Free Republic

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:...

Raleigh, N.C. — Two months after recommending that North Carolina community colleges deny admission to illegal immigrants, the state Attorney General's Office has reversed that stance. The switch comes after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials told state officials that federal laws don't prohibit illegal immigrants from attending college. Community College System officials decided in May to stop allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in degree programs after the Attorney General's Office issued an advisory opinion recommending the 58 community colleges tighten their admissions standards to be more in line with federal laws. J.B. Kelly, general counsel for the Attorney General's...

Something very good has just taken place on a college campus. After a two-year ordeal orchestrated by a group of mutinous faculty members, the Ave Maria School of Law has been given a clean bill of health by the American Bar Association and can continue with its work. I spoke on the campus last autumn and departed burdened by gloom. I feared the mutineers might win. They were the typical professorial grumblers, and such unhappy philistines so often have the upper hand on campuses. Truth be known, I spend very little time on college campuses. The life of the mind...

The process that began in the 1960s to transform America’s elementary, middle and high schools into places where students could literally graduate without being able to read their diploma, where the teaching of mathematics was reduced to mush without rules, and where it was more important for students to feel really good about themselves than having to measure up scholastically with millions in foreign nations, has now reached the campuses of America’s colleges and universities. In a nation where it now costs thousands of dollars to fire an incompetent teacher, we have the specter of university and college presidents eliminating...

The case of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College firing of June Sheldon is raising some eyebrows among academics, liberal and conservative. Here is the media version : The controversy centers on an incident in June 2007, when Sheldon was asked by a student in a human heredity class about heredity’s impact on “homosexual behavior in males and females.� Among other references, Sheldon noted a German study demonstrating some link between maternal stress and homosexual behavior in males, according to the lawsuit. After a student complained, college officials investigated and dismissed Sheldon, an adjunct professor at the school since January 2004....

After two decades of unconscionable increases in tuition and fees, colleges and universities increasingly are employing a new scam to swindle students and their parents out of whatever pennies they have left: the custom textbook. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, publishers make a few minor tweaks to a standard textbook, jack up the price and sell the special edition to the captive thousands who are required to buy it for required courses. For example, the University of Alabama requires all 4,000 of its freshmen to pay $59.35 for a spiral-bound special edition of "A Writer's Reference." The university's...

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 18, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A former San Jose City College biology professor is suing the college after she was fired for answering a student's question on the relationship between homosexuality and heredity.On June 21, 2007, June Sheldon, an adjunct professor teaching a human heredity course, answered a question about how heredity affects homosexual behavior by citing the class textbook and a well-known German scientist.  She noted that the scientist found a correlation between maternal stress and homosexual behavior in males but that the scientist's views are only one set of theories in the nature-versus-nurture debate...

Arguments were heard today in a federal district court case to determine whether a state university system can dictate that private Christian schools in the state teach their college prep courses from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks. As WND reported earlier, the University of California system adopted a policy last year that basic science, history, and literature textbooks by major Christian book publishers wouldn't qualify for core admissions requirements because of the inclusion of Christian perspectives. Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and five students in the case against the University of California, told WND that...

Jack and Jill’ aren’t allowed to live together at the University of Kansas yet, but more and more school are allowing members of the opposite sex to live together . Most colleges didn’t allow students of different genders to live in the same dormitory 40 years ago. After gender-neutral buildings were opened, universities began to allow members of the opposite sex to live on the same floor. Now, there’s a new gender-based issue to debate in student housing. “We’re at the next phase in the evolution,” Jeffrey Chang, co-founder of the National Student Genderblind Campaign, said. “Why can’t men and...

Free Congress Foundation frequently is asked for a recommendation for good institutions of higher learning. Paul T. Yarbrough agreed to undertake a review of the best institutions in this country. He spent months acquiring catalogues, reviewing materials and asking questions. What follows is his exclusive report. We hope this will be an annual exercise. [SNIP] For our survival as a nation, to advance the cause of liberty and preserve what is left of our Judeo-Christian culture, faith and reason must infuse the life of an American college. There is no other way to achieve excellence. Do any institutions in our...

snip But no longer. In the economic expansion that began in 2001 and now appears to be ending, the inflation-adjusted wages of the majority of U.S. workers didn't grow, even among those who went to college. The government's statistical snapshots show the typical weekly salary of a worker with a bachelor's degree, adjusted for inflation, didn't rise last year from 2006 and was 1.7% below the 2001 level. College-educated workers are more plentiful, more commoditized and more subject to the downsizings that used to be the purview of blue-collar workers only. What employers want from workers nowadays is more narrow,...

A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck.

Higher education could heal itself by teaching civics—not race, class, and gender.The university is worth fighting for. No other institution can carry the burden of educating our young people. That’s why we must redouble our efforts to restore integrity, civility, and rigorous standards in American higher education—particularly in the area of civic education.I’ll be the first to admit that the situation is dire. I sympathize when critics throw up their hands in despair. I sometimes feel that way myself. Darkness often prevails in places where the light of learning should shine. I often trade horror stories with my friend Hadley...

THUWAL, SAUDI ARABIA -- Up the corniche, along a coast where boats carrying pilgrims bound for Mecca sailed for centuries, a thicket of cranes rises over whitewashed mosques along the Red Sea. Steel flashes and blowtorches glow as 20,000 workers build a $10-billion university ordered up by a king who hopes Western ingenuity will revive the economy of this ultraconservative Muslim nation. When finished next year, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology will offer coed classes, Western professors, a curriculum in English and other touches loathed as dangerous liberalism by Islamic fundamentalists. The West may be dependent on Saudi...

READING, WRITING, WEAPONS Texas students join a nationwide movement for the right to bear arms while at college BLANCO — Cameron Schober, a 22-year-old Texas State University student, aimed his semi-automatic pistol at the outline of a man's torso just as a gust of wind blew down the target. "Everybody hold up!" hollered instructor Mike Cox. As six other shooters lowered their weapons, Schober scrambled to brace the cardboard target at a makeshift range on a deserted Hill Country ranch. Schober and fellow student Bill Downs were among 13 people who recently completed Cox's shooting proficiency and eight-hour classroom course,...

Former faculty at Antioch College, which is temporarily closing amid financial problems, plan to teach in coffee shops, bookstores and parks to keep alive the spirit of the private school known for its pioneering academic programs. Scott Warren, former associate professor of philosophy and political theory at Antioch, said 22 ex-faculty members have formed the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute in the village of Yellow Springs... Warren said the institute will follow the Antioch formula of offering progressive liberal arts courses while encouraging learning for life, humanitarian acts and collective decision-making. Murdock said she applauds the group's passion, but the institute...

The required reading for today’s class is, first, William Deresiewicz’s article about the transformation of our elite universities into high-priced trade schools: Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers. Next, you should read Mary Grabar’s bleak article about how the college curriculum itself is becoming less academic, and more like an Oprah Winfrey show: Oprah is us. Course offerings on Oprah appear in college catalogs, while those on Milton disappear. When you’re done with both, have swept up the broken glass and china, and repaired the bullet-holes in the walls, come...

Afew weeks ago, John McCain made a little joke at his wife's expense. Referring to her alma mater -- Cindy McCain is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she was a cheerleader and sorority sister -- he called it "USC, the University of Spoiled Children." It's not an original joke, of course -- it's been around for ages, possibly even as long as John McCain himself -- but it said a lot about the man who wants to be president. ...Visit any college classroom -- at the University of Spoiled Children, Harvard, Yale, Puget Sound, doesn't matter...

Is Gov. Bobby Jindal at odds with LSU? Better put, does Jindal have a beef with LSU system president John V. Lombardi, or vice versa? Those are fair questions to ask in light of the governor's recent appointments to the LSU Board of Supervisors, a powerful board that's responsible for setting the direction of the state's flagship university. The new men on the block, or Jindal's appointments, are R. Blake Chatelain of Alexandria and James W. Moore of Monroe. If confirmed by the state Senate, Chatelain and Moore will represent the 5th District on the LSU board, or the two...

Last month, Wake Forest dropped the SAT and ACT as an entrance requirement, becoming the only top-30 national university with a test-optional policy. This step away from standardized tests will help us and other institutions of higher education move closer to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity. Our decision to reevaluate our admissions policy grew out of a close look at the state of higher education and some long, hard thinking about the kind of university we want Wake Forest to be. For several years, a growing body of research has made clear that America's top colleges and...

Deval Patrick, already arguably the worst governor in the United States, has announced that he intends to give illegal immigrants free tuition to Massachusetts state colleges. "It's a simple matter of justice," he is quoted as telling reporters. As the station notes, out of state US citizens are required to pay a higher-than- instate rate to attend the same schools.

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...

There's a splendid controversy brewing at the University of Chicago--at least we'll consider it splendid so long as it has a happy ending, which now seems likely. The U of C may be best known these days as home to the law school where Barack Obama used to lecture on constitutional law (twice a week!), but in simpler times it was most famous as the academic perch of the great free-market economist Milton Friedman, who died in 2006. So when a prestigious university wants to name a research center after its most celebrated (Nobel prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, etc.,...

The Columbia University professor who gained widespread attention last fall after a noose was found hanging on her office door was fired on Monday after months of wrangling over charges that she plagiarized the work of two former students and a former colleague. Madonna G. Constantine, a professor of psychology and education with a focus on racial issues at Columbia’s Teachers College, was sanctioned in February, after an 18-month investigation into the plagiarism charge, but allowed to stay in her job and to appeal the ruling that she had violated the university’s academic standards. But over the last five months,...

It's sweltering in Boston, and a dozen Tufts University coeds are out in shorts and tanks, attracting the usual stares. Only today the stares are for a different reason: the girls are huddled around a 750-pound machine that looks like a spaceship, long and wide with a bubble-shaped cockpit open to reveal a mass of pipes and wires. It's actually a solar car—one they've built from the ground up and hope to race next year. Suddenly sparks fly, and the girls jump back. They may be engineering whizzes, but they know a hazard when they see one. They call a...

This month 3,700 recent college grads will begin Teach for America's five-week boot camp, before heading off for two-year stints at the nation's worst public schools. Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of "education" courses to be certified. On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially...

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...

NU students, alumni call for Wright action Groups demand honorary degree be awarded after all June 8, 2008 BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist When Northwestern University officials announced it was rescinding its offer to bestow an honorary degree upon the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the reason given was that the school didn't want the occasion to be overwhelmed by controversy. But apparently that may not be the whole truth. According to a spokesman for the university, the decision to rescind the degree was made in March, before a Wright sermon became a headache for the Barack Obama campaign. "That decision...

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...

West Virginia University President Mike Garrison says he is resigning effective September 1. [Funny how these perps always get to hang around long enough to get another year's pension, huh?] Long story short, the university manufactured an MBA degree for the GOVERNOR's DAUGHTER. This is such a sordid tale: How political insiders get plum profitable positions and the power to cover up malfeasance. This is how our government works today. The bureacracy no longer works for you. It works for it's members and the pols and vendors who provide the money.

Peter Beckway spent six years working toward a Ph.D. in English literature, racking up nearly all A's, winning a prestigious teaching assistantship, and earning a 3.88 grade-point average. All that remained were the final exam and oral presentation, each to be scored by a panel of professors he chose. So Beckway was "devastated" when that panel ridiculed his written work and said he wouldn't get the chance to deliver his oral presentation. And, they added, he wouldn't be getting a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago or anywhere else. Now, Beckway is suing the five professors on the...

  Much has been made of Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis paper. Since her brother Craig Robinson has now given his thoughts on the campaign, one might be curious of what his own Princeton senior thesis reveals. The title of Craig Malcolm Robinson’s senior thesis is “The Nature of Informal Social Structures Within a Prison”. It was completed at Princeton in 1983.Here are some excerpts: Trenton State Prison houses inmates mostly from the Trenton and Newark areas. This partially accounts for the racial make-up of the population. Racism, as I will show later, is accounted for as a result of the...

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...

(RE:) ...the changing demographics of the American work force and the increasing globalization of business interactions. "Many individuals are likely to find themselves directing--or under the direction of--someone demographically dissimilar," business professors Derek R. Avery and Kecia M. Thomas write in the journal "Academy of Management Learning & Education" (2004). "Hence, understanding diversity and its impact of workplace relationships has become a critical business competency." ( ... ) as a sample, I looked at the course listings of BusinessWeek magazine's top 10 U.S. business schools to see what they offered in diversity management. The magazine ranks MBA programs based on...

"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,...

YONKERS - During a Sarah Lawrence College graduation speech she apologetically admitted was filled with "random" thoughts in lieu of a theme, Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange received thunderous applause from students after comparing America's troubled role in Iraq with its troubled role in Vietnam when she was their age. "History repeats itself," she told them today, repeatedly tucking her messy blonde hair behind her ears. "It is a heavy burden to inherit." Lange, whose daughter Hannah Jane Shepard was among the 435 seniors and graduate students in black caps and gowns at the liberal arts college's 79th commencement, urged the...

Higher education has long been the bastion of progressivism, another name for hard-edged socialism that pursues a warped sense of justice — social, environmental, political, economic, scientific — through the manipulation of democratic institutions. There are places — Blue States — where progressives dominate all three branches of government. There, they pursue their brand of justice chiefly through wealth redistribution. They "soak the rich" with tyrannical verve, and when spending gets ahead of tax revenues as it always does, they tax some more. Reduce appropriations? Don't be silly; one can't buy justice by spending less. Increasingly, however, their traditional revenue...

Current Issue : Feature Stories POLITICOS TURNED PROFESSORS by Jamal Watson May 15, 2008, Former politicians are turning down lucrative job offers elsewhere to teach students who are interested in, but sometimes cynical about, the political process. While John F. Street, a former two-term Philadelphia mayor, chose to teach at Temple University because of his longstanding relationship with the school, he says he is impressed with the institution’s commitment to the community. Not long after John F. Street had closed one chapter in a long career as a powerful force in Philadelphia politics, he embarked on another chapter. This time,...

Obama Grilled on Ties to Pro-Palestinian Professor by FOXNews.com Thursday, May 22, 2008 A persistent questioner at a campaign stop Thursday grilled Barack Obama on his ties to a professor with pro-Palestinian views, prompting Obama to speak at some length against “guilt by association” and about his support for the Jewish community. The at-times heated exchange occurred during a town hall event held at a synagogue in Boca Raton, Fla. The questioner focused on Obama’s relationship to Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University who has drawn fire for some of his criticisms of Israel. Obama responded...

Michael Brewer, a senior at Morehouse College, was strolling purposefully around this storied campus on a hot spring day, his heavy frame dripping sweat, his hands clutching a small stack of fliers. "No more hate," the fliers read, in a stylish typeface. "No more discrimination. No more." "What's up, brother?" Brewer said in a lilting, cheerful voice as he approached a fellow student in a dark business suit. "Take one of these, if you will." The young man gave the flier a glance. It was promoting what was perhaps the most ambitious week of gay rights events in the history...

Foreign Students Do Not Help with the Balance of Payments WASHINGTON (May 2008) – Lobbying groups frequently claim that foreign students are a benefit to America’s balance of payments, comparable to a booming export sector. For instance, the Institute for International Education (IIE) asserts that foreign students contributed a net $14.5 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2006-07 school year by paying for tuition and living expenses with resources from abroad, representing a net inflow of nearly $25,000 per year, every year, from the average foreign student. To assess these claims, the Center for Immigration Studies has published a...

Mississippi State University, for the second consecutive year, earned top honors in the GM and US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Challenge X student engineering competition. Over the past nine months, the 2008 Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainability competition challenged 17 university teams from the US and Canada to re-engineer a Chevrolet Equinox that employs advanced powertrain technologies. The Mississippi State team designed a through-the-road parallel hybrid electric vehicle powered by a 1.9L GM direct injection turbo diesel engine fueled by biodiesel (B20). It used a GM F40 6-speed manual transmission and a Johnson Controls 300V NiMH battery pack in conjunction...

Knox report From the Firearms Coalition The Pen is Mightier...and More Dangerous by Jeff Knox (May 6, 2008) When Steven Barber turned in his midterm creative writing assignment at the University of Virginia's College at Wise (UVA-Wise), he was hoping for a good grade to complement his 3.9 grade point average. Instead, Barber was expelled from school, locked in a mental institution for three days, and had his concealed carry permit revoked. Barber's fictional story was a first person narrative of a troubled college student consumed by depression, paranoia, drug addiction, and alcoholism as he struggles with one of tragedy's...

Since 2002, taxpayers have entrusted San Diego community college leaders with $1.5 billion to transform three campuses, modernize six adult education centers and expand academic programs. So far, they have spent less than 15 percent of the money, constructing or renovating about a dozen buildings. The San Diego Union-Tribune analyzed thousands of district records and interviewed dozens of people and found that college officials missed many project deadlines and struggled with runaway costs for land and building materials. Failure to act quickly in the escalating real estate market cost the district millions. Delays in acquiring real estate cost millions of...

ST. LOUIS -- Some felt the silent protest with white armbands and the dramatic turning of backs was disrespectful. But those who took part said it was a fitting way to show their disapproval that Washington University was honoring a woman whose views and life’s work they strongly disagree with. For her part, Phyllis Schlafly, the 83-year-old at the center of the controversy, said she thought it was "juvenile" of students who were "raining on their own parade." But it didn’t ruin her moment, she said. At today’s commencement ceremony held on a sunny Brookings Quadrangle, Schlafly did not seem...

A senior at Missouri State University, studying social work, she’d already helped found a Christian sorority, and was investing a lot of her free time in a place called ‘The Potter’s House,” a local Christian outreach barely disguised as a coffee shop. She was excited about her growing faith, but increasingly eager to put that faith into action. “I kept asking God, ‘Why aren’t You using me?’” she remembers. “Is there something wrong with me? Am I not strong enough?” And yet, by her own admission, Emily was not exactly the type to find a fray and fling herself into...

Episcopal Seminaries Struggle With Costs Long-Held Training Model Faces an Uncertain Future By G. Jeffrey MacDonald Religion News Service Saturday, May 17, 2008; B09 In the cloistered world of Episcopal seminaries, time sometimes seems to stand still as clergy-in-training gather in stone chapels to pray in ways familiar to their forebears centuries earlier. But the semblance of timelessness can be deceiving. Some of the 11 seminaries affiliated with the Episcopal Church are slashing core programs, while others report rapid growth in enrollment. Still others are reexamining conventional wisdom about what it takes -- and how much it costs -- to...

Mrs. Obama clearly identifies herself with a “separatist” view of race. “By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separatist may better understand the desperation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.” Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”...

It seems anyone can get a college degree these days-especially if they go to North Carolina Central University. Standards of integrity there have long been dismal: This is, after all, the school that gave violent felon Solomon Burnette a diploma in 2007. Burnette, you may recall, robbed two Duke students at gunpoint in 1997. After finishing a 13-month prison sentence, he had the audacity not only to enroll in Arabic classes on our campus in April 2007; Burnette also penned a column I and many others interpreted as inciting physical violence against white Dukies in his student newspaper. Unfortunately, however,...

The University of Toledo confirmed yesterday that an administrator who wrote a column critical of gay rights for a local publication has been fired. Crystal Dixon, associate vice president for human resources, was terminated on Thursday following about a week on paid administrative leave and a predisciplinary meeting May 5. Ms. Dixon wrote a guest column last month for the Toledo Free Press titled "Gay rights and wrongs: another perspective," expressing her opinion that being gay is a choice that has consequences, according to her religious beliefs.