Free Republic

The notion of objective truth has been abandoned and the peer review process gives scholars ample opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies. Last fall, emails revealed that scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England and colleagues in the U.S. and around the globe deliberately distorted data to support dire global warming scenarios and sought to block scholars with a different view from getting published. What does this scandal say generally about the intellectual habits and norms at our universities? This is a legitimate question, because our universities, which above all should be...

BERKELEY, Calif. – Students carried out raucous rallies on college campuses nationwide Thursday in protests against deep education cuts that turned violent as demonstrators threw punches and ice chunks in Wisconsin and blocked university gates and smashed car windows in California. At least 15 protesters were detained by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee police after as many as 150 students gathered at the student union then moved to an administrative building to deliver petitions to the school chancellor. University spokesman Tom Luljak said campus police allowed one person inside, But when she emerged, she encouraged everyone to rush the building, he said....

While most of us do not see the threat, or just do not want to admit the problems that Islam brings to non-Islamic countries, Islam continues to advance in America. In this latest stage of Islam on the move, this school is offering only two majors. Arabic language and Islamic law and theology. The last thing that this country needs are more pro-Sharia Muslims. Sharia needs to be officially banned, and then any Muslim that calls for it afterwards shall be arrested or deported if possible. Those that want Sharia do not belong here, and are to be looked upon...

PHOENIX — Saying it would protect students and staffers, a veteran state lawmaker wants to let some faculty members carry their weapons onto university and community college campuses. Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, said existing restrictions in state law keep everyone but police from legally having a gun on campuses. The problem, he said, is those who want to harm someone else are not going to be deterred by that restriction. "It's a long-time goal of mine to make sure there are no defense-free zones where criminals know they can go into an establishment and there'll be no law-abiding citizens there...

Charter Colleges? Deborah Lambert, December 18, 2009 Amid the heavy-handed bureaucracies that dominate our nation’s colleges and universities, there are seeds of opportunity. Professor Marvin Olasky noted in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education that a move toward Charter Colleges might be the answer. Dr. Olasky, editor-in-chief of the news magazine World and a journalism professor at the U. of Texas, Austin, hails Rob Koons, “the University of Texas professor removed last fall as head of a UT Western Civilization program, who is proposing that Texas legislators back the creation of charter colleges, as they now support...

Defunct Republican Club Limits Oxy's Political Discourse After a dwindling presence on campus, the Republican club ceased to exist two years ago and has not been restarted, to the dismay of several students and faculty. Devon Puglia '08, a registered Democrat, was the President of the Republican club from '06 - '08. He said, "[The club] was very small and informal during my time, and by my senior year it was just me." He described Oxy professors and students being hostile to political opinion that didn't conform to the school's prevailing liberal ideology. "I'm sure there are plenty of...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Students aren't the only ones benefiting from the billions of new dollars Washington is spending on college aid for the poor. An Associated Press analysis shows surging proportions of both low-income students and the recently boosted government money that follows them are ending up at for-profit schools, from local career colleges to giant publicly traded chains such as the University of Phoenix, Kaplan and Devry.

After 74 seasons, Northeastern is axing its football program. NU athletic director Peter Roby informed parents of the school’s decision last night via an e-mail, which was obtained by the Herald. Roby simultaneously met with the team on campus to break the news. “The decision was a difficult one, made all the more difficult because of the respect and admiration I have for our coaches and players,” Roby said in the e-mail. “Despite my personal feelings toward them I am convinced that this decision is in the best interest of the university. The past several years have been disappointing for...

mother-of-six who today admitted hiding an explosives manual in her burka wrote a note suggesting she was willing to blow up herself and her children, a police source said. Houria Chahed Chentouf, 41, from Manchester, was sentenced to two years in prison for the terror-related offence but walked free from court after serving her time on remand. Officers found the chilling note written by Moroccan-born Chentouf at her home in Holland.

A dangerous idea has been gaining momentum within education-reform circles: Too many young people are going to college. Since Charles Murray took up this line in a series of Wall Street Journal op-eds and then in last year’s book Real Education, the idea has neared the mainstream. Though only directly addressed in a few words, this idea haunts nearly every page of Matthew B. Crawford’s otherwise excellent book Shop Class as Soulcraft, which made it up to number 17 and was listed as an editors’ choice on the New York Times Bestseller List. An article in National Review’s recent special...

College education is a costly proposition with tuition, room and board at some colleges topping $50,000 a year. Is it worth it? Increasing evidence suggests that it's not. Since the 1960s, academic achievement scores have plummeted, but student college grade point averages (GPA) have skyrocketed. In October 2001, the Boston Globe published an article entitled "Harvard's Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation." The article reported that a record 91 percent of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. The newspaper called Harvard's grading practices "the laughing stock of the Ivy League." Harvard is by no means unique. For...

Sorry but taking off on an old thread from 2001. My 17 year old is a senior and going off to college next september. We live in the Rio Grande Valley Texas and we are visiting Hillsdale College in Southern Michigan in 2 weeks. Does anyone have any other Suggestions for a conservative College? Thanks in advance.

HANOVER, N.H. - In an annual rite, incoming Dartmouth College students dutifully lined up to shake the president’s hand, one of many perfunctory events that kick off each school year. But this fall, the tradition was marked by an extra jolt of excitement: More than 1,000 freshmen clamored to meet Dartmouth’s newly appointed leader. The crowd wound around one end of the indoor track, out the door, and along the glass walls of the field house. Many waited longer than an hour. At the head of the receiving line last week, Dr. Jim Yong Kim delighted the teenagers by greeting...

Today The Cardinal Newman Society published a new, second edition of The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College, a free online resource for parents and students seeking a faithful Catholic education. This comprehensive Guide recommends 21 Catholic colleges and universities in the United States plus eight international, online and unique programs based on the strength of their Catholic identity. In addition, the Guide includes several essays to help families better understand the search for a strong Catholic college. The culmination of four years of research and hundreds of interviews, this edition of The Newman Guide builds substantially on the...

"Now the college utilizes resources from the Bonner Center for Civic and Community Engagement to make the effort as efficient as possible. The Bonner Center student scholars are charged with organizing the 1,000-plus freshmen into service areas, and then coordinating yearlong activities from which students can meet their requirements."

Universities and public-school districts spent the summer preparing for swine flu. For some colleges, however, the virus popped up sooner than expected. Four Ohio schools -- Miami, Xavier, Cedarville and Cincinnati -- have cluster cases of the flu, according to state health officials. "We knew we were going to see it, but to have it happen so quickly surprised us a little bit," said Debora del Valle, spokeswoman for Xavier. The Cincinnati school has 110 suspected flu cases and canceled large events through Labor Day. No cases have been reported by Ohio public-school districts. Yesterday, President Barack Obama urged Americans...

SANTA PAULA -- Thomas Aquinas College is one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review, and it ranks #1 in the country for “most religious students.” The education services company features the 4-year, Catholic school in the new 2010 edition of its popular guidebook, The Best 371 Colleges (Random House / Princeton Review, July 28, 2009, $22.99). Of special note in this year’s report on Thomas Aquinas College is that the school is one of only 13 in the country to be named to the first-ever “Financial Aid Honor Roll,” receiving a highest possible...

The Catholic students of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., are the "most religious" among students from the nation’s top schools, according to The Princeton Review’s latest college ratings. The students of Bennington College in Bennington, Vt., meanwhile, are the least, revealed the recently published findings. Based on a survey of 122,000 students at 371 of the “best” colleges in the country, the new lists report the top 20 colleges in 62 categories ranging from those related to academics and demographics to those related to politics and the quality of life. Among the most notable are “Most Conservative Students,”...

Democrats have promised to make college education another taxpayer-financed entitlement, but some post-secondary schools appear to be more favored than others. Specifically, for-profit institutions are becoming political targets, notwithstanding their generally strong educational record. Often called career colleges, for-profit schools don’t rank with the Ivies for prestige. But schools like Devry or Kaplan that specialize in computer technology, physical therapy and other tangible skills provide a valuable service in training young and even not-so-young people to compete in our information economy.

President Barack Obama plans to announce a community-college initiative designed to boost graduation rates, improve facilities and develop new technology. The effort will involve $12 billion in spending spread over the next 10 years. While small compared to the $100 billion in stimulus money the Obama administration has to spend on education, it would mark a substantive increase in direct federal spending on community colleges. A recent report by the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, estimated the federal government provides community colleges with about $2 billion a year in direct support, about a tenth of what it spends on...

Over the Memorial Day weekend, many college administrators attended a conference about the absence of men on today's college campuses and expressed concern about the negative experiences and unprecedented challenges facing college men today. The "2nd Conference on College Men" at the University of Pennsylvania featured sessions examining the implications of negative comments about men that are prevalent on college campuses and the sexist campus activism of participants in the nation's 500 college gender studies departments. The conference program, attended by about 100 professors and student affairs personnel, exposed some unpleasant facts: men are "overrepresented" in drug and alcohol abuse,...

Liberty University will no longer recognize its campus Democratic Party club because its parent organization stands against the conservative Christian school's moral principles. The club, which has about 30 members, will no longer be able to use Liberty's name, hold on-campus meetings or be eligible for student activities money. "I think it does the university a great disservice to stifle one side of the discussion simply because we are Democrats,'' said Maria Childress, the club's adviser and an administrative assistant at the school. Brian Diaz, president of Liberty's Democratic club said he was informed of the school's decision in a...

Note: The following text is a quote: Two Missouri Brothers Among Those Indicted in $4 Million Nationwide Spamming Conspiracy Millions of E-Mail Addresses Illegally Harvested from Computers at 2,000 Schools KANSAS CITY, MO—Two Missouri men and their company are among those indicted by a federal grand jury in a nationwide e-mail spamming case that victimized more than 2,000 colleges and universities in a scheme that sold more than $4 million worth of products to students, announced Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Amir Ahmad Shah, 28, of St. Louis., his brother, Osmaan Ahmad...

Several years ago I wrote an essay addressing liberal bias in the (mainstream) media. That essay reviewed a scholarly article by a sociologist who did a careful content analysis of leading newspapers. What I didn’t realize at the time was how many people take such statements as “the [mainstream]0 media is (liberally) biased” as an article of faith. The article concluded that the content examined didn’t show much liberal bias, indeed, more conservative bias than many are even willing to consider. Sociologists are good at this kind of thing: debunking myths and taken-for-granted “truths.” It is never a good idea...

Another bishop has declined to attend another graduation ceremony at another Catholic university because of plans to bestow an honorary degree on another pro-choice politician. This time it's New Orleans Catholic Archbishop Alfred Hughes who says he will not attend next month's graduation at Xavier University of Louisiana, which plans to award an honorary degree to Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, Louisiana native, Roman Catholic and abortion rights supporter. Hughes is joining in protest a dozen other Roman Catholic bishops who plan to boycott next month's graduation at the University of Notre Dame, which plans to give an honorary degree...

Vacuous bullies on college campuses, who couldn't score in a debate with a Teletubbie, proclaim their feigned concern about "racism" and "bigotry" as an excuse to attack people expressing opposing beliefs. Likewise, Janeane Garafalo maligned Americans as "racists" for attending "Tax Day Tea Parties," and homosexual activist Perez Hilton attacked Carrie Prejean, "Miss California," as a "dumb b**** for speaking in support of traditional marriage. If any of these self-anointed "bigot" busters ever confronted real racism or unjust discrimination of any kind, they wouldn't trivialize it by using it so carelessly. Holocaust images were entrenched in my memory as a...

Last week, an unruly mob of radical protestors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill chased former U.S. congressman and anti-illegal immigration spokesman Tom Tancredo from his speaking engagement. Police were forced to use pepper spray at one point while protestors tried to push their way into an already packed room. Tancredo stopped speaking when protestors outside the building broke a window in the lecture hall (video) . Last night, it initially appeared that a similar mob might do the same to another former congressman, Virgil Goode, a Virginian who is an outspoken opponent of affirmative action and shares views...

Wading into the politically charged immigration debate, a group of colleges and universities is urging Congress to give illegal immigrants tuition aid and a path to citizenship in light of efforts in several states to block them.

Wading into the politically charged immigration debate, a group of colleges and universities is urging Congress to give illegal immigrants tuition aid and a path to citizenship in light of efforts in several states to block them. The College Board, made up of 5,000 schools and best known for its SAT college admission tests, released a report Tuesday that cites a need for federal legislation that would open up in-state college tuition, financial aid and legal status to many illegal immigrants in the U.S. Speaking publicly on the issue for the first time, the board is making its push after...

Once upon a time, a long time ago and very far away, there was a joke in which four political philosophers — who are all dead now and can’t be subpoenaed by Congress — were asked what the appropriate response would be to a couple having sex on the steps of the public library. The conservative said it was okay if the couple had benefit of clergy. The liberal said it was fine, as long as it was mandatory. The communist said it didn’t matter because they were going to be shot afterward, anyway. And the libertarian said: There shouldn’t...

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint proposed an amendment Thursday to overturn a provision in the stimulus bill that prohibits renovation funding for schools that allow religious worship in their facilities. BY CRISTINA CORBIN Republican Sen. Jim DeMint proposed an amendment Thursday to kill a provision in the Senate stimulus bill that prohibits renovation money for schools that allow religious groups to meet on campus. DeMint proposed the amendment after the provision was passed in the Democratic-controlled House despite unanimous Republican opposition. The amendment is expected to be voted on Thursday, an aide to the senator told FOXNews.com. DeMint and others who...

Ivy-covered walls, Ph.D. economists, and growing demand for education seem to have, so far, offered colleges and universities at least a little protection from the recession and market meltdowns, according to several new analyses of colleges' financial health. University endowments, those big pools of "rainy day funds" that were designed to be so well diversified that they'd protect colleges during bad years, have fallen only about 25 percent in the past 18 months or so. While that has been painful for the colleges, it could have been worse. The U.S. stock market fell by more than 40 percent in the...

2008-2009 Top Ten Conservative Colleges January 2009 Young America’s Foundation is pleased to release our fifth annual “Top Ten Conservative College” list in response to the frequently asked question of which schools we recommend to those seeking conservative colleges. Each year, hundreds of thousands of students begin their college search. Admission guides, seminars, advice from friends, and help from advisors all offer different perspectives. Presented with so many options, confusion often clouds this important decision-making process. Given the requests for Young America’s Foundation’s recommendations, and to aid in making the right decision, we are proud to release our fifth annual...

The Best Value Colleges were selected based upon institutional data and student opinion surveys collected from the fall of 2007 through fall of 2008. Broadly speaking, the factors we weighed covered undergraduate academics, costs and financial aid. Additionally, we considered the percentage of graduating seniors who borrowed from any loan program and the average dollar amount of debt those students had at graduation. Learn more about our best value colleges methodology. CLICK HERE FOR THE LIST OF BEST VALUES COLLEGES : PUBLIC COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (Listed alphabetically): http://www.princetonreview.com/SchoolList.aspx?id=788&uidbadge= PRIVATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (Listed alphabetically) : http://www.princetonreview.com/SchoolList.aspx?id=789&uidbadge=

With the Big Three seeking a bailout from Washington, the Big Ten are following suit. Earlier this week the Carnegie Corporation of New York took out a two-page ad in the New York Times, signed by executives of 36 public universities, state university systems and higher-education associations, urging Congress and President-elect Obama to rescue them. Mr. Obama has already promised to expand federal subsidies to higher education by increasing Pell grants and making student-loan terms more permissive. The university chiefs seek an additional "federal infusion of capital" -- as much as $45 billion -- to build new facilities, especially "green"...

Our colleges and universities have not only become centers of anti-Americanism but are also becoming centers facilitating the stealth jihad - the gradual transformation of America into a theocracy subject to sharia (Muslim law). As they have already almost succeeded in doing, the Muslims are now in the process of taking over America without a shot being fired or a bomb going off. Yesterday, I wrote about the stealth jihad, which has already turned Europe into Eurabia and destroyed its Judeo-Christian basis. And now it looks like America is starting down that same path to civilizational suicide. This conclusion is...

On August 6, 2008, the Washington Post reported that tuition and fees at public colleges in Virginia will increase by an average of 7.3 percent this year. The article was four sentences long and ran in the Metro section, below the fold, in space reserved for unremarkable news. The drumbeat of higher education price increases has become so steady in recent years that it barely merits attention. But the cumulative effect is enormous: the average price of attending a public university more than doubled over the last two decades, even after adjusting for inflation. The steepest increases came in the...

Some of the nation’s universities are trying to sell chunks of their portfolios privately as their endowments swoon with the markets, The New York Times’s Claire Cain Miller and Geraldine Fabrikant write. Among institutional investors, school endowments aggressively embraced private equity, real estate partnerships, venture capital, commodities, hedge funds and other so-called alternative investments over the last few years. Endowments with more than $1 billion in assets reported 35 percent of their holdings in these types of investments on average last year, a much greater portion than big public pension funds, for example. Now they are balking. The value of...

America’s university system is creating a class-riven nation. There has to be a better way. To ask whether too many people are going to college requires us to think about the importance and nature of a liberal education. “Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood,” John Stuart Mill told students at the University of St. Andrews in 1867. “Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.” If this is true (and I agree that it is), why...

I have one simple goal for the 2008-2009 academic year: I want to organize more federal lawsuits against universities in one year than I have in the last four years working with organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund. In order to succeed, I need two things from ordinary Americans (including, but not limited to, typical white people). First of all, I need parents to start raising children who know something about basic constitutional principles. One way to ensure this is to provide kids with alternatives to public education. Even a short two-week stint at a place like Summit Christian Ministries...

A federal court has ordered the state of Colorado to stop discriminating against students of a Christian college, a facility that state officials determined provided too much religion. The state for years has provided grants to students of secular institutions as well as students at a Methodist university and a Roman Catholic university, according to yesterday's opinion from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. However, students at Colorado Christian University, a non-denominational evangelical Protestant university, were banned from the grant program after state officials decided the school was too pervasively sectarian. "We find the exclusion unconstitutional for two reasons:...

The Nebraska Legislature approved in-state tuition for illegal aliens in 2006. The University of Nebraska reported that about 3 dozen students participated in the program last year. According to the msm and the University everything is great, of course the students "fear" of deportation distracts them from getting straight-As. Does anyone have research or results from other states on how these programs have worked?

Can you be an obscure, self-indulged, theory-laden, post-modern scholar and manage to be an effective university president?  University of Wisconsin at Madison is hoping “yes.� It has picked Biddy Martin, Cornell provost and women’s studies professor, as its new chancellor. Her best-known work is a little something called Femininity Played Straight, which features chapters entitled “Sexualities without Gender and Other Queer Utopias� and “Teaching Feminism.� The one review that Amazon.com has picked up on the book is truncated to a single sentence, though it pretty much sums up the obtuseness of Ms Martin’s field: “Martin's eccentric use of the body...

College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of the books — minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-expensive titles. The bill is a good first step. But colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway...

Fisherman’s Shoes Find Target by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 24, 2008 Despite what you may have been lead to believe by the so-called mainstream media, the Pope delivered an address to Catholic college presidents that could be summarized as My Way or The Highway. The Pope addressed the United Nations in an approach that longtime students of the UN might characterize as one of rapprochement. Nonetheless, his remarks to the college presidents, according to attendees at that meeting were, if not remonstrative, then at least reminders of the need to pass on actual Catholic teaching in universities that bear that...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- College-aged women have more abortions than any other age range of women in the United States and a leading pro-life group that reaches out to college students says a lack of resources for pregnant and parenting students on most university campuses is part of the problem.In a new study released Wednesday, Feminists for Life of America released what it considered the first nationwide survey of pregnancy help for college students.The survey highlights the perceptions that students have about resource availability on their campuses.According to the report, Perception is Reality, most college campuses either lack appropriate...

If your kid comes home from college one day and tells you that your Christian faith is stupid, welcome to the world in which I live. The college environment does that to our kids. It makes good Christian students stupid. By that I mean it turns them into liberals, atheists, or both. Three out of four Christian kids (that’s 75% for those of you who attend UNC-Wilmington) abandon the church when they go to college and only about a third of them return by age 30. In other words, most stay stuck on stupid. Christians and conservatives could simply whine...

After reading my post about Randolph College’s field trip to a Nevada brothel to study American consumerism, Randolph junior Catherine Helsley wrote an extraordinary essay about what such a trip reveals about the decline of values in Academia. Ms. Helsley allowed me to share it with Hot Air readers. As a contemporary American college student, I am rarely shocked by the daily dose of leftist viewpoints that I am exposed to, but nothing prepared me for an Associated Press story detailing a recent field trip to a Nevada brothel organized by Randolph College. I am particularly offended because I am...

This is the state of our academia today. If you're conservative then you must be shouted down, not allowed to speak, rush the stage or throw pies in your face. Former top Bush aide Karl Rove didn’t get the friendliest of receptions at the University of Iowa Sunday, CNN affiliate KCRG reports. Rove, who was paid $40,000 to speak at the University, was confronted with an at-times hostile crowd of 1,000, and was interrupted on several occasions.At one point during the speech, Rove reportedly lashed out at some of the students, saying, “You got a chance to ask your questions...

One expert said some productions made by the terror group were 'good enough to put on the Discovery Channel' PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN In an Internet age, al-Qaeda prizes geek jihadis as much as would-be suicide bombers and gunmen. The terror network is recruiting computer-savvy technicians to produce sophisticated Web documentaries and multimedia products aimed at Muslim audiences in the US, Britain and other Western countries. Already, the terror movement's al-Sahab production company is turning out high quality material, some of which rivals productions by Western media companies. The documentaries appear regularly on Islamist Web sites, which al-Qaeda uses to recruit followers...