Free Republic

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education argues that accreditation ought to be denied to Christian colleges that require professors to sign statements of faith or otherwise “draw lines around what is regarded as acceptable teaching and research.” This seems like an obvious next step in the current march of secular intolerance, so I expect we’ll be hearing more arguments like this in the future: ** Why does accreditation matter? Aside from the traditional goal of conferring legitimacy on colleges and their programs, accreditation has taken on a far more consequential role: Students attending institutions that are not accredited...

Religious colleges and universities, often derided by academic elites, got a surprising shout-out recently from an Ivy League insider. harvard hoodie “Elite schools like to boast that they teach their students how to think, but all they mean is that they train them in the analytic and rhetorical skills that are necessary for success in business and the professions,” William Deresiewicz wrote in the July 21, 2014 issue of The New Republic. “Everything is technocratic—the development of expertise—and everything is ultimately justified in technocratic terms.” “Religious colleges—even obscure, regional schools that no one has ever heard of on the coasts—often...

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...

Over the past five years, an underground movement has been burgeoning on evangelical Christian campuses. Although many of these colleges explicitly ban “homosexual behavior,” they are now home to dozens of LGBT-friendly student groups. The umbrella organization Safety Net, founded in December 2011, encompasses groups from approximately 75 different evangelical Christian colleges. Some of these groups are tiny, and many operate in near-secret. But over the past two weeks, an LGBT group at Gordon College has made itself impossible to ignore. When we, the authors, attended Gordon College over a decade ago, the vast majority of administrators, faculty, and students...

In a decision that drew an unusually fierce dissent from the three female justices, the Supreme Court sided Thursday with religiously affiliated nonprofit groups in a clash between religious freedom and women’s rights. The decision temporarily bars the government from enforcing against a Christian college part of the regulations that provide contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The court’s order was brief, provisional and unsigned, but it drew a furious reaction from the three female justices — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan — who said the court had betrayed a promise it made on Monday...

A student in Virginia Beach says his attempt to start a Second Amendment Club on campus at ECPI University fell flat, leading to heated call for change online. The school says people don’t know the whole story. Right now gun rights websites are supporting Patrick Winslow’s fight to start his club, but the university claims it’s rooted in misinformation. 10 On Your Side got to the bottom of the debate that has so many people up in arms. “I have now taken on an effort to want to educate the students and the faculty on the Constitution, Declaration of Independence,...

Congratulations, graduates, on your diploma. Now what about that $29,000 student loan debt? More than 70 percent of graduates will carry student debt into the real world, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. And the average debt is just shy of $30,000. But the news will get worse next week when interest rates on student loans are set to rise again. Though federal student loan rates are fixed for the life of the loan, these rates reset for new borrowers every July 1, thanks to legislation that ties the rates to the performance of the financial markets....

No Koch Bros wanted at B.C. Brooklyn College, part of the disastrous and dysfunctional City University of New York sinkhole, has a $60 million endowment. A drop in the bucket compared to CUNY’s horrifying $3 billion budget.46% of its wildly inflated budget comes from New York State. New York City taxpayers kick in another 10%.With so much taxpayer money, involuntarily extracted, they just aren’t in need of any dirty Koch Brothers cash. Brooklyn College’s liberal politics are keeping grants and progress from faculty and students, one frustrated CUNY professor told the Observer.The CUNY college has turned down a $10 million...

I thought this was interesting and Freepers might get a kick/laugh out of it. Look at number 1 major requiring the least amount of study and number 5.

Colorado Christian University has won an important case against the Department of Health and Human Services contraception mandate. Instead of CCU being forced to provide employees and students abortifacients, a federal judge in Denver has ruled that the school can retain its religious freedom. It's a significant decision, and one that the Supreme Court will surely keep in mind as it prepares to decide on the high profile Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case. The Becket Fund, a non-profit, public interest law firm who represented CCU in its lawsuit, emailed LifeNews the good news: In a carefully reasoned opinion, the court...

College campuses across the country are filled with professors that strive to enhance the lives of their students through education. However, it’s no secret that many of these educators teach their courses from their own left-of-center perspective. Accuracy in Academia is launching a new online education initiative called “Conservative University” to promote conservative principles that aren’t part of the debate at many schools. The program will launch this Friday at the Network of enlightened Women’s national conference in Washington, D.C., and will be offered for free online. The first course is entitled “Sex, Lies & Women’s Studies.” “We’ve been covering...

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...

Author's Note: The idea for this column isn't terribly original, as this YouTube video attests.Some readers have written questioning my series of columns lampooning the lavender graduation at UNC-Wilmington. That is the ceremony where UNCW graduates are given purple cords to show that they are gay and lavender cords to show they approve of homosexuality. Students then wear these cords when they get their degrees at the university-wide graduation ceremony. Some self-proclaimed conservatives have reasoned that since participation in the ceremony is optional, lavender graduation isn't a topic worthy of column space. That view is misguided as it fails to...

In education circles, universal preschool is hot. But it’s only half the answer. If we really want to raise a generation of employable kids, we need universal 13th and 14th grades too. As taxpayers, we’ve decided to subsidize the education of every American child between the ages of 5 and 18. But current education funding structures reflect a bygone industrial age, when a high school diploma met or in some cases exceeded the needs of the local and national economies. Now, neither preschool nor college is a luxury, and families shouldn’t have to pay for the schooling that keeps society...

BRUNSWICK, Me. — For 40 years, evangelicals at Bowdoin College have gathered periodically to study the Bible together, to pray and to worship. They are a tiny minority on the liberal arts college campus, but they have been a part of the school’s community, gathering in the chapel, the dining center, the dorms. After this summer, the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship will no longer be recognized by the college. Already, the college has disabled the electronic key cards of the group’s longtime volunteer advisers. In a collision between religious freedom and antidiscrimination policies, the student group, and its advisers, have refused...

University presidents overwhelmingly oppose letting students carry concealed guns on their campuses — and don’t really want people carrying them anywhere else, either. A study commissioned by Ball State University polled 401 university presidents in the U.S. and found that 95 percent of them do not want students with concealed handguns to be allowed at their universities. Furthermore, most weren’t comfortable with students having guns anywhere else either, as 65 percent of them opposed the carrying of concealed handguns off-campus. The numbers are hardly surprising, as the university presidents seem to have little personal taste for guns. Seventy-nine percent of...

It's decision time for the Obama administration on a major rule designed to crack down on colleges that saddle students with a mountain of debt without preparing them for the job market. The Education Department is under intense pressure as the agency prepares to finalize its highly anticipated "gainful employment" regulations, aimed squarely at for-profit college programs seen as predatory. Go too far, business groups warn, and the Obama administration risks denying millions of students a higher education. Yet the agency’s draft rule, issued in March, has come under fierce criticism by some congressional Democrats and advocates, including former Homeland...

*This video will be deleted by Youtube soon. :( Sign says: "Warning: Masturbators, Thieves, Liars, Drunkards, Fornicators, Homosexuals: Judgement Day."

Jennifer Polk was a few years into her Ph.D. in history at the University of Toronto when she attended a departmental meeting and heard that 50 per cent of the school’s graduates were getting tenure-track professor jobs. “They were patting themselves on the back,” she says. “I was sitting there horrified.” She realized she needed another plan. Since that meeting several years ago, the number of jobs for academics has fallen further. The chance of becoming a professor is now estimated to be one in four. Charmaine Grant began her Ph.D. three years ago partly because she couldn’t get a...

In his lone commencement address of the year, former Florida governor Jeb Bush urged students at a Christian liberal arts college Saturday to reaffirm their socially conservative values, a sign that he is underscoring his own as he considers running in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. “Remain true to your convictions and your faith,” Bush said, speaking at Grove City College in northwestern Pennsylvania. “This may seem a little challenging today, where we have a federal government that is willingly violating the religious freedom of its citizens. But we don’t have to accept it.” Dropping a possible hint about his...