Free Republic

For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college? The idea might seem impractical, since college costs more than high school and higher education isn’t for everybody in the first place. Yet it’s also obvious that a high school education alone isn’t nearly as valuable as it used to be, which is why some researchers and policymakers are now studying ways to make college as accessible as high school for those who want it. College is free in Scandinavian countries and highly subsidized in much...

AUSTIN, April 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ebola, a form of hemorrhagic fever in which the internal organs of the victim liquefy, has one of the highest rates of fatality of any known contagious disease at approximately 80-90% and is one of the most contagious diseases known to medical science. It is also high on the list of possible bio-terror weapons of concern to international law enforcement and military security agencies. Tom Clancy’s thriller novel, Rainbow Six describes a group of radical environmentalists that wants to rid the world of people using a modified version of Ebola. All of which is...

Note: In the following article, I refuse to refer to Campus Crusade for Christ by their new name. I find their removal of the words “Crusade” and “Christ” to be offensive and demeaning (and just incredibly silly).Nearly half of the abortions in this country are performed on college-age women. According to Students for Life of America, 70% of all abortion-providing and abortion-referring facilities are located within five miles of a college campus. Given those staggering numbers, it would seem that campus ministries would be positioning themselves to do something about the problem. But most are doing nothing at all. If...

...Mumia Abu-Jamal's recorded remarks will be played Sunday at [Goddard College's] commencement, along with a video about him. Bob Kenny, the school's interim president, is quoted on the website as saying the graduates' selection of Abu-Jamal reflects "their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that."

Every year it gets worse. It seems that the community college that both my daughters have attended is steadily becoming a hotbed of liberal teachers. This time it's an America hating, military hating, obama loving history professor. Im sick of this crap and I'm making a stand. I wanted to get with the freeper brain trust to plan the best course of action. I havent done anything. I suspect if I complain to the dean nothing will happen, because I think the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm sure someone out there has experience dealing with this sort...

Sorry - I'm not sure what our posting policy is regarding TimeMag, so I'm just posting the link.

Prolific bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he held up banks supposedly said, Because that's where the money is. Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon, who reports on an FBI internal document stating that Cuban intelligence is targeting American academia and university professors to recruit spies, brings to mind Sutton's declaration. Why should Cuban intel target colleges? Because that's where the communists are.

Is your daughter a victim of male oppression? Blame Aladdin – as well as The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, The Lion King and Toy Story 2. Disney cartoons and other G-rated children’s movies are full of “gendered sexuality,” subjecting women to the male “objectifying gaze,” as “heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical, and transformative.” These were the conclusions of Women’s Studies professors Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak in their 2009 research paper, “Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children’s G-Rated Films.” The sociologists examined “all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990 and...

April is the cruelest month, and August is the melancholy month. Even the crickets sing a different song at dusk as August begins summer's slow retreat. Children listen for the back-to-school bells as autumn closes in and the days begin to get noticeably shorter. Bicycle baskets morph into book bags. Sandals give way to tighter shoes, and the days of flip-flops are numbered. Sand from the beaches becomes the sand through the hourglass in the science lab. Free spirits are rounded up and structured into classes of whiteboards and textbooks overflowing with data. Teachers promise expeditions to new frontiers...

The University of Colorado is moving to fire a tenured faculty member after the Boulder campus paid $825,000 this week to settle a graduate student's allegations that the philosophy professor retaliated against her for reporting she was sexually assaulted by a fellow student. Chancellor Phil DiStefano recently issued a notice of intent to dismiss associate professor David Barnett, campus spokesman Ryan Huff confirmed to the Daily Camera. If fired, Barnett would be only the fourth tenured professor ever dismissed by the university in its 138-year history. Barnett is accused of compiling a 38-page report painting the victim as "sexually promiscuous"...

A Kent State University associate professor of history is standing by his call for “jihad” and statement that Israel is “a regime that is the spiritual heir to Nazism.”In an “open letter” to “academic friends of Israel,” Julio Pino accuses the pro-Israel academic community of being “directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians.”In his statement that quotes former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and compares the academics to alleged Nazi collaborator and philosopher Martin Heidegger, Pino writes “Your names are scrawled on every bullet fired, bomb dropped, body buried and burnt forehead in Gaza. May...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Students in an Ohio State University psychology class are being taught that atheists have higher IQs than Christians, according to a report from a college watchdog organization. Campus Reform notes that a question from a recent online psychology quiz from the university implied that religious beliefs were directly related to IQ levels. “Theo has an IQ of 100 and Aine has an IQ of 125,” the quiz stated. “Which of the following statements would you expect to be true?” Students were then asked to select an answer from the following four options: 1.Aine is an atheist, while...

College campuses often seem culturally biased against non-liberals. But in some cases, political bias so deeply and obviously pervades official campus policy that no one can even defend it when challenged. On that front, the Young Americans for Liberty declared victory in their legal battle with the University of Michigan after administrators agreed to pay out $14,000 and revise discriminatory funding policies. Last year, YAL asked the university for $1,000 to bring anti-affirmative action activist Jennifer Gratz to speak on campus. UM collects mandatory fees from all students and uses them to subsidize events hosted by recognized student groups. But...

the state’s ability-to-function-in-a-modern-economy rate among graduates hovers at a dismal 37 percent. That is, according to the state Department of Education, only 37 of every 100 students who entered high school in 2009, and stayed long enough to graduate, learned enough by last June to do college-level academic work — or to enter the workforce in any meaningful way. And in New York City, the ratio was one in four. So let’s cut to the chase: If 75 percent of New York high-school seniors get diplomas, but only 37 percent are academically or economically functional ... Per-student spending — just...

The more we insist everyone must attend college, the less colleges will offer what students need. About a month ago, I came across a pair of letters online. The first, simply signed “Alumnus,” is an angry retort to his alma mater’s request for a donation. He is irritated that his degrees and the time and money spent on them have left him $40,000 in debt and unemployed for two years-plus after graduation. The second, signed “A Dedicated Professor,” is an attempt to take Alumnus to task for his lack of understanding about the significance of a true education—something he accuses...

A white professor is suing Alabama State University (ASU) over claims the historically black university discriminated against him and his partner based on their race and sexual orientation. According to the lawsuit filed in federal court on June 11, Dr. John Garland is suing the ASU and eight current and former employees for racially discriminating against applicants for university positions and subsequently targeting him when he retaliated against those practices. “[Garland’s supervisor] expressed his opinion, stated or implied, that Dr. Garland did not belong at the University and was not ‘suited to [the University’s] type of students’ because Dr. Garland...

A student is suing Occidental College in Los Angeles for expelling him after a female student allegedly sent text messages indicating she had wanted to have sex, arranged for a rendezvous, then one week later accused him of sexual assault. The case is the latest to follow the Obama administration’s new effort to crack down on campus rape. The plaintiff, who filed anonymously as John Doe, said the female student texted him asking if he had a condom, informed a friend she was “goingtohave ‘sex” (sic) and coordinated a route to his dorm. Police investigated and decided not to prosecute,...

Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. But university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged American universities' international reputations. For over two centuries, our superb system of American public and private higher education kept pace with radically changing times and so ensured our prosperity and reinforced democratic pluralism. But a funny thing has happened on the way to the 21st century. Colleges that were once our most enlightened and tolerant institutions became America's dinosaurs. Start with ossified institutions. Tenure...

Continuing their commitment to silence anyone who might stand in the way of their agenda, gay and lesbian groups are now beginning to criticize supporters who are thought to be insufficiently loyal. The most recent case involves Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor, who is married to the University’s president, Teresa A. Sullivan. A man with impeccable progressive credentials, Laycock has been a longtime supporter of gay rights and same-sex marriage—filing an amicus brief in the 2012 Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor that urged the court to extend same-sex marriage benefits to every state in...

Colin CampbellMay 29, 2014Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg accused the entire Ivy League of liberal political bias during a particularly fiery commencement address at Harvard University Thursday. "It is just a modern form of McCarthyism," Bloomberg said of university "censorship" of conservatives. "Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species" "And that is probably nowhere more true than it is here in the...