Free Republic

It will come as no surprise that this year Hillsdale College has chosen to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass fled north to freedom in 1838. Eventually, he became a celebrated orator, and a leading figure in the abolition movement. Douglass also became a friend of Hillsdale College. He was twice an honored guest of the college. His first visit took place in January 1863, a few weeks after the final issuance of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. On that occasion, Douglass delivered an address entitled “Popular Error and Unpopular Truth.”...

The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology and Spanish — while adding programs with “clear career pathways” as a way to address declining enrollment and a multimillion-dollar deficit. Students and faculty members have reacted with surprise and concern to the news, which is being portrayed by the school’s administration as a path to regain enrollment and provide new opportunities to students. Critics see something else: a waning commitment to liberal arts education and a chance to lay off faculty under new rules that...

Subsidies reduce motivation, distort the education market, and often end up reducing students’ motivation. The “free college” movement, fueled to a large degree by Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential bid, is a response to concerns about increasing college-tuition rates, concomitant stagnation in state and federal grants, and a corresponding student-loan debt load that has ballooned to roughly $1.4 trillion. Indeed, inflation-adjusted data provided by the College Board shows that the average sticker price of higher-education tuition (excluding room and board) over the past ten years has increased 32 percent for two-year public colleges, 37 percent for four-year public colleges,...

Most efforts to reform state universities have ended in failure. Texas regent Wallace Hall was almost impeached when he tried to investigate political clout used to get favored students into the University of Texas. An innovative voucher plan in Colorado was quashed by political forces. The governing board of the University of Virginia was forced to reverse course when it carried out its legal right to terminate the sitting president. There’s better news in North Carolina, however. Slowly, sporadically, and facing strong opposition, the Republican-backed legislature is taming the 16-campus University of North Carolina system. In 2012, Republicans obtained majorities...

Dear Montana Representatives:On February 13th, I had the opportunity to speak in Dennison Theater at the University of Montana (UM). Events leading to the speech as well as events occurring during the speech made it clear that the Montana legislature must act to restore respect for freedom of speech on its publicly funded university campuses. I write today to ask that you pass specific free speech legislation we have already adopted in my home State of North Carolina.Prior to my speech, in a bizarre statement to the entire university community, UM president Seth Bodnar stated, “Ours is a university driven...

The President of Evergreen State College announced this week that the college is predicting a 20 percent drop in enrollment for the upcoming fall semester. Evergreen president George Bridges announced this week that the college is facing a 20 percent drop in enrollment for the upcoming fall semester. The school currently boasts a student body of 3,800, but with the graduation of the current class of seniors this spring and the introduction of a smaller freshman class this fall, the total student body will drop to 3,100 students. The college was also hit with a five percent drop in enrollment...

The president of the embattled Evergreen State College — where racial unrest last spring thrust the small Washington campus into the national spotlight — is predicting that the public institution will see a nearly 20 percent drop in student enrollment come fall.

James Comey, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director who was fired last year by U.S. President Donald Trump, will teach a course on ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, the school said on Friday. “Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth,” Comey said in a statement released by the college, the country’s second oldest. Comey graduated from William & Mary in 1984 with a double major in chemistry and religion, and will teach for...

“I have had enough bullshit,” wrote Notre Dame sociology professor Christian Smith in a recent piece about the systemic problems of American Higher Education. “The manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and integrity.” This forward, in-your-face commentary on the state of today’s higher education caught the attention of many in the realm of the Ivory bell tower, but should also serve as a wake-up call to those who don’t follow higher ed...

A frequent point I have made in past columns has been about the educational travesty happening on many college campuses. Some people have labeled my observations and concerns as trivial, unimportant and cherry-picking. While the spring semester awaits us, let's ask ourselves whether we'd like to see repeats of last year's antics. An excellent source for college news is Campus Reform, a conservative website operated by the Leadership Institute (https://www.campusreform.org). Its reporters are college students. Here is a tiny sample of last year's bizarre stories. Donna Riley, a professor at Purdue University's School of Engineering Education, published an article in...

Academia turns a blind eye to the reality of actual socialism, the ideology practiced by Marxists while they sought the perfection of communism...someday. Socialism is ruining Venezuela today, and the whitewash pervades elite culture, even when the evil strikes close to home for an elite American small college. I attended Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio) in the mid-1970s. I enjoyed my time there, made some great lifelong friends, and graduated with a sincere appreciation of the benefits of having a liberal arts education as it was practiced at the time. Over the years, my political perspective has moved well away from...

Video News - Sattler College founder Finny Kuruvilla details the Boston school's mission on 'Fox & Friends.'

Merrimack College is offering undergraduates an opportunity to earn a degree in social justice and experience “real-world learning in the field.” According to the program description, the school “offers majors the chance to turn their passion for change, human rights, and a more just world into a career.”

According to a press release issued Monday, “Bunker Hill Community College" has eliminated its unconstitutional restrictions on free speech that prevented Navy veteran Jeff Lyons from passing out copies of the U.S. Constitution...... Additionally, the Massachusetts Community College System, which includes Bunker Hill, has agreed to review similar problematic policies at 6 of its other campuses.” This was the modern battle at Bunker Hill where a Navy veteran was told he needed permission to hand out copies of the very document he risked his life for,” said YAL President Cliff Maloney. “Free Speech does not require a permit and we...

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey shuttered their world-famous Clown College in 1997, twenty years before America’s largest circus closed for business this year, after almost a century and half of entertaining us. But, fortunately for connoisseurs of the absurd, America’s progressive academics have stepped into the breach, beclowning themselves with fields of study so deranged that they seem comic, at best. The endless search for new reasons to declare personal oppression has met the infantile fascination with private bodily functions, and the results are as absurd as any sideshow attraction. However, the impetus behind the lurch leftward is grim...

The president of the University of Southern California is the highest paid college president in California and among the best paid in the country. In 2015, C.L. Max Nikias made nearly $3.2 million to lead the Los Angeles-based private school, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s recently updated roundup of executive pay. The publication analyzed data from more than 600 private universities and nearly 250 public colleges.

When academics look for male role models, you never know what they’re going to find. "For one thing, there is not much substantive evidence that male role models are decisive in healthy boys’ development," Michael Kimmel writes in the December 15, 2017 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. "They might be nice to have, but the male role model--the elementary-school teacher, the father, the stern but supportive coach--by himself, as a single variable, doesn’t really have much of an independent effect on a boys development." "And that's why single moms, lesbian moms, female teachers, and female coaches can provide...

I have been in school for more than 40 years. First preschool...Thanks to tenure, I have a dream job for life...Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, has convinced me that it is a big waste of time and money.... How, you may ask, can anyone call higher education wasteful...those with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, 73 percent more than those who have only a high-school diploma, up from about 50 percent in the late 1970s. The key issue, however, isn’t whether college pays, but why.... Educators teach what they know—and most have...

No one seems especially shocked. Last week on WAMU, the National Public Radio affiliate that broke the story, the Washington Post’s Robert McCartney called it “fraudulent” and “a terrible embarrassment.” But he quickly added, “It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, though, to anybody who has been following District schools for any length of time.” In an analysis for the Post, Valerie Strauss concluded, “It is, unfortunately, familiar.” The “it” involves Ballou High School, described as “a historically troubled school serving some of the city’s most disadvantaged students in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.” However, earlier this year...

Fellowship grants were used to rank students according to their value to the schoolHalf the students at Stanford University’s elite, $70,000-per-year business school receive fellowship grants. For years, the school has made it clear that the money goes to those who might otherwise be unable to attend, or who might be forced — against school recommendations — to work part-time during the Master of Business Administration program. ”All fellowships are need-based,” says promotional material from the Graduate School of Business. “It’s important to understand that we do not negotiate fellowship amounts or eligibility.” But now, thanks to a huge breach...