Free Republic

WASHINGTON - President Bush today signed legislation ushering in a new era in GI Bill benefits. The legislation, which the Senate last week passed overwhelmingly, is part of a $162 billion war spending bill. "We are very excited that after 18 months of working on the GI Bill that it's been passed into law," said Patrick Campbell, legislative director for IAVA. "Now veterans everywhere will see their opportunities greatly expanded." The administration has opposed the new GI Bill on the grounds it would be too expensive, while the Pentagon has been concerned the more generous benefits - including a free...

Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University. For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting "The Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith -- he of the powdered wig and invisible hand -- flutter over the campus food court. Every undergraduate, regardless of major, must study market economics and the philosophy of individual rights embraced by the U.S. founding fathers, including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." A sculpture commemorating Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is...

College girls who turned the tables on builders by wolf-whistling at them have been warned their behaviour is ‘harassment’. The students singled out contractors working on an extension to West Kent College for amorous comments and cheeky remarks.But the joke has become so persistent that the pupils have been threatened with disciplinary action.The tables have turned: Construction workers are renowned for wolf-whistling attractive girlsAn email was sent to pupils which said: 'It has come to the attention of the college that some female students have been making comments to, or whistling at, the builders both whilst on site and...

The environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the push to recycle plastics and offer organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors and expensive new research institutes. The University of Maryland teaches "green" real estate strategies for landscape architects. The University of Virginia's business graduate students recently created a way to generate power in rural Indian villages with discarded rice husks. And in a Catholic University architecture studio last week, students displayed ideas for homes made from discarded shipping containers. "It should be part of everything we do," said Ligia Johnson, a Catholic student whose...

Whenever I reflect on the most important moments of my life it's always those seemingly insignificant and casual conversations that come to mind. In every possible way he could devise, my father tried to impart to me the lessons and values he had learned the hard way, hoping against hope that my journey would be less torturous than his own. The most profound message that my Dad delivered to me was: "Put in a little effort now and it will pay off for the rest of your life." Of course, as a precocious (some say obnoxious) pre-teen I put more...

Mark Perry titles his post "It's an 'Educated-Take-All' Economy", with a graph showing the returns to education for median family income. Quoting a news article first (in italics): Barack Obama said that he was trying to put together tax and spending policies that dealt with two challenges. One is the competition from rapidly growing developing countries, like India and China. The other: the U.S. becoming what he called a "winner-take-all" economy, where the gains from economic growth skew heavily toward the wealthy. ...Wouldn't one way for Obama to solve this "problem" be to have the government shut down all American...

The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to finance sending a son or daughter off to Ivy U. or the flagship campus of the state university system. Sometimes both the student and the parent end up with big debts from financing a degree from some prestige institution. Yet these are the kinds of institutions that many have their hearts set on. Media hype adds to the pressure to go where...

HELSINKI: If you can bear dark snowy winters lasting anywhere between three and seven months and are prepared to stand out in a crowd of Finns – tall, blonde and speaking Suomi or Swedish – there is a chance Finland's 'silver economy' needs you. In an extraordinary attempt to lure immigrants to their rapidly-ageing country, Finnish universities have government approval to hawk their wares to Indian and Chinese students. On offer is a world-class education in one of Europe's most wired and well-developed economies and the chance of a good job afterwards. Finland's 'look east' policy is born out of...

I was asked recently - by a child porn advocate, no less - why I write books with chapter titles that are so “offensive.” Citing two such chapter titles – “Fag Hags and Rainbow Flags” and “The Liar, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” – the child porn advocate asked what some of my fellow UNC professors had done to make me sound so “nasty.” I think the question is worth answering. Put simply, I use provocative language in chapters (more often in columns) criticizing a small minority of my fellow professors for two reasons: 1) because they are proponents of...

America continues to grow in stature as the most-favoured destination for Indian students with the last seven months showing a 38% increase in the number of candidates going there. What's more, Chennai seems to be one of the largest exporters in the country. Sample this: 38,274 student visas were issued from across the country in fiscal year 2006-07 (October 2006 to September 2007), of which the Chennai consulate gave out 19,973. Correspondingly, between October 2007 and April 2008, 50,316 student visas were issued from across the country, of which the Chennai consulate alone accounted for 24,975. With a rising middle...

BAGHDAD — Baghdad Police College broke ground for a new campus to be known as Baghdad Police College East June 5. When completed next year, the new facility will have 19 buildings for training and housing Iraqi Police. The new $35 million facility will accommodate 2,000 recruits and 200 instructor staff. There will be nine student barracks, four instructor barracks, one laundry and one dining facility, two large classroom buildings, one multi-purpose facility and one administration building. The facility will be constructed on the former polo field of Baghdad Police College, adjacent to the present campus. The new BPC East...

Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities. Citibank has been among the most aggressive in paring the list of colleges it serves. JPMorgan Chase, PNC and SunTrust say they have not dropped whole categories, but are cutting colleges as well. Some less-selective four-year colleges, like Eastern Oregon University and William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., say they have been summarily dropped by some lenders. The practice suggests that if...

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education has begun checking students’ Social Security numbers and alerting colleges and universities if they appear invalid. Jim Purcell, the department director, said Thursday that the goal is to ensure that illegal aliens aren’t allowed to pay instate tuition rates when state officials think they’re ineligible under federal law. The investigation into the Social Security numbers began last week after Purcell alerted institutions, at the direction of Gov. Mike Beebe, that they need to ask students for evidence of legal residency before allowing them to pay the cheaper in-state rates. Purcell said the first check...

What? Barack Obama just creamed John McCain in the nationwide popular vote, but McCain prevails because he won in the Electoral College? What? California went for a Republican for the first time since 1988, giving McCain a decisive 55 electoral votes? Neither scenario is implausible. The referendum in California to reverse a state Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage seems certain to bring out hundreds of thousands of conservative voters. And if enough irate Hillary Clinton voters carry out their threats to sit out the election or even vote for McCain, ol’ Mac would be in clover. Some...

Goodbye SAT? by: Bethany Stotts, May 28, 2008 Criticisms of the flaws of standardized testing abound in American education circles, be it for allegations of racism in the ACT and SAT’s or complaints about No Child Left Behind’s unaccountable “accountability.” Now FairTest, a non-profit opposed to the “misuses and flaws of testing practices,” has advanced a media campaign heralding Wake Forest University’s recent choice to become “test-optional” as the harbinger of a national trend. Both Smith College and Wake Forest University announced their switch to test-optional admission policies this month, but WFU’s crossover is exceptional due to its rank as...

I guess the proposal for a new tax on Massachusetts colleges with big endowments is, as they say at the Statehouse, a "nonstarter" — for the moment. But if I were the leaders of those colleges, I wouldn't relax. The mentality that led to the proposed 2.5 percent tax on endowments of more than $1 billion is alive and spreading like a virus. It's the mentality that says government gets to decide how much you, your business or your institution "needs." Anything more than that, you don't really deserve, and they can take it away — all so they can...

"The bursting of our collective bubble comes quickly. A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught. Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence. In each of my courses, we discuss thesis statements and topic sentences,...

American Degree Mills Exposed by: Deborah Lambert, May 27, 2008 If someone in your family is heading off to college shortly, here’s something you might want to think about. A new study by the non-profit Delta Cost Project found that although the cost of college tuition outpaces inflation by a country mile, it doesn’t necessarily translate into better results, according to USA Today. For example, this year “the sticker price increases ranged from 4.2% at community colleges to 6.6% at public four-year institutions.” Since a college degree is still the must-have “ticket” for every American student, steady tuition increases are...

Starting this fall, Pace University will offer a 50 percent tuition scholarship to U.S. military veterans who have served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq from 2001 to the present. The scholarship is open to all veterans who meet Pace's admissions requirements, and includes veterans now at Pace. Veterans must provide a copy of their DD-214 form with one of the following designations: Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal; Operation Afghanistan Campaign Medal; or the Operation Iraqi Freedom Medal. In addition, Pace is waiving application fees for these veterans. The scholarship is renewable based on academic performance. Applicants are encouraged to apply...

Governor Deval Patrick has decided against taking action to allow illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition and fees at state colleges and universities this fall, an administration official said yesterday, crushing advocates who were counting on the governor to deliver on a pledge to support the students. Earlier this year, Patrick said he was considering ways to offer illegal immigrants in-state rates, such as issuing a regulation, adding that it would be "the right thing to do." The governor declined to comment yesterday, but an administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Patrick decided that there were "significant...

Dartmouth English professor Priya Venkatesan is suing her students for “mental harassment” and the college’s administrators for “failure to safeguard my emotional health.” Venkatesan maintains that some of her students were so resistant to her exposition of “French narrative theory” that the classroom became a “hostile working environment.” “They argued with my ideas,” she charged. “They questioned my authority.” The professor’s suit mentions a specific incident wherein students assailed her contention that science is “a patriarchal construct that suppresses feminine ways of knowing.” One of the students took issue, citing empirical evidence in his argument. When he was applauded by...

Obama has said that he plans for college students to be able to get a $4000 tax credit for college for each year of school in exchange for 100 hours of community service. To the stout conservative this sounds perfectly obvious. Since the Democrats don't really want to lower your taxes $4000, you can work for a tax credit. However, this ploy is not so obvious to most modern liberal college students and their parents. Too often they hear this and think this is a substantial amount of money for college, and what better thing can you do for your...

Help Wanted: Lefty College Seeks Right-Wing Prof CU-Boulder Bid to Endow A 'Conservative' Chair Leaves Both Sides Uneasy By STEPHANIE SIMON May 13, 2008; Page A1 BOULDER, Colo. -- How liberal is the University of Colorado at Boulder? The campus hot-dog stand sells tofu wieners. A recent pro-marijuana rally drew a crowd of 10,000, roughly a third the size of the student body. And according to one professor's analysis of voter registration, the 800-strong faculty includes just 32 Republicans. Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson surveys this landscape with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in...

No federal law prohibits North Carolina from admitting illegal immigrants to its colleges and universities, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said today. The statement from federal officials contradicts a letter sent this week by the office of state Attorney General Roy Cooper. The letter from Cooper's office advised the state Community College System that federal law bars the admission of illegal immigrants to public colleges and universities, even if they pay out-of-state tuition. The letter said that the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, was responsible for enforcing the law and offered to ask...

Well, now in Massachusetts they are looking to tax college endowments, university endowments that have more than a billion dollars in it. They say that by doing this, they can put more than a billion dollars a year into the state revenue. Legislators have asked state finance officials to study a plan that would impose a 2.5% annual assessment on colleges with endowments over a billion dollars. Now, the universities are very upset and here's quite possibly -- I want to frame this. I want to frame this. I want this on my wall of my office. When a nonprofit,...

To hear Howard Avery describe it, Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie knew nothing of his son when their paths happened to cross at a recent AAU basketball event. As fate would have it, though, that chance encounter led to a scholarship offer from the Wildcats and perhaps the earliest verbal commitment in the history of college basketball's winningest program. Michael Avery, a 6-foot-4 eighth-grader from Lake Sherwood, Calif., says he will play for the Cats. Now on with the business of finding a high school. "That's the funny thing," Howard Avery said with laugh. "We've got our college. Now we need...

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights. Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names." The trauma was so...

Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story. One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get into elite colleges in the United States. Harvard, Yale and Princeton already have 34 students from those schools. When a copy of the 50th anniversary report on members of the Harvard class of 1958 arrived in the mail recently, I thought back to one of my fellow students in that class who had worn a hole in the sole of his shoe...

Something remarkable happened in a college softball game Saturday in Ellensburg(Washington). At least, I am conditioned to think it was remarkable, since it involved an act of sportsmanship, with two players helping an injured opponent complete the home run she had just slugged.

This week millions of high school seniors across the nation will mail forms and checks to colleges announcing their intention to matriculate. It's the culmination of what some say was the toughest year ever to pry open the golden doors of academe. My husband and I are still a few years away from writing those whopping checks to doubtless already well-endowed institutions, but a spirit of rebellion stirs in my soul at the thought of it. We tamely fork over tens of thousands of dollars (about $45,000 per year) for the privilege of having our young indoctrinated. Why are we...

The academic left is fond of buzzwords that sound harmless but function in a highly ideological way. Many schools of education and social work require students to have a good "disposition." In practice this means that conservatives need not apply, as highly publicized attempts to penalize right-wing students at Brooklyn College and Washington State University revealed. "Social justice" is an even more useful codeword. Who can oppose it? But some schools made the mistake of spelling out that it means advocacy for causes of the left, including support for gay marriage and adoption, also opposition to "institutional racism," heterosexism, classism...

However high-minded their courses may sound – "Mirror of Princes," say, or "The Political Philosophy of Aristotle" – college students today enter a low hook-up culture when they leave the classroom. In case you don't know, a hook-up is a brief sexual encounter between two partners who don't necessarily know each other before and who don't necessarily want to know each other after. And it's free. The sort of transient sex that once was available to men only for money can now be had, without paying, from college women – as long as the man is a fellow student and...

As a parent, I am reevaluating the merits of the 160K investment I am about to finish making in my daughter's education at the University of Texas. It's not that UT isn't a fantastic school and that my daughter has not done well in her double major of Psychology and Spanish ( 3.95 GPA) it's just that I'm trying to figure out what she does in a year or so to get that back or to even leverage on it in the world that she will find herself.. Perhaps she can be a sort of Dr. Phil for Telemundo going...

Dear Dave, My son is a sophomore at a local college, and he wants to transfer to a very prestigious university. If he did this he would incur more than $100,000 in student loan debt, and that's with us picking up half of the cost. What do you think I should tell him? Will Dear Will, I'd have a hard time telling anybody that one school is $100,000 more valuable than another one. The fact is that unless he has $100,000 lying around somewhere, he shouldn't go to that other school for one very simple reason – he can't afford...

--snip-- The ideological force-feeding of undergraduate students that characterized the University of Delaware’s residential life program had numerous components: radical environmentalism, an attempt to stigmatize traditional moral sentiments, foregrounding questions of sexual orientation, efforts to promote deep distrust of American society, promotion of identity politics, and an aggressive focus on racial grievance. As we looked at other colleges and universities, we found this combination of themes to be widespread, but organized in a variety of ways. Residence halls aren’t the only venue. Many campuses have a contingent of administrators whose job seems to be to turn late adolescent social anxieties...

The following commentary was written in response to a New York Times article entitled "Guns on Campus: Could They Prevent a Repeat?" by David Codrea. Republished with permission. Interesting take, Mr. Codrea. I have worked on college and university campuses most of my adult life - first as a student, now as a professor. I have grown quite accustomed to the idea of citizen concealed carry. I know that such policies (now the norm in 48 states) do not increase crime; in contrast, data suggests these allowances deter all but the most brazen (or stupid) criminals. Most importantly, I also...

...In September, Congress vowed to make education more affordable by passing the "College Cost Reduction and Access Act." The law reduced the interest rates borrowers pay on federally insured student loans. Backed by the Federal Family Education Loan Program, these loans account for more than 70% of education lending. Taxpayers will fork over $7 billion by 2012 to pay for the rate cuts. But Congress didn't stop there. Convinced that the private lenders who make these loans were reaping too much profit, Congress also cut the yield on each loan. The return on the popular Stafford loan for undergrads was...

As pointed out in Ben Stein's new documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed": "If professors value their careers, they will keep their mouths shut." This is the perfect example of liberal bias and political correctness ruling the day on college campuses... and why the Collegiate Network established the Campus Outrage Awards. Each year the Collegiate Network highlights the five most egregious examples of political correctness run amok on American college campuses. Earlier this month, the Collegiate Network awarded Iowa State University (ISU) a 2008 Campus Outrage Award for classroom bias. ISU received the fifth place for denying Professor Guillermo Gonzalez, Assistant...

Why does college cost so much? There are two basic reasons. The first is that people will pay what the colleges charge. The second is that there is little incentive for colleges to reduce the tuition they charge. Those who want the government to provide subsidies to help meet the high cost of college seem not to consider whether government subsidies might have contributed to the high cost of college in the first place. In any kind of economic transaction, it seldom makes sense to charge prices so high that very few people can afford to pay them. But, with...

Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to colleges and universities seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing. Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are limits to how much of it is good -- and how good compared to other uses of the resources required. In other words, education is not a Good Thing categorically in unlimited amounts, for people of all levels of ability, interest and willingness to work. Nor is there any obvious...

A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College." The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the difficulties that both students and parents have in trying to borrow the money needed when their current incomes will not cover college costs. All that is fine for a purely "human interest" story. But making economic policies on the basis of human interest stories -- which is what politicians increasingly do, especially in election...

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — More than 100 college presidents and athletic directors are urging NCAA President Myles Brand to re-examine the presence of alcohol ads on broadcasts of games, suggesting that college sports and beer advertising are a “bad mix.” The Center for Science in the Public Interest has said some of CBS’s game telecasts may have exceeded the amount of beer advertising allowed. In a letter sent yesterday, the presidents cited the amount of beer advertising during CBS’s broadcast of the “March Madness” college basketball tournament. “Beer advertising during the games continues to undermine the many positive attributes of college...

Updated: April 8, 2008 05:26 PM EDT ALFRED, N.Y. (WIVB) - - Alfred University has cancelled all classes and closed the library per police request. ALFRED, N.Y. (WIVB) - - Police are on campus at Alfred University, investigating a report of a Hispanic male, possibly carrying a gun. He is described as wearing a green hoodie sweatshirt and carrying a back pack. Faculty and students are being advised to remain inside where they are, not to go outside. Update: The following email has been sent out to the campus: Alfred State College has been advised that the description of the...

What a comeback and what a great game.

Conservatives complain that college professors lean left when it comes to politics — and the data mostly show that's true. But new research suggests the personal politics of academics have little effect on what their students think. The research, to be published this year in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, analyzes separate surveys on the attitudes of about 6,800 students at 38 universities and how they changed between their freshman and senior years. Then it examines whether those results are affected by the political attitudes of the faculty at their particular schools. The short answer is no, according...

Stuck in the Middle by: Charles Dolci, April 01, 2008 I read your article "The Middle of Nowhere" with great interest. However, I wonder if there really is a problem that needs a solution. I am a new High School teacher. After having successfully spent nearly 30 years as a professional in industry, I decided to pursue a career as an educator. One thing I have noticed, in both careers, is that people have different abilities, drives, desires and goals. While your article does not claim that ALL children must “succeed” (whatever that means) it does express great dismay that...

There was a time when not having sex consumed a very small part of Janie Fredell’s life, but that, of course, was back in Colorado Springs. It seemed to Fredell that almost no one had sex in Colorado Springs. Her hometown was extremely conservative, and as a good Catholic girl, she was annoyed by all the fundamentalist Christians who would get in her face and demand, as she put it to me recently, “You have to think all of these things that we think.” They seemed not to know that she thought many of those things already. At her public...

Two injured after shooting in dorm parking lot in Tyler © 2008 The Associated Press TYLER, Texas — Two people were injured early Thursday morning after being shot in a parking lot outside a Texas College dorm in Tyler, police say. Tyler Police Lt. Derreck Wagoner tells Tyler television station KLTV that one person was shot in the abdomen and the other was shot in the hand. Wagoner says the abdomen wound victim is hospitalized in serious

Police in Panama City Beach are still searching for an ex-felon accused of sexually assaulting a Tuscaloosa woman on spring break and pushing her from a sixth-floor hotel balcony. Police intend to charge Shawn Wuertley, a security guard at the Sandpiper Beacon Resort in Panama City, with attempted felony murder, sexual battery and false imprisonment. Indiana criminal records indicate that Wuertley, 29, served several years in prison on several felony charges, none of them violent. He was convicted of burglary charges in 1998, 1999 and 2004, car theft, theft and two charges of receiving stolen property in 1999. He was...

NEW DELHI: Industry body Assocham on Monday said over $ 13 billion is spent every year by about 450,000 Indian students on higher education abroad as they are not accommodated by domestic institutions. Over 90 per cent of students appearing for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) entrance examinations are rejected due to capacity constraints, of which the top 40 per cent pay to get admission abroad. "Over 150,000 students every year go overseas for university education, which costs India a foreign exchange outflow of 10 billion dollars. This amount is sufficient to build...