Free Republic

College Republicans across the country issued a warning to their universities that enough is enough of trying to silence them following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. After Kirk was murdered on Wednesday by an assassin's bullet while he was speaking with college kids at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, many have said that attempts to silence his message have failed, because now those who embraced Kirk's views and defense of open exchange of ideas with those who disagree are only going to get louder. [snip] Here's part of what the letter shared: At BU, conservative...

The 2025-26 academic year began with a fell note of doom for the humanities. Dr. Jenn Frey at Tulsa University had built a beautiful Honors College grounded on the Great Books, seminar discussion, and service learning (an experiential model intended to help students ground their intellectual discoveries in practical, hands-on service within specific communities). After taking her program to a position of national prominence, Frey was abruptly released from her deanship, and her program pivoted to look like every other program at every other college. ... There is another story happening at the same time, however, on the fringes of...

So strong is the gravitational pull of “wokeness” that it has caused many college and university leaders to approve of appalling treatment of faculty members who dared to question the prevailing leftist orthodoxies. Fortunately, our legal system still protects the rights of professors against such mistreatment, and three high-profile cases recently ended in victory for the plaintiffs. Let’s start with the case brought by Professor Bruce Gilley of Portland State University. In June 2022, the (since-retired) communication manager of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion, who goes by the name tova stabin—no capital letters—posted a tweet reading,...

The email dropped into my university account with a quiet ding, an inauspicious start to what would become an unwanted foray into the messy world of AI “false positives.” With the arrival of the short missive from my professor informing me that my essay had been flagged for AI use, I was caught up in what would became a weeks-long process to appeal and clear my name of alleged AI use on an assignment in my counseling graduate course. The ordeal thrust me into the university’s AI-detection administrative machine, where I joined the many others across higher education experiencing a...

When the general assembly decided to build a state university here 235 years ago, they named the town for a church built by the British. The little chapel on the hill was actually called New Hope.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Week 1 in college football can be misleading. Recent history is littered with season openers that didn’t affect the next dozen weeks like we thought they would. Drawing season-long conclusions based on one weekend’s worth of games is a perilous endeavor. Do it at your own risk. But make no mistake. Saturday wasn't a great day for the SEC. And could have been a lot worse if No. 9 LSU hadn't snapped a five-game Week 1 losing streak against No. 4 Clemson. Texas entered 2025 as the preseason No. 1 team in...

The No. 1 Texas Longhorns versus the No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes is one of 22 games on the Week 1 college football slate that feature a ranked team on the field. Here are the betting odds to dissect prior to Week 1 in college football.

Virtually every observer of American higher education agrees that it is in trouble, and most think the short to midterm future for universities is pretty bleak. Most emphasize growing disenchantment with the academy on the part of governmental funders, most conspicuously the Trump-era federal government. Still others point to both the enrollment decline of the past 15 years along with the shrinking supply of college-age Americans in coming years because of declining fertility rates. Another factor arising that could be both a threat and an opportunity for colleges is artificial intelligence (AI). Will it magnify higher education’s troubles or help...

More older student loan borrowers are struggling to pay their monthly bill, as the Trump administration ramps up its collection efforts. Nearly 1 in 5 — or roughly 18% — of student loan borrowers who are 50 and older became “seriously delinquent,” or 90 days or more late on their payments, in the second quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The rate for that age group was closer to 10% in 2019. For comparison, closer to 8% of student loan borrowers between the ages of 18 and 29 became seriously delinquent during that time...

The student debt crisis isn’t a natural market phenomenon; it’s the predictable result of decades of government interference. Since 1980, average tuition and fees have increased by 1,200 percent, while consumer price inflation has risen only 236 percent over the same period. This massive increase has left students and families struggling to keep up, often forcing them to take on substantial debt just to attend college. Today, over 42.7 million Americans owe a combined $1.69 trillion in federal student loan debt. A combination of federal policies, including subsidized loans, government grants, bloated university budgets, and a complete lack of accountability,...

After months of targeting universities over antisemitism allegations, the Trump administration is turning to a new focus: whether schools are using proxies for race in admissions to diversify student bodies. This emphasis is emerging in recent edicts from federal agencies and in the White House’s scrutiny of specific universities. In late July, Attorney General Pam Bondi warned in a memo against using “unlawful proxies” for race—such as geography or applicant essays on overcoming hardships—in admissions. Soon after, the U.S. Education Department announced it would require universities to report new data on applicants, broken down by race, to “ensure race-based preferences...

In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court reaffirmed that every college applicant deserves to be judged as an individual, not as a member of a racial group. The justices struck down the use of race in admissions, ending decades of officially sanctioned discrimination. But as legal advocates know, a court victory is only the first step. Without transparency, rules can be quietly undermined. Since the court’s decision, many universities have claimed that race no longer plays a role in admissions. Yet some have adopted opaque scoring systems that appear to use racial proxies—seemingly neutral factors that...

Most Americans firmly believe that educational institutions should be places where all ideas can be discussed and no one need fear reprisal for saying the wrong thing or pursuing the wrong research topic. That ideal, however, is not embraced by all people. There are powerful forces, here and abroad, that want to dominate education in order to advance their goals. They have no qualms about telling students what they must believe or telling faculty members not to research certain topics. Of course, the leaders of our colleges and universities would never cooperate with those authoritarian forces—or would they? In her...

At long last, college football returns this week. Before the first full slate of games take place in the final week of August, the 2025 season will kick off with a five-game slate on Saturday, Aug. 23. Week 0 will be highlighted with its first matchup of the day, a game between Iowa State and Kansas State in Dublin, Ireland for the 10th edition of the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.

Imagine, for a moment, the year is 2500. Human civilization is gone, lost to disaster, time, or neglect. One day, an alien research team lands in what was once North Carolina and begins to study the ruins of a place once known as Duke University. Buried beneath centuries of sediment, they find a course directory from the Department of History, dated 2025. What would these visitors conclude about American history? Would they know about the Revolutionary War and its heroes, Washington crossing the Delaware, the debates at Valley Forge, the intellectual courage of the Founding Fathers? Would they learn about...

The Department of Education (ED) announced on Tuesday that it is ending the taxpayer funding of political activism jobs on college campuses. The department is rescinding the Biden-era guidance that allowed the Federal Work Study (FWS) program, which provides college students with part-time jobs to help fund their education, to be used for jobs at political rallies, voter hotlines, poll workers and other political activism jobs. Institutions should instead “focus FWS funds on jobs that provide real-world work experience instead of political activities.” “Federal Work Study is meant to provide students opportunities to gain real-world experience that prepares them to...

Kentucky’s recent passage of House Bill 4, which eliminates “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs at public universities and colleges, represents a crucial step toward restoring meritocracy, academic freedom, and intellectual diversity to higher education in the Bluegrass State. The bill was passed in the 2025 legislative session over the veto of Democratic governor Andy Beshear, who predictably claimed that its supporters were motivated by “hate.” In fact, HB 4 provides a necessary corrective to years of institutional overreach that has discriminated against students, stifled open inquiry, and punished dissenting voices on campus. The case of Dr. Allan Josephson exemplifies this...

This trend may be individually smart, but it makes our society dumber and ultimately undermines the potential educational value of a college education. College students admit to lying about or hiding their views on family, faith, politics, and other socially contentious issues, such as gender ideology, in order to "fit in" at their colleges. At least, in this case, at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. Almost everybody is living a lie, to avoid bullying by the other 10% of students and, of course, the college professors who act like the old Soviet Political Officers in the Soviet Union's...

Last month, a Republican Congress and President Trump achieved, if that is the word, a massive budget-reconciliation bill. As is more and more common, a Congress averse to accountability for particular votes crammed the measure full of many agenda items that the majority and the president wanted but chose to vote up or down on them as a package. Several provisions are relevant to American higher education. They involve the student-loan program, in which the federal government provides both subsidized and unsubsidized loans to both graduate and undergraduate students. Federal grants to needy students, e.g. Pell grants, are only modestly...

Some years ago, I saw in a friend’s kitchen a sign meant to place the house’s terms of engagement beyond dispute: “My dogs live here. The rest of you are just visiting.” Little did I know then that a bit of mass-produced kitsch could explain the higher-ed reformer’s central dilemma. Consider this year’s attempt by the UNC System to bring its schools in line with Trump Administration anti-DEI guidance. As recent events make clear, that effort may fail precisely because the public’s representatives cannot possibly turn over every campus rock or smoke out every defiant faculty member. Why not? As...