Free Republic

America’s university system is creating a class-riven nation. There has to be a better way. To ask whether too many people are going to college requires us to think about the importance and nature of a liberal education. “Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood,” John Stuart Mill told students at the University of St. Andrews in 1867. “Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.” If this is true (and I agree that it is), why...

I have one simple goal for the 2008-2009 academic year: I want to organize more federal lawsuits against universities in one year than I have in the last four years working with organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund. In order to succeed, I need two things from ordinary Americans (including, but not limited to, typical white people). First of all, I need parents to start raising children who know something about basic constitutional principles. One way to ensure this is to provide kids with alternatives to public education. Even a short two-week stint at a place like Summit Christian Ministries...

A federal court has ordered the state of Colorado to stop discriminating against students of a Christian college, a facility that state officials determined provided too much religion. The state for years has provided grants to students of secular institutions as well as students at a Methodist university and a Roman Catholic university, according to yesterday's opinion from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. However, students at Colorado Christian University, a non-denominational evangelical Protestant university, were banned from the grant program after state officials decided the school was too pervasively sectarian. "We find the exclusion unconstitutional for two reasons:...

The Nebraska Legislature approved in-state tuition for illegal aliens in 2006. The University of Nebraska reported that about 3 dozen students participated in the program last year. According to the msm and the University everything is great, of course the students "fear" of deportation distracts them from getting straight-As. Does anyone have research or results from other states on how these programs have worked?

Can you be an obscure, self-indulged, theory-laden, post-modern scholar and manage to be an effective university president?  University of Wisconsin at Madison is hoping “yes.� It has picked Biddy Martin, Cornell provost and women’s studies professor, as its new chancellor. Her best-known work is a little something called Femininity Played Straight, which features chapters entitled “Sexualities without Gender and Other Queer Utopias� and “Teaching Feminism.� The one review that Amazon.com has picked up on the book is truncated to a single sentence, though it pretty much sums up the obtuseness of Ms Martin’s field: “Martin's eccentric use of the body...

College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of the books — minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-expensive titles. The bill is a good first step. But colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway...

Fisherman’s Shoes Find Target by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 24, 2008 Despite what you may have been lead to believe by the so-called mainstream media, the Pope delivered an address to Catholic college presidents that could be summarized as My Way or The Highway. The Pope addressed the United Nations in an approach that longtime students of the UN might characterize as one of rapprochement. Nonetheless, his remarks to the college presidents, according to attendees at that meeting were, if not remonstrative, then at least reminders of the need to pass on actual Catholic teaching in universities that bear that...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- College-aged women have more abortions than any other age range of women in the United States and a leading pro-life group that reaches out to college students says a lack of resources for pregnant and parenting students on most university campuses is part of the problem.In a new study released Wednesday, Feminists for Life of America released what it considered the first nationwide survey of pregnancy help for college students.The survey highlights the perceptions that students have about resource availability on their campuses.According to the report, Perception is Reality, most college campuses either lack appropriate...

If your kid comes home from college one day and tells you that your Christian faith is stupid, welcome to the world in which I live. The college environment does that to our kids. It makes good Christian students stupid. By that I mean it turns them into liberals, atheists, or both. Three out of four Christian kids (that’s 75% for those of you who attend UNC-Wilmington) abandon the church when they go to college and only about a third of them return by age 30. In other words, most stay stuck on stupid. Christians and conservatives could simply whine...

After reading my post about Randolph College’s field trip to a Nevada brothel to study American consumerism, Randolph junior Catherine Helsley wrote an extraordinary essay about what such a trip reveals about the decline of values in Academia. Ms. Helsley allowed me to share it with Hot Air readers. As a contemporary American college student, I am rarely shocked by the daily dose of leftist viewpoints that I am exposed to, but nothing prepared me for an Associated Press story detailing a recent field trip to a Nevada brothel organized by Randolph College. I am particularly offended because I am...

This is the state of our academia today. If you're conservative then you must be shouted down, not allowed to speak, rush the stage or throw pies in your face. Former top Bush aide Karl Rove didn’t get the friendliest of receptions at the University of Iowa Sunday, CNN affiliate KCRG reports. Rove, who was paid $40,000 to speak at the University, was confronted with an at-times hostile crowd of 1,000, and was interrupted on several occasions.At one point during the speech, Rove reportedly lashed out at some of the students, saying, “You got a chance to ask your questions...

One expert said some productions made by the terror group were 'good enough to put on the Discovery Channel' PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN In an Internet age, al-Qaeda prizes geek jihadis as much as would-be suicide bombers and gunmen. The terror network is recruiting computer-savvy technicians to produce sophisticated Web documentaries and multimedia products aimed at Muslim audiences in the US, Britain and other Western countries. Already, the terror movement's al-Sahab production company is turning out high quality material, some of which rivals productions by Western media companies. The documentaries appear regularly on Islamist Web sites, which al-Qaeda uses to recruit followers...

The Battle for Belmont Abbey College and the Soul of Catholic Higher Education has been engaged.Let us support them in their battle and pray for the continued success of their vital mission.

For those who feel they missed out on an Ivy League education, there's this: The University of Maryland is bringing leading professors from Harvard, Yale and other top schools to teach classes, and students won't need SAT scores or prerequisites to get in. With an eye on the booming boomer interest in lifelong education, U-Md. officials are announcing a partnership today that will marry talent from the country's best-known schools with the university's own. Professors will lead a day of seminars March 29 geared toward alumni and local residents long out of school, officials said. Excerpt

The Youth Vote Will Rock by: Cliff Kincaid, February 05, 2008 Raising money is one sign that a campaign is generating energy and enthusiasm. Another is having people actually show up at your events. Here, Ron Paul is also doing well. Around the country, even on college campuses, he is drawing good crowds. On the campuses, a Florida International mock primary election poll of students found Ron Paul winning among Republicans, getting 27 percent to 23 percent for McCain, while a local paper reports that at the University of Pittsburgh the most active candidate organization on campus has been Paul’s....

(Follow up to http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1960770/posts) MOUNT PLEASANT -- Dennis G. Lennox II will have to wait to find out his fate at Central Michigan University. The university canceled today's scheduled hearing, which could have led to the expulsion of the outspoken student, because inclement weather forced officials to close the campus. Officials also postponed a December hearing for undisclosed reasons, Lennox said. "I haven't been notified yet if it has been rescheduled," Lennox said. "I hope the school would drop the matter and stop bullying me." The hearing stems from allegations that Lennox provided false information to a university official, did...

The Five Most Expensive Colleges * George Washington University * Kenyon College * Bucknell University * Vassar College * Sarah Lawrence College This may surprise you: The world’s most expensive universities are not haute institutions in the Swiss Alps or on the balmy shores of the Persian Gulf. Nor are they the Ivy League citadels of America’s elite like Harvard or Princeton, or ancient halls of learning like Cambridge or Oxford in the United Kingdom. No, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most expensive four-year university in the U.S. (and most likely the world) is Washington, D.C.’s George...

Common Learning Agenda Blues by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 08, 2008 Those who argue that colleges and universities lack standards may be incorrect but only technically. “Under the current curriculum guidelines, students must take four humanities and two social science classes that could include history and political science,” Bucknell’s Nick Mozal writes of that Pennsylvania university’s “Common Learning Agenda.” “However, there is no course requirement to teach students the core history and cultural heritage of the United States.” “Students have difficulty even finding such a course.” Mozal presides over the Bucknell University Conservatives Club, which publishes The Counterweight newspaper, in...

Matthew J. Schmitz December 15, 2007 Princeton, NJ After receiving multiple death threats, a Princeton student was beat unconscious last Friday in what appears to be a politically-motivated assault. The attack came after emails saying, "WE WILL KILL YOU," were sent to the officers of a student group that promotes traditional views of marriage and sexual ethics. Francisco Nava '09, suffered serious abrasions, bleeding, and a light concussion after being beat until he lost consciousness this Friday. The attack, which occured within blocks of Princeton's campus, appears to be connected to multiple death threats received by Nava and other officers...

If you think political correctness on our college campuses is a threat to free speech, I have a news flash for you. It's even worse than that. It's actually putting the lives of our young people at risk. Sound a bit over the top? Only if you haven't read a riveting account by a campus psychiatrist who knows the price our children are paying – mentally, emotionally and physically – for the attitudes that allow the "sexual revolution" to rage unchecked in the halls of "higher learning." That psychiatrist, Dr. Miriam Grossman, took a bold step last year when she...

Almost all of the HBCUs were created at a time when Southern blacks were excluded from other schools (only four of the HBCUs are outside the South). They turned out doctors, lawyers, ministers and politicians. W.E.B. Du Bois graduated from Fisk in 1888, Thurgood Marshall from Lincoln (Chester County, Pa.) in 1930, and Martin Luther King Jr. from Morehouse (Atlanta) in 1948. ...In fact, a remarkable 40% of all African-Americans with a bachelor's degree in the physical sciences, and 38% of those who majored in math or the biological sciences, attended HBCUs. Conversely, almost no students at HBCUs gravitate to...

Zimbabwe's education system, once regarded as among the best in Africa, is in crisis because of the country's economic meltdown. Almost a quarter of the teachers have quit the country, absenteeism is high, buildings are crumbling and standards plummeting. In one of the most shocking examples of the Dickensian conditions, a reporter witnessed hundreds of children...writing in the dust on the floor because they had no exercise books or pencils. "Starting this term, we are supposed to buy our own teaching materials," ... "With our paltry salaries I don't see it working. We will just sit in the classes." Absenteeism...

Coin trays in Texas cars may actually get to see the faces of dead presidents. The much-discussed and controversial Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, has breathed life into the debate of toll roads in Texas. Plans for the Trans-Texas Corridor include TTC-Instate 35, which starts in Laredo and extends north to Gainesville, running along the eastern part of Texas; and Interstate 69/TCC, which has three openings in Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville and follows the coast to Texarkana. Much of the TTC will be privately operated toll roads, run by the Spanish firm Cintra. The TTC will not run through San Antonio,...

Global warming lecture at CSUF stirs controversy Science weighs against philosophy on campus By: Sylvia Masuda Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: News Posted: 10/18/07 Controversy erupted in the Cal State Fullerton science community over Tuesday's global warming lecture in the Titan Theater. Research professor and climatologist Patrick Michaels presented "Reducing the Effects of Global Warming in Southern California," a presentation which explained why global warming is not an imminent problem. The Economics Association organized the event. Over the years, science organizations have criticized Michaels for exaggerating his credentials and for pushing what they feel is a political agenda. CSUF science...

he average taxpayer and parents who foot the bill know little about the rot on many college campuses. "Indoctrinate U" is a recently released documentary, written and directed by Evan Coyne Maloney, that captures the tip of a disgusting iceberg. The trailer for "Indoctrinate U" can be seen here. "Indoctrinate U" starts out with an interview of Professor David Clemens, at Monterey Peninsula College, who reads an administrative directive regarding new course proposals: "Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues." Clemens is fighting the directive, which...

Indoctrinate U”’s thesis is contained in its title. You may think that universities are places where ideas are explored and evaluated in a spirit of objective inquiry. But in fact, Maloney tells us, they are places of indoctrination where a left-leaning faculty teaches every subject, including chemistry and horticulture, through the prism of race, class and gender; where minorities and women are taught that they are victims of oppression; where admissions policies are racially gerrymandered; where identity-based programs reproduce the patterns of segregation that the left supposedly abhors; where students and faculty who speak against the prevailing orthodoxy are ostracized,...

George Will takes a look at the requirements for today's students of social work -- and discovers a political commissariat worthy of the Soviet Union. Universities have required pledges of loyalty to liberal political thought as a requisite for success in their social-work programs, failing students who object to being told what to think (via CapQ reader Sandeep Dath): In 1997, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted a surreptitious political agenda in the form of a new code of ethics, enjoining social workers to advocate for social justice "from local to global levels." A widely used textbook --...

October 08, 2007, 0:00 a.m. Coded on CampusIvory-tower decay. By Michael Barone I am old enough to remember when America’s colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America’s colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society. Colleges and universities today almost universally have speech codes, which prohibit speech deemed hurtful by others, particularly those who are deemed to be minorities (including women, who are a majority on most...

I am old enough to remember when America's colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America's colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society. Colleges and universities today almost universally have speech codes, which prohibit speech deemed hurtful by others, particularly those who are deemed to be minorities (including women, who are a majority on most campuses these days). They are enforced unequally, so that no one gets punished...

Washington, DC, Oct. 3, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Virginia-based Cardinal Newman Society has announced publication of a new comprehensive guide for Catholic students and parents selecting a college. The culmination of two years of research and interviews, The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College recommends 21 Catholic colleges and universities in the US and Canada that "faithfully live their Catholic identity and provide a quality undergraduate education." The Newman Guide, edited by Joseph Esposito, the Cardinal Newman Society’s director of research, puts its stamp of approval on schools ranging from Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland-- the second-oldest...

For many college-bound students, choosing just the right school can be even more stressful than taking the SAT exam. How do you choose, from among more than 3,500 American colleges and universities, the place where you'll live and learn for four years? Beyond that, how do you find the school you love -- and can also afford? Savvy students and parents should start by pinpointing what they most want and need in a college. Make your own customized list or check a few Internet sites for ideas. Specifications for schools Some sites, such as The Princeton Review, allow you to...

Warning: This commentary may not be suitable for younger readers.The play is not exactly the stuff of Tony awards, but it does have its moments. It’s called “Sex on a Saturday Night,” and it features a naïve Princeton freshman named Joe who is about to go on his first date with an equally naïve girl named Frances. With his friends urging him to “score big,” Joe takes his date to a remote love nest. The two become extremely drunk, and Frances passes out. So does Joe—but not before he violates his unconscious date. The play is meant to be a...

AUTUMN AND a new academic year are upon us, which means that selective colleges are engaged in the annual ritual of singing the praises of their new freshman classes. Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are. What they almost never...

...Just how skewed the system is toward the already advantaged is illustrated by the findings of a recent study of 146 selective colleges and universities, which concluded that students from the top quartile of the socioeconomic hierarchy (based on parental income, education and occupation) are 25 times more likely to attend a “top tier” college than students from the bottom quartile. Yet at least since the 1970s, selective colleges have repeatedly claimed — most recently in amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in the landmark affirmative case concerning the University of Michigan — to give an edge in admissions...

If presidents of some of the nation's top liberal arts colleges get their way, they will no longer be included in the U.S. News and World Report's influential collegiate ranking system. At issue is the "reputation survey," part of the ranking system that is filled out by the presidents of colleges included in the survey. Presidents from some of the nation's leading private and liberal arts colleges met in Annapolis Tuesday to discuss a possible boycott. Approximately 80 presidents and 71 academic deans of the nation's leading liberal arts colleges attended the annual meeting of the Annapolis Group, an organization...

Somewhere in the early to mid ‘70s, nuns from most of the older religious communities replaced their habits with pants suits, left their convents for apartments, and gave up teaching and hospital work to lead retreats and give workshops. At exactly the same time they also stopped getting vocations and their numbers began to drop considerably - so much so, that each year parishes are solicited by the USCCB to contribute to what’s known as the “Retirement Fund for Religious,” made necessary by the fact that all the members of the old established communities of women religious are now old....

I know why I chose Columbia: the campus is magnificent, the education is top-tier, and my peers are intelligent. I could look at a stranger, tell him or her that I went to Columbia, and hear the predictable, “Wow, you must be smart.” When my brother was getting ready to go to the Naval Academy, everyone ooohed and awed about how brave he was. Aunts and uncles would say, “John, you must be one of thousands of kids who wanted to go—you must be so smart!” When he appeared unsure about whether he wanted to choose Navy or University of...

...In a shift of historic importance, America's colleges and universities have largely abandoned the idea that life's most important question is an appropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, they have betrayed their students by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way, before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgent business of living itself. This abandonment has also helped create a society in which deeper questions of values are left in the hands of those motivated by religious conviction - a disturbing and dangerous development. ...Over the past century...

In 1997, the National Association of Social Work (NASW) altered its ethics code, ruling that all social workers must promote social justice "from local to global level." This call for mandatory advocacy raised the question: what kind of political action did the highly liberal field of social work have in mind? The answer wasn't long in coming. The Council on Social Work Education, the national accreditor of social work education programs, says candidates must fight "oppression," and sees American society as pervaded by the "global interconnections of oppression." Now aspiring social workers must commit themselves, usually in writing, to a...

Seniors at UC Berkeley, the nation's premier public university, got an F in their basic knowledge of American history, government and politics in a new national survey, and students at Stanford University didn't do much better, getting a D. Out of 50 schools surveyed, Cal ranked 49th and Stanford 31st in how well they are increasing student knowledge about American history and civics between the freshman and senior years. And they're not alone among major universities in being fitted for a civics dunce cap. Other poor performers in the study were Yale, Duke, Brown and Cornell universities. Johns Hopkins University...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Before he transferred to San Francisco State University, Emo Loredo knew only a few other openly gay students. So he was pleasantly surprised when he discovered his new college offered not only dozens of classes on gay issues, but an undergraduate minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies. "One of the things I've learned is that homosexuality was around way back in ancient times," said Loredo, 24, who enrolled this semester in a sociology class called Queer Cultures and Society. "Before, I thought homosexuality was started in the early 1970s." Years after creating a smattering of...

When Emily McLain decided to enroll at the University of Oregon, a significant part of the appeal was low tuition. She had not counted on all the fees that unexpectedly appeared on her bill. “I had my dad calling me asking, ‘What’s this for?’ ” said Ms. McLain, 22, a political science and international studies major now entering her last year at the university. This year, the university is charging a $51 “energy surcharge” for rising electricity costs. A $270 “technology fee” for computer service. There is the $371.25 fee for campus health center, $135 fee to maintain buildings and...

One of the more momentous cases in Supreme Court history, Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), involved an attempt by the state of New Hampshire to wrest control of the privately chartered school from its board of trustees. But a corporate charter like Dartmouth's, the Marshall Court ruled, is the same as a private contract; the state could not simply annex the school. The sanctity of contract has preserved the independence of not a few colleges and universities. But institutions of higher learning now shy from the same oversight their faculties have demanded of the corporate world, and some of the...

VANCOUVER, August 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A British Columbia human rights tribunal will hear the case of a college pro-life group denied official club status on campus. The group, called the Capilano College Heartbeat Club, filed an official complaint with the BC Human Rights Commission saying that the decision of the student union amounted to discrimination on the basis of religious belief.  The Capilano Student Union (CSU), however, contends that the reason the group was rejected was not opposition to religious belief, but to the group's attempt to "advance an anti-abortion political agenda." The CSU is, "an autonomous democratic organization"...

Kiss federally subsidized collegiate promiscuity goodbye. Prices for birth control are going to increase a lot for college students. That has CNN deeply concerned. Higher prices for birth control? Oh, the humanity.That’s because deficit reduction legislation has changed how much the federal government pays to underwrite contraceptives. Costs for the pill and patch have gone up enough, apparently, for college students to consider anything except abstinence. “[Stephanie] Davidson [a Columbia University student] worries that these students will have to choose between food, books, and birth control,” said CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen on the August 22 “American Morning.”The report was...

Kudos to Hank Brown, president of the University of Colorado, and the CU Board of Regents for doing the right thing and firing Ward Churchill. Unfortunately, what most riled public opinion about Churchill — the patent disdain for America in his reference to 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns" — isn't confined to one cultural studies professor with a penchant for academic fraud. Rather, his anti-American comments reflect much of the design and purpose of modern academia.

(CNSNews.com) - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama received about $1.5 million in contributions this year from college professors and others in the education field, outpacing the party's front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who got $940,000 from academics. Still, Clinton's near-$1-million second-place finish was almost as much as academia's total combined donations to leading Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. (See Complete Candidate Breakdown) That many college professors and academics lean to the political left is no surprise -- 76 percent of their donations went to Democratic candidates in the first two quarters of 2007. But the volume...

Gay Friendly Colleges Ranked - Reed towards top Top of the list is New College of Florida, which provides a campus community most accepting of gay students. It also ranks number one for the most politically active tertiary institution, but ranks worst for a near absence of intercollegiate sports. The top five gay-friendly Colleges are in order: New College of Florida; Macalester College of St. Paul, Minnesota; Wellesley College in Massachusetts; Eugene Lang College/New School University in New York City; and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The top College ranked by Princeton Review for academic experience is Reed College in...

Dawn Eden, call your office: For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more. But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed...

Young America’s Foundation is pleased to release its third annual “Top Ten Conservative College” list in response to the frequently asked question of which colleges we recommend to those seeking conservative colleges. Each year, hundreds of thousands of students begin their college search. Admission guides, seminars, advice from friends, and help from advisors all offer different perspectives. Presented with so many options, confusion often clouds this important decision-making process. Given the requests for Young America’s Foundation’s recommendations, and to aid in making the right decision, we are proud to release our third annual “Top Ten Conservative Colleges” list. A wide...