Free Republic

We’re witnessing the continuation of a long trend. Girls overtook boys for school exam performance in the 1980s and outnumbered them in universities in the 1990s. There is no reason why the progress should stop at equality: in field after field, women are starting to dominate. In the recession, four out of five British jobs lost were held by men. … And there is, of course, no discrimination. The economy is changing shape in a way that is to men’s collective disadvantage. Occupations requiring physical strength are rapidly disappearing; a quarter of manufacturing jobs have vanished in the past 10...

Nick Palacios struggled to get his conservative Pentecostal parents to accept him as a gay evangelical Christian for nearly a decade before his family found a common ground through faith. Now, as an openly gay seminarian, the 29-year-old hopes to carve out a similar acceptance for other gays in the broader evangelical community through his role as president of the nation's first LGBT student club sanctioned by a major evangelical seminary. The group, called OneTable, formed last fall at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, one of the world's largest multi-denominational seminaries, and has attracted about three dozen students. "It quickly...

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected a Christian university's challenge to President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare overhaul, which the school said unconstitutionally imposes costly burdens on large employers and infringes religious liberty.

DES MOINES – Gov. Terry Branstad said Monday he was raising “a cautionary flag” about over-building at university campuses at a time when more learning is going online when he vetoed planning money for big-ticket capital projects at state college campuses last week. With college credits increasingly available through Internet-based options, the governor said he did not think it was wise to charge into a new wave of building projects at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa State University in Ames and the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls without first embarking on a comprehensive, long-range look...

In an interview with EWTN's "The World Over's" Raymond Arroyo, The Exorcist author and 1950 graduate, William Blatty spoke about the reasons for the canon law petition on Georgetown University that has been submitted to the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.'s Cardinal Donald Wuerl. The petition compiled by Blatty and The Cardinal Newman Society addresses numerous scandals at the University and whether it can continue to describe itself as Catholic. -

Conservatives have long suspected there is discrimination against conservative professors in academia, and now there is evidence to prove it. Sociology professor Neil Gross, a self-described liberal, reveals the results of surveys showing this bias in his new book, Why Professors are Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? Sociologist George Yancy asked professors if they would be more or less likely to hire someone if they were a Republican, evangelical or fundamentalist. Three-quarters said political affiliation would not affect their hiring decision. But the one-quarter that did say it would influence their decision virtually all said they would favor a...

Want to invest in your education like financial guru John Thiel, head of wealth management at Merrill Lynch? Then go to a public university. "I'm a state school guy," the Florida State University graduate told his alumni newsletter. "I didn't go to the Ivy League; I didn't go to Stanford or UCLA. I'm a CPA who went to a state school, and I run the largest wealth management firm in the world." Thiel gambled that he'd get back more bang for his buck at a public school than at a private one. By any measure, his bet paid off. And...

Dear Carrie, I have a 3-year old daughter who I hope will go to college one day. Given the increasing costs, what's the best way for me to save? I've opened a 529 plan, but is there anything else I can do? --A Reader Dear Reader, The first thing you can do is to give yourself credit for starting to save so early. While saving for a child's college education is an enormous challenge, making it a priority when it's so far away can be the first big hurdle. So you're off to a good start. As someone who believes...

VCU Holds Second Lavender Graduation Cassie Williams Jones University Public Affairs (804) 828-7028 cwjones@vcu.edu 5/2/2013 Approximately 40 graduating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex seniors participated in the second VCU Lavender Graduation on April 26. Lavender Graduation is a special graduation ceremony that honors the achievements of graduating gender and sexual minority students on campus. Participants received a rainbow cord to wear with their academic regalia at the university’s official commencement activities on May 11. “It was such a delight to be part of the second annual Lavender Graduation planning group and to see the room full of people...

Last week, in an article for the Huffington Post, titled Commencement 2.0, I discussed the need for higher education officials to begin substantive planning for digital disruption. The article argued that low-cost high quality online courses combined with sophisticated exam tools and online teaching assistance would inevitably lead to massive dislocation in higher education. To my surprise, on the same day this article appeared The Georgia Institute of Technology, one of the nation's leading engineering and computer science schools announced that it would begin offering a low-cost Online Master of Computer Science degree. The next phase of digital disruption is...

Ball State University, a public institution in Muncie, Indiana, is purportedly looking into claims that a course centered around the subjects of creationism and intelligent design constitutes a violation of the separation of church and state. The college purportedly began its investigation after the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a church-state separatist group, sent a letter of complaint regarding physics and astronomy professor Eric Hedin. Hedin’s offense? He apparently encourages students to read books by scientists, journalists and proponents who embrace intelligent design. The description of his course, as reported by World on Campus, claims that students will “investigate physical...

An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had...

PROFESSOR: Affirmative Action Isn't Helping The Right People Erin Fuchs May 20, 2013, 12:19 PM Kevin Brown Affirmative Action Indiana University/Maurer School of Law Professor Kevin Brown says he was a beneficiary of affirmative action when he went to Yale Law School. As the Supreme Court considers whether affirmative action is legal, it may be a good time to ask if it's working as intended. Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Kevin Brown supports considering race as a factor in admissions but says there is a problem in how affirmative action is implemented. Colleges are giving fewer and fewer...

Markets work. But sometimes they take time. That's the uncomfortable lesson that proprietors of America's colleges and universities are learning. For many years, market forces didn't seem to apply to them. There was a widespread societal consensus that a college education was a good economic investment. Politicians gave lip service to the idea that everyone should go to college. No one should be stopped by a lack of money. There was historic precedent. The G.I. Bill of Rights vastly expanded college populations and helped build prosperous post-World War II America. Putting even more through college would make us even more...

The new Holy Grail in American life appears to be a four-year college degree. Almost all high school students and their parents aspire to go to college, and high school graduates are enrolling in much higher numbers than in the past. The problem is that too few of them are graduating. Dropout rates from four-year schools are over 40 percent and from community colleges they are closer to 70 percent. The need for remedial courses to compensate for what kids are not learning in high school is distressingly high and not all that effective. For those who actually graduate, a...

The new logo for the University of Connecticut’s sports teams is a terrifying husky dog that calls to mind images of sexual assault, says one student. The new logo was unveiled last week, receiving mixed-to-negative reviews from UConn fans who preferred the older, cuter husky dog. But one student went much further, criticizing the new, meaner logo for being a pro-rape symbol. Ads by GoogleIn an open letter to UC President Susan Herbst, self-described feminist student Carolyn Luby wrote that the redesigned team logo will intimidate women and empower rape culture. UConn basketball coach Geno Auriemma said the logo “is...

Community colleges in Michigan would be able to expand the programs in which they can offer four-year degrees, including nursing, if a bill that has been introduced by State Rep. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, is passed. House Bill 4148 allows colleges to offer bachelor degrees in nursing, wastewater treatment technology, allied health, ski area management, information technology and manufacturing technology. The key to the legislation is nursing, said Mike Hansen, president of the Michigan Community College Association. Hansen said that a bill passed last year allowed community colleges to offer degrees in four programs, but nursing was dropped. Hansen said all...

The federal government gave out more than $40 billion for research and development (R&D) to universities across the country in fiscal 2011. Universities depend heavily on federal funding, with many of the top programs relying on the government for more than 60% of their R&D budgets. As a result, many research program directors fear that the federal cuts promoted by the sequester will hurt future funding. A few of the top schools received a disproportionate share of the governmentÂ’s spending on grants for R&D. Of all 896 schools that received federal money for R&D, approximately 20% of those funds went...

Brevard Community College has fired Professor Sharon Sweet who forced her students to sign this pledge: Brevard Community College (BCC) has fired a professor after a school investigation concluded she required students to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the run-up to the 2012 election. The school’s spokesman John Glisch, said the Board of Trustees voted Wednesday morning to terminate mathematics professor Sharon Sweet with an overwhelming vote. “The board voted 3-1, with one member absent, to dismiss professor Sweet,” Glisch told Campus Reform Wednesday afternoon. “The termination took effect immediately, ending pay and benefits for Sweet...

Forty percent of Colorado’s class of 2011 enrolled in a Colorado college or university needed remedial education courses in at least one subject in order to catch up to college-level work... in the core subjects of reading, writing or math. the new figures may jolt school board members, school and college leaders, policy wonks and parents. That’s because the state has changed the way it calculates remediation rates with the aim of making them more accurate. But by doing so, remediation rates for students from many districts look much worse. ... Using the old methodology a year ago, only 31...