degrees, and will have arguably wasted a lot of time and money that would have been better spent obtaining more relevant vocational or technical training prior to entering the workforce. I fault the system for this, as most employers hiring workers for "white collar" jobs want to see a college degree.

While it would be easy to criticize employers for this, I completely understand why this would be the case. Using a bachelor's degree as a screening tool, an employer can at least infer a few things about the potential employee. If the college has a decent reputation, there is a good chance they employee is actually educated to some extent, and can hopefully read and write. A high-school diploma is much less reliable in this regard. A college degree also indicates that a candidate has a certain level of work ethic, perseverance, and tolerance for interfacing with mysterious bureaucracies. Finally, hiring a degree-holder exposes the Human Resources folks to less risk. If a candidate has a degree, its akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. "How was I to know the kid was a dud? He has a degree from the University of California!" Hiring someone without a degree can mean taking more of a leap of faith.

So that's the system we've got, and unless one has a kid with exceptional ability in a field that falls outside this system, those are the rules we play by. An exceptional musician, or athlete, or computer geek need not go to college. But the rest of the ambitious kids with some academic ability pretty much need to go to college as a starting point on a career path that will hopefully enable them to provide for themselves and their families.

My daughter is a very bright young woman who will absolutely thrive in the academic environment of the university. She could study history, or literature, or psychology, or political science, or English and excel. But the reality of life beyond college is that she will have to choose a major that strikes a balance between what she loves and what she needs to compete for a job in four years. She will probably pursue a double major, with one of the two majors being in business. She doesn't particularly love business, but it doesn't take much research to figure out that a B.A. in psychology won't get you a job. Of course, there's always law school.

My son is interested in the military. Because he is also smart and has real leadership ability, he should be an officer. Which requires a college degree. So he'll go to college too. Picking a major will be easier for him, as he loves business and will be an entrepeneur someday.

I'm rambling now, but I guess the point is that I agree too many kids are spending too much time and money pursuing college degrees that are either useless or unecessary.  But I also agree that our economy is structured in such a way that attempting to begin a career without a bachelor's degree puts one at a significant, and avoidable, disadvantage.

Earl B.
Tustin, Calif.

05/22 02:31 PM Share

Surviving in a Hostile Landscape   [Jane S. Shaw]

In a new post on the Pope Center site, my colleague Jay Schalin shares experiences from his nine-year tour of on-campus duty. He was over age 40 when he started as a  freshman at a community college, eventually earning a master's degree. Along the way, he saw it all.

05/22 10:59 AM Share

Reflections of an Unlicensed Humanist   [John J. Miller]

Leon Kass delivered the NEH's Jefferson Lecture last night. He'll be the last conservative to hold this honor for a while. Here's the text of his address.

05/22 10:50 AM Share

Thursday, May 21, 2009

College: Useless and Necessary?   [Robert VerBruggen]

Conservative critics of higher ed tend to agree that too many people are going to college. Where they disagree, though, is why the people who shouldn't be going are going. Do lots of jobs use the B.A. as a screening device, even though many B.A.'s don't mean anything; or, are kids just going because they're told to, and getting no career or income boost out of it? If the former is true, a kid who's not qualified for college should still try to go (so long as he can graduate), because even though he won't learn much, he'll get a valuable credential — it's the system that needs to change, not the behavior of individual students. If the latter is true, he'll waste years of his life, only to end up in the same job — the system should stop encouraging kids to do this, but in the meantime, the kids should stop doing it for their own good.

A while back, I linked to an analysis showing that when you look at two kids with low IQs, if one goes to college and the other doesn't, the one who goes will usually make more money. This seems to indicate that the B.A. does provide a leg up. However, as George pointed out at the time (I can't seem to find the post), two kids with the same IQ can be different in other ways; one might be more diligent.

John Derbyshire provides a disappointing experience from a reader who dropped out of school and worked in the public sector for a little bit:

It was only when I decided I wanted to work in the private sector that I realized I had to go back to school to finish my degree. No one would even INTERVIEW me for a writing job without a "BA" behind my name — despite my lengthy and wide-ranging career cred. It took me three years at part-time to finish the degree (worked a full-time job and paid as I went — no loans), after which I landed a job as a copywriter at a major direct merchant.

At the end of my collegiate experience, I was no better writer than when I went in — but had spent several thousand dollars to tack the "letters" behind my name.

If this guy's experience is anything like common, not only does college provide a leg up, it's often necessary even for people who shouldn't need a leg up, because they already have experience in the field.

05/21 03:17 PM Share

An Ode to the Non-Controversial Commencement Speech   [Allison Kasic]

I'm in complete agreement with Erin O'Connor on the issue. I find the inevitable annual controversy tiring — "They picked who!?! He said what!?!"
 
Graduation is not the time for polarizing politics and culture wars. It's a celebration of students. As a student, every year I suggested that my school bring in a non-political speaker such as Dave Barry for commencement. Instead we got alternating politicians — a liberal one year, a conservative the next. That political balance is certainly better than the mix a lot of other schools go with, but when a big chunk of the audience is inevitably annoyed and alienated just because of the speaker selection, that's not a good situation. I'd take Dave Barry over that drama any day.

05/21 12:23 PM Share

May I Introduce Myself?    [Jane S. Shaw]

Regular readers are familiar with the principled postings of George Leef of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. I am a colleague of George’s, and he invited me to join him as a blogger. A brief introduction:

My professional life has been divided into three periods — first, as a journalist (culminating in a stint with Business Week, which Steve Lagerfeld once memorialized as the “anti-business” business magazine — sorry about that), then as an editor and writer about free-market approaches to the environment at PERC (the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Mont.), and now as head of the John W. Pope Center, a North Carolina-based nonprofit institute dedicated to improving higher education.

Although I share many of George's free-market principles, I'm more of an accommodationist; I tend to promote what I view as realistic choices.

I admire Phi Beta Cons because, unlike many group blogs, it features camaraderie and interplay of comments without descending to mere chatter. The conversation is informed by a serious goal,  fixing  a system riddled with problems. The result is a column nearly perfect balanced by independent thought and interactive engagement.

I would be remiss if my first posting were mostly about me. George, who has left for an educational tour of Crete with his son, has a piece on our site about grade inflation — opposition to it, in fact. In 2004 a Princeton dean put her foot down and told Princeton faculty to limit the percentage of A's they award.

The policy seems to be working. Princeton students don’t much like it. But if Princeton becomes known as a school that actually demands effort from its elite (and otherwise pampered) students, those students will have an edge in the job market (over their elite and pampered rivals). In our new economy, that edge may be worth a lot.

05/21 11:02 AM Share

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

She Sings of Arms and the Man   [John J. Miller]

On the NRO mothership, Sarah Ruden talks about translating the Aeneid.

05/20 08:52 PM Share

I'm Pro-Life Because I Recycle!   [David French]

The unexamined clichés of the religious Left never fail to amuse. Whenever pro-lifers mobilize (such as in response to Obama's honorary degree and commencement speech at Notre Dame), two lame responses always follow. The first is the canard, "Pro-lifers stop caring about the baby as soon as its born."  And the other is, "Yes, I'm pro-life, but I'm pro-life in the fullest possible sense . . . I care about everything that makes our lives good."

Yesterday's Inside Higher Ed contains a classic of the genre. Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, writes about the "real scandal" at Notre Dame. Describing the protesters, she says: "They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living."

Does she have a shred of evidence to support these claims? Does she know anything at all about the individual protesters? Some variation of this leftist talking point has been repeated so often that even pro-lifers internalize the critique, wringing their hands and exclaiming, "Yes, yes, we need to love the living more." But what about the evidence? Has it ever been the case that pro-life Christians care more about the unborn than the born?  

Of course not. In fact, religious conservatives are among the most generous — if not the most generous — Americans when it comes to giving their money or their time. And are they giving all that money to pro-life causes? Hardly. I work at perhaps the largest pro-life religious conservative legal organization in the world, but our budget is less than 3 percent of that of one of the largest Christian relief organizations. It has never been the case that pro-life Christians only care for unborn children. To say otherwise is slander.

But McGuire is hardly done. She moves on to perhaps a classic statement of the religious Left's view of what it really means to be pro-life:

Catholicism is not a one-issue faith. The social justice teachings that are central to our Church’s moral construction demand that we act in defense of the sacred dignity of all human life, from conception through salvation. Ours is a faith that demands peace and decries unjust war even as we demand that the unborn child have a right to live — not mere life, but a life that can realize the full potential of the Creator’s divine plan as a matter of justice. Ours is a faith that is profoundly intolerant of racism and the exploitation of women, of poverty and the violence that economic injustice spawns. Ours is a faith that demands a more just sharing of the world’s resources, more pervasive global education to remediate the illiteracy that condemns children to repeat the cycles of poverty of prior generations. Ours is a faith that finds the use of torture for any reason an abhorrent offense against life. Ours is a faith that calls each member to take the option for the poor, to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters on this planet, to exercise the responsibilities of our citizenship fully, to honor the rights and dignity of workers, to be moral stewards of God’s creation — all in the name of life. This is what it really means to be “pro-life.”

Ahh yes, you're against abortion, but it's just as important to fight illiteracy, oppose waterboarding, increase the minimum wage, recycle, and compost your garbage. This is precisely how the religious Left loses its moral voice; when everything is a life issue, the very act of abortion itself recedes into the background. There is no sense of priority, no understanding that perhaps you can't learn to read and choose paper over plastic if you're not alive.  

In fact, in reading her entire piece, one realizes what she means by "real scandal." It is the existence of the conservative pro-life movement itself — those she dismisses as the "ostensibly Catholic mobs." I suppose faithful Catholics and their Protestant allies should just shut up . . . after all, at least more of those who live are driving Priuses.

05/20 12:07 PM Share

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

"pious, optimistic, evasive, sad and damaging all at the same time. "   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Archbishop Chaput on Notre Dame's Fr. Jenkins's performance Sunday. 

He has the audacity to hope though:

The most vital thing faithful Catholics can do now is to insist – by their words, actions and financial support – that institutions claiming to be “Catholic” actually live the faith with courage and consistency.  If that happens, Notre Dame’s failure may yet do some unintended good. 

05/19 02:22 PM Share