Free Republic

John Sabo and Josh Thieler grew up in Pittsburgh-area communities that were hit hard as 200,000 steel and manufacturing jobs disappeared from the region, upending their parents’ generation and leaving main streets pocked with empty storefronts. Sabo, the son and grandson of mill workers, says his father rarely found steady work after losing his job in a U.S. Steel mill, leaving Sabo to “know what government cheese tastes like.” Thieler spent part of his childhood in a trailer park in a small city that shed nearly half its population as families hunted elsewhere for work. Today, both men have good...

On January 5, 2024, Western Oregon University (WOU) announced a bold change to its grading regime: “The letter grades of D- and F” have been axed in favor of a mark of “No Credit (NC)” for undergraduates. WOU’s provost, Jose Coll, clarified that this new system will not lower the university’s academic standards but, rather, “increase retention and graduation rates.” The university will no longer “mask” students’ “demonstrated abilities” with a slew of poor marks, following the likes of Brown University and Hampshire College, which have already exchanged letter grades for alternative measures in some instances. By removing troublesome grades,...

American Jews are in a strange predicament. On the one hand, following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, radical-left partisans learned that antisemitism is an increasingly important and effective part of their racialist ideology. On the other hand, holdovers from the Left’s tolerant but distant past are not prepared to abandon the party that has abandoned them. They still feel the need to distract the public from the inroads made by antisemitism deep within the Democratic party. They do this by pointing to the so-called epidemic of white supremacy on the right—an epidemic that is more imagined than real. This...

Many Americans realize that our higher-education system is decaying, its standards in decline while costs continue to rise. Is this situation like a tooth with a cavity that can readily be fixed? Or is the decay so deep that we need something far more serious, such as a root canal? David Barnhizer’s new book, Conformity Colleges, strongly suggests that we must have the latter. His subtitle explains that we suffer from “the destruction of intellectual creativity and dissent.” That’s an accurate diagnosis. An emeritus professor of law, Barnhizer has written a no-holds-barred exposé of the tragic fall of our institutions...

“Finally.” It’s a word those who’ve spent years sounding the alarm about the plight of higher education have been saying a lot lately. Finally, the thought-policing and groupthink have become undeniable. Finally, the cost of toxic dogmas is coming clear. Finally, the bloat and cartel-like behavior is being seen for what it is. The train-wreck congressional testimony by the leaders of some of the nation’s most prestigious universities, the blatant and unrepentant campus antisemitism on display, and the laughably hypocritical double standards applied to speech have illustrated the problems in higher education, even for voters and policymakers who have neither...

In May of 2011, I wrote the following words in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Online learning has become the third rail in American higher-education politics: Step on it and you’re toast.” In so doing, I planted my foot squarely on that electrified third rail. Besides being roundly criticized in the comments section, I learned that my administration at the time—which was, unbeknownst to me, planning a major online expansion—did not appreciate what they saw as an attack on their sacred (cash) cow. I was removed from my administrative position, had my pay cut, and was threatened with dismissal. Being...

As a battleground state in our national political contests, Arizona is also ground zero in the fight over the future of higher education in America. Higher-ed-reform advocates have notched several victories in Arizona recently, but the forces in favor of the status quo have stubbornly resisted many of these efforts, leaving much still to be done. Effective and lasting reform will require either a significant course correction by the state’s universities themselves, or else the direct intervention of the Arizona legislature or the Arizona Board of Regents (or both) to exercise more aggressive oversight, especially regarding curriculum and employment. For...

During the last dozen years or so, one of the more common higher-education stories has been a college or university rushing to judgment against a male student or faculty member over an allegation of misconduct with a female. The Obama education department encouraged schools to “get tough” by employing procedures that were grossly unfair to the accused individuals, usually resulting in their suspension or expulsion. Subsequently, many lawsuits were filed against colleges for having violated the rights of those who were disciplined. In most instances, the school lost, with the judges frequently denouncing the “kangaroo court” nature of the proceedings...

The kerfuffle over the relative merit of forcing “viewpoint neutrality” in history classrooms puzzles me. No wonder: Although an historian by Ph.D., I have taught mostly economics for almost three decades! Historians, and I daresay others teaching the human sciences, could learn much from what I call “econogogy,” specific pedagogical techniques employed by many, though by no means all, economists. Students pay tuition or incur debt to develop independent analytical-thinking skills (and to have some fun), not to learn the political opinions of professors that they could see for free on X or Facebook. Dramatic current events, from terrorist attacks...

During World War II, the US government, under Democratic Party leadership, encouraged citizens to invest in savings bonds, and over 85 million Americans subscribed. But high post-war inflation diminished the value of these bonds. The Republican Party criticized Democrats for the poor returns earned by bondholders. Running on a platform that promised to control inflation, the Republicans won the presidency in 1952, ending two decades of Democratic dominance. In Inflation, War Bonds, and the Rise of Republicans in the 1950s (NBER Working Paper 31969), researchers Gillian Brunet, Eric Hilt, and Matthew S. Jaremski examine how ownership of war bonds affected...

After decades of the academy’s never-ending stream of new jargon, one can’t be blamed for ignoring another entry. But as with all the others, what begins as a crackpot idea quickly finds its way into university rules and regulations. That’s what’s happening with “cultural taxation.” For a few years now, individual campuses of California State University have been considering turning what seemed like just another grievance into an opportunity to promote a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda. A typical university policy statement (such as this one from California State University, Fullerton) reads, “Faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups may...

For the last 20 years or so, many colleges and universities have embraced the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology by hiring administrators to promote it throughout the school. Although DEI might sound benign, its fundamental beliefs are not; they’re hostile to the foundations of Western civilization, including individualism, private property, free enterprise, and logic. Moreover, many people who are drawn to DEI positions are steeped in racial hostility. That toxic brew has landed Penn State Abington in federal court. Zack De Piero was a professor who taught English and composition courses. He had been with Penn State Abington since...

I recently discovered that George Mason University, where I teach, plans to adopt a “Just Societies” course requirement. “Students entering Mason in Fall 2024 or later will be required to take two Mason Core courses that have the Just Societies flag.” If you read any closer, you unsurprisingly discover that this is a thinly veiled woke-indoctrination requirement. Students are not exploring substantively different views on justice; they are hearing about “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” in all its Orwellian wonder. ... What’s so terrible about the Just Societies framework? Let me count the ways. First, the requirement plainly takes the correctness...

A story in Inside Higher Ed last week revealed that two more Ivy League schools, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, have stopped publishing “dean’s lists” that recognize high levels of academic achievement. As one anonymous Penn alumnus put it, “The war against individual achievement continues unabated.” Other Ivies (e.g., Brown and Harvard) had already abandoned—or never really embraced—the concept of recognizing merit in this manner. These latest moves are still another sign that much of higher education is contemptuous of the values that produced American exceptionalism, among them appropriately and generously rewarded hard work. To some, it is not...

If I, a graduating senior, were to give one piece of advice to an incoming UNC student, it would be to research prospective classes diligently. Search online for syllabi, survey professors’ CVs and academic work, and read students’ course reviews. Far too often, one signs up for a class simply because it fulfills a general-education or major requirement, only to spend a semester subjected to a shallow display of advocacy and a denigration of what once provided the basis for a rigorous liberal education. Unfortunately, the number of truly rigorous and enlightening courses available to UNC students continues to dwindle....

Inputs are out, and outcomes are in. So goes the current thinking about the methodology used to create college rankings. The publications that tell us which colleges are best, next best, and on down the line often revamp their formulas, and the emphasis has moved in recent years to evaluating institutions by the status of their students after graduation rather than their status—and institutional conditions—when they enter. The industry’s behemoth, U.S. News, responded to ongoing criticism by touting, about this year’s best-colleges list, “We want to ensure the educational resources we provide emphasize the outcomes for graduates … This, in...

The rise of political orthodoxy on campus is often cited as one of the key reasons for reforming universities. But if there is a rise of orthodoxy, what does this orthodoxy look like, who is perpetuating it, and on what grounds are they doing so? Professors might immediately want me to point out that universities are known for being open environments of intellectual, academic, and expressive freedom, which support their core mission to create and disseminate knowledge. They might also wish to take issue with the idea that faculty members push an orthodoxy, as it’s common for students (or students’...

If President Biden’s electric-vehicle mandate is as popular as progressives claim, why are they trying to censor critics who want to inform the public about the mandate’s costs? That’s the story this week, after the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) launched ads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Montana to educate Americans about the Administration’s back-door EV mandate. Mr. Biden is “rushing to ban new gas-powered cars” and wants “to force you into an electric vehicle,” one ad says. The Biden team doth protest. “There is no EV mandate,” a Biden campaign official declared. No? The Environmental...

In June 2023, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) prevailed in complaints alleging racially discriminatory admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The 6-3 Supreme Court decision in these cases eliminated decades of ambiguity about what aspects of race were permissible in candidate evaluations at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities. Following the Court’s decision, a number of analysts and commentators noted that Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion contained a footnote exempting military service academies. That footnote reads: The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s...

Although the Ivies and other elite colleges and universities in the U.S. are financial titans, they are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organizations. As a result, their vast property holdings are exempt from taxation in all 50 states. The rationale for this status is that higher education is an inherent public good. At least that has been the assumption under which this country has long operated. But this argument has increasingly been called into question by events over the last few years, culminating in the headline-making responses by university presidents to a recent congressional panel....