Free Republic

Transfer Tax? Bethany Stotts, May 21, 2010 Alleging waste and a “transfer tax” in higher education, Peter P. Smith argues in the most recent Education Outlook that America should establish a “National, ‘Student-Facing’ Course Database and Transfer Information System” for postsecondary transfer students, and “Automate” the “Processing and Evaluation of Transfer Credits” in order to decrease the number of students who get sidetracked from graduating. In addition to these two reforms, Smith also suggests that higher education should “Create agreements among Colleges that Streamline the Transfer Process,” “Improve the Management and Quality of Postsecondary Data for the Administration of Credit...

Greenfield Schools Bethany Stotts, April 14, 2010 In a recent American Enterprising Institute (AEI) Education Outlook, Senior Fellow Frederick Hess suggests that the K-12 system should adopt “Greenfield” schooling practices in order to enhance educational entrepreneurship. “‘Greenfield’ is a term investors, engineers, and builders use to refer to an area where there are unobstructed, wide-open opportunities to invent or build,” he writes in the April publication. “It is not a term one hears often in K–12 education. This is no surprise.” Hess argues that educational entrepreneurs today are often siphoned into resource-intensive “whole school” models. “Some reformers are fascinated by...

Passover is an unfortunate time to be asking what has gone wrong between America and Israel. Is today's strenuous disagreement over Israel's West Bank housing policy the real problem, or is this controversy merely a symptom of deeper, more profound differences?Partly because of the extraordinary secrecy surrounding Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent White House meeting with President Obama, much remains hidden from public view. Nonetheless, after 14 months in office, Obama has made clear he sees the U.S.-Israeli relationship very differently than any of his predecessors.Consider, for example, Obama's September 2009 U.N. General Assembly speech, profoundly anti-Israeli, and to a...

March 27, 2010 Republican Elite In Disarray After David Frum Is Sacked By Think-Tank America’s conservatives were in open disarray yesterday after the abrupt sacking of a leading Republican for daring to blame his party for “the most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s”. David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” when he was a speechwriter for President Bush, was fired by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) after posting a column on his website that called healthcare reform a disaster for Republicans and blamed it squarely on their own refusal to compromise with the Obama Administration. The prominent...

With Mike Allen’s account of his exchange with David Frum, we apparently have David’s version of his departure from AEI: Donor pressure forced AEI president Arthur Brooks to fire him. “But the elite isn’t leading anymore,” David is quoted as saying. “It’s trapped. Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained. I think Arthur took no pleasure in this. I think he was embarrassed. I think he would have avoided it if he possibly could, but he couldn’t.” I have known and liked David and Danielle Frum for...

The Right’s response to David Frum’s perceived heresies has inflicted serious intellectual and political damage on the conservative movement. I’m a full-spectrum conservative of conviction. But even if I leaned to the left, I still would find it laudatory that, in recent decades, political conservatives in America have been the most steadfast defenders of freedom of speech and the most vigorous champions of free and open intellectual inquiry. Indeed, no graduate of an American college or university in the past quarter century cannot help but notice that the biggest threat to free speech today comes not from the political Right,...

The paid services of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum are apparently no longer required at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Frum made headlines earlier in the week with his criticism of Republican leaders who he said had brought their party its

The working assumption is that they canned him for his “Waterloo” piece about ObamaCare and the GOP. Did they? Hmmm: Frum made clear in a letter to AEI President Arthur Brooks that his departure after seven years at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. “I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute,” he wrote, “and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.” AEI did not comment immediately. In a brief interview, Frum said “there was no suggestion by AEI” that his sharp criticism of the GOP’s health-care strategy was the reason for...

Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for the Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday. The ouster also came one day after a harsh Wall Street Journal editorial about the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, which said that he "now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans" and accused him of "peddling bad revisionist history." Frum made clear in a letter to AEI President Arthur Brooks that his departure after seven years at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. "I have had...

Being reported by Huffington What took the think tank so long?

Dear Arthur, This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9. I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship. Very truly yours, David Frum

How Much is My Bachelor’s Really Worth? Bethany Stotts, February 4, 2010 Mary Pilon writes for the Wall Street Journal on February 2 that researchers are questioning whether college graduates actually gain $800,000 or $1 million in additional lifetime earnings over those with only a high school degree. “In recent years, the nonprofit College Board touted the difference in lifetime earnings of college grads over high-school graduates at $800,000, a widely circulated figure,” Pilon reports. “Other estimates topped $1 million.” “But now, as tuition continues to skyrocket and many seeking to change careers are heading back to school, some researchers...

Overcoming Anti-Reform Excuses Bethany Stotts, February 3, 2010 Superintendents work outside the box to promote beneficial change in their local school districts, argues Frederick Hess in the January 2010 American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Education Outlook. In “Cages of Their Own Design: Five Strategies to Help Education Leaders Break Free,” AEI Senior Fellow Hess asserts that superintendents and principals often make three complaints which “are real problems” but not exclusively true. The first “common excuse,” is that they are restricted by their contract bargaining agreements but “most CBAs include substantial ambiguity on various counts,” including teacher pay and other personnel decisions,...

Passing the First Quarter Tilla Bradley, February 2, 2010 The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) hosted a panel discussion of the education policies of the Obama administration. Panel members included Alice Johnson Cain, the education director for the Hope Street Group, Kevin Carey, the policy director at Education Sector, Frederick Hess, the director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, Mark Schneider, the former commissioner of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, and Andy Smarick, a visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and adjunct fellow at AEI. Research fellow Andrew Kelly acted...

‘A Probabilistic Undertaking’ Sarah Carlsruh, November 16, 2009 “We are now losing in Afghanistan. It is not a slow win. It is not a stalemate,” proclaimed Frederick Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) November 4th lecture on the “Afghanistan Strategy: The Way Forward.” Top Commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, requested in an August 31st report to President Barack Obama that 40,000 additional troops be sent to Afghanistan. A September 21st Washington Post article quotes Gen. McChrystal saying that “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months)—while Afghan security capacity matures—risks...

In a full page article about the falling value of the Dollar in Financial Times the article notes that Sarah Palin posted a comment on her Facebook page on the issue. The opening paragraphs of the article contained her quote: The falling US dollar is giving ammunition to the critics of the Obama administration and fuelling broader concerns about the potential erosion of America’s reserve currency status. Republican politicians have highlighted the dollar’s slide as evidence of waning US power. Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential Republican candidate, on Wednesday sought to link the dollar decline to rising US indebtedness and...

College By...Subscription? by: Bethany Stotts, October 05, 2009 Is subscription-based online education a successful strategy for remedial education? Burck Smith, co-founder of SMARTHINKING argues in a September publication that “call center” style online courses would prove more affordable for both students and colleges. “According to one recent report, the cost of offering these courses exceeds $2 billion a year, of which approximately $800 million is borne by students and families in tuition and fees,” writes Burck for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Educational Outlook. He was referring to the 2008 Strong American Schools Diploma to Nowhere report, which was...

Over his decades as a columnist, lecturer, TV host and debater, William F. Buckley Jr. lost his cool in public only once--when he threatened to sock Gore Vidal "in your goddamn face" on the third night of their joint appearances on ABC during the ill-fated 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Three nights on a television set with Vidal might drive anyone mad, yet Buckley also tangled with the roughest players on the left, from Jesse Jackson to William Kunstler, with unfailing composure. But suppose that instead of his formal addresses and his weekly "Firing Line" show on PBS, Buckley...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Sarah Palin begins to build her network of advisors Politico's Ben Smith reports: Randy Scheunemann, has emerged as an advisor to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as she attempts to build a serious public profile and begins to build a network of aides and advisors typical of a national politician. Scheunemann confirmed this evening that he's with Palin in Hong Kong, where she is delivering a paid speech at a conference hosted by the brokerage house CLSA, which has in the past heard keynotes from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Rich Lowry recounts how the McCain...

Government Friends With Benefits by: Mytheos Holt, August 12, 2009 Last Thursday, August 6, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted a presentation by resident scholar Andrew Biggs on his paper entitled “The Case for Simplying Social Security Benefits.” Prominently featured by Biggs were the problems with estimating Social Security benefits due to the byzantine calculations involved. In discussing his political priorities, the former Social Security Administration official cited equity and predictability as the two relevant factors. “First, we want to make benefits more predictable, and secondly, we want to improve the social insurance value of the program,” he said. To...