On the Campus
It’s been a recurring theme, in the news, that Rhode Island’s public institutions of higher learning need more money, and those interested in that outcome pick careful examples. Certainly, we all want to invest in thriving campuses, but too few of us wonder where the money goes. Consider: After two years in collective bargaining negotiations,…
Rich Lowry writes about “a slow-motion social and economic evisceration of a swath of Middle America”: In the 1970s, 73 percent of both the highly and moderately educated were in intact first marriages. That figure plummeted across the board, yet the moderately educated (45 percent in intact first marriages) are now closer to the least-educated…
This is becoming a growing wave of like opinion: “We have too many college seats,” [former Keene State College instructor Craig] Brandon, a Surry resident, says in an interview. “We don’t need that many college graduates. The reality is that we overeducate people, which would be OK if it were free, but it’s not free.”…
Although admitting that “many students will thrive in their four years on campus… with dignity and sense of self intact,” Mary Eberstadt offers reason for concern about the social climate on American campuses: In 2006, a particularly informative (if also exquisitely depressing) contribution to understanding hookups was made by Unprotected, a book first published anonymously.…
Frankly, I don’t buy this: Overall, the United States needs to increase the proportion of the population with a college education by 4.2 percent annually to meet the demands of an increasingly global economy, which will require 60 percent of the work force to have degrees by 2020, according to Jeffrey Stanley, associate vice president…
After listing a number of the ways in which college students are catered to, Jonah Goldberg gives the lesson (unfortunately, subscription required): But even as this sensitivity is being cultivated, the student is stuffed to the gills with cant about the corruption of “the system,” i.e., the real world just outside the gates of his…
Well, there’s no denying that this is not a desirable occurrence: Take former doctoral student Marcel Benz, for example. In 2001, he had to throw out a year’s experimentation because there was no way to control temperature and humidity in the building. The impact of Benz’s experience reached far beyond his lab, because a private…
Let’s be honest: We’ve all realized that so-called “affirmative action” was never meant to be an objectively applied tool ensuring proportional representation; it’s always been a weapon for use against white men. But it’s still going to be interesting to watch the intellectual contortions as elite society’s war on masculinity tips scales in the other…
Speaking of public sector investments on your dime, Rhode Island’s Board of Governors for Higher Education is looking for a 22% increase in the public funds that they receive. Of course, part of the plan might be to hit lawmakers with a large requested increase — requested as if absolutely essential, naturally — so as…
NYU history and education professor Jonathan Zimmerman strives mightily to square the liberal circle with the rigid hierarchical structure of higher education: Some of these people are great teachers, and others aren’t. But all of them are getting ripped off, driving from campus to campus and waiting — always waiting — for the full-time job…
