Free Republic

Later this month, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro will be landing at Berkeley, an event which is apparently being treated by the locals as some sort of Category Five Speechstorm. We already learned that the school is offering special counseling sessions for traumatized locals, and security concerns “forced them” to initially only sell half the tickets for the auditorium where Ben will be speaking.But you can’t be too careful in the face of a natural disaster like someone showing to, er… talk. Inside of a venue where only people who are willing to pay for tickets will be able to...

Oberlin College is looking at a $5 million deficit heading into the 2017–18 academic year due to an unexpected drop in admissions. This not only strains budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, but also points toward a much larger budgetary issue that has been brewing under the surface for years. Newly-elected Chair of the Board of Trustees Chris Canavan, OC ’84, announced the news in an email to faculty and staff June 14. The email, leaked to the Review by anonymous sources, was sent just a few weeks before Canavan officially took office, replacing six-year board member Clyde McGregor, OC...

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos vowed Thursday to replace what she branded the “failed system” of campus sexual assault enforcement, to ensure fairness for victims and the accused. “Instead of working with schools . . . ,” DeVos said, “the prior administration weaponized the Office for Civil Rights.” “We must do better because the current approach isn’t working,” she said. DeVos spoke to about 100 invited guests at George Mason University, where protesters had gathered outside, worried that she would announce changes to the way sexual violence cases are handled on campuses across the country. “One rape is one too many,”...

RUSH: “Bisexuals 400% More Prevalent In Harvard Freshmen Than General Population.” Why does anybody know? How does anybody know? Well, let’s find out together. It’s a story from The Daily Caller. “Bisexuals are at least 400 percent more prevalent in Harvard University’s incoming class of freshmen than they are in the general population. While approximately 1.8 percent of the general United States population identifies as bisexual, 7.9 percent of Harvard’s Class of 2021 says they are bisexual.” Wait a second. The gay population .6 .5? And the transgender population, I mean, it’s less than one-tenth of 1%. And yet look...

About 70% of Los Angeles high school graduates enroll in two- or four-year colleges, but only 25% graduate within six years. ... it’s hard to assess recent district efforts that could be seen as pushing in different directions. On one hand, the district is touting higher standards: a high school graduation requirement that all students pass the courses necessary for applying to a four-year state college. On the other hand, the district requires a grade of D only in these classes and the colleges require a C or better to apply. The district also offers an array of “credit recovery”...

A professor recently published an article in which he “offers recommendations to eliminate repressive, heteronormative practices” in higher-ed. University of Texas at Tyler Professor Frank Dykes, along with educator John Delport, explain in a recent article that since “LGBTQ issues are marginalized in teacher preparation programs”—the primary focus of their research—“repressive, heteronormative practices” have flourished.

When I was a college freshman in the early 1990s, I lived in a dorm that was as sterile as a hospital room, a 193-square-foot box with white cinderblock walls that I shared with two other guys. The bathroom was also shared—with an entire floor. Such basic living quarters greeted generations of college students before me. For much of the history of American higher education, dorms and other student amenities—from dining halls to recreational centers—were an afterthought to the primary business of campus planning: grand academic buildings. In fact, in the 1840s, the president of Brown University described dorm life...

The University of San Francisco this week is scheduled to host a segregated orientation dedicated to black students, a program that takes place in addition to its standard welcoming activities for all students. The Black Student Orientation is slated for Aug. 18, the day prior to the university’s New Student Orientation. The day-long event–billed as having been “designed by Black students, faculty, and staff to welcome new Black students to the USF Black Experience”–will “address the specific and particular needs of African American/Black students at USF,” according to the school’s website.

The Higher Education Establishment insists that its mission is just that. Academic insiders know better. "Activism in this broad sense rules the day in contemporary higher education," Zena Hitz, a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, writes in the summer 2017 issue of Modern Age. "The core purpose of the University of Texas, according to its mission statement, is 'to transform lives for the benefit of society.'" "Education is for the sake of 'social transformation,' says Harvard College--or 'the improvement of the world today,' according to Yale University." Yet and still, conservatives ready to high five each other and...

Georgia College STEM course lets entitled students choose grades, opt-out of homework, and leave student groups with new stress policy. University of Georgia campus descends further into emotionally-immature amateur hour with participation trophy policy to reduce college students’ stress, reducing a STEM course to little more than an “adulting” version of Kindergarten Nap-Time In a stunning but not-to-surprising example of the deteriorating quality of education and discipline in America’s universities, A UoG STEM college course in data management has adopted what they call a “Stress Reduction Policy”. This stress policy, in all its extravagant methods of stroking students’ over-inflated egos,...

Jessica Smith raised an arm and pointed across the lobby of the university student center like an ornithologist who had just spied a rare breed in the underbrush. “There’s one,” she said. It was, in fact, an unusual bird that Smith had spotted, especially on this campus: masculum collegium discipulus. A male college student.

Affirmative action is once again in the news. This time because of a leaked Justice Department memo indicating possible action regarding complaints from Asian-American groups that Harvard University is discriminating against Asian-Americans in its admissions policies. As this story was breaking, Harvard released news that, for the first time in history, the majority of its incoming freshman class will not be white. Per the story, 50.8 percent of Harvard's class of 2021 will not be white. Here's Harvard's spokesperson: "To become leaders in our diverse society, students must have the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, life experiences,...

August is the month when parents bid farewell to not only their college-bound youngsters but also a sizable chunk of cash for tuition. More than 18 million students attend our more than 4,300 degree-granting institutions. A question parents, their college-bound youngsters and taxpayers should ask: Is college worth it? Let's look at some of the numbers. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation...

[ * * * ] As campuses around the country have simmered and erupted in polarized protests and debates in recent years, more are considering how they can help students navigate free expression – sometimes with a push from legislators. This year Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and North Carolina have mandated campus free speech policies, and a handful of other states are considering such laws. Some schools have decided that First Amendment instruction should be included right from the start, during a time typically reserved for talk of meal plans and dorm rules. “We needed to take the opportunity in orientation...

Twelve years after finishing Harvard’s graduate theater program, Katierose Donohue still pays almost as much in student loans each month — about $650 — as for her share of the rent in Los Angeles. She recently stopped hosting her monthly sketch comedy show, “Ma’am,” because she didn’t always break even on her $200 budget. She’s now working side jobs as a dog walker and a social media copywriter, after past gigs serving at Starbucks and handing out free cigarettes for Camel. She’s never missed a loan payment, but there’s no end in sight: She borrowed nearly $75,000 to attend the...

When a Trinity College professor drew national outrage for his “Let them all ******* die” Facebook status update about white people, his college stood by its man. Not all students and donors were similarly inclined. "Donors have pulled back and incoming students have decided to go elsewhere in response to the firestorm that erupted from a professor's racially-charged Facebook posts, Trinity College’s president said Monday," Russell Blair wrote in The Hartford Courant on August 1, 2017. "Joanne Berger-Sweeney said 16 incoming students have withdrawn and past donors have chosen not to contribute to the school this year, resulting in about...

Yesterday, we noted the left’s freak-out over the news that the Justice Department will be investigating race-based discrimination in college and university admissions. The freak-out was on full display on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show yesterday. You knew the fix was in from Mitchell’s choice as guests of two critics of the initiative: the Washington Post‘s Jonathan Capehart, and Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The most outrageous moments came when Mitchell said: “I don’t know if there are cases, even” of white students being disadvantaged by minority students taking available slots. View the video here.

On August 12, 2017, I will get in my car and make my annual cross-country trip from my summer home in Colorado to my other home in North Carolina. After I arrive in the Tar Heel State and get settled I will sit down at my computer and do something the leftists at my university have been wanting me to do for years: I will pen my letter of resignation to the Board of Trustees at UNC-Wilmington.However, before I submit that letter, I thought it would be a good idea to write a brief letter of explanation to all of...

The initiative, which will reportedly be overseen by a DOJ Civil Rights Division heavy with Trump-appointees, would be charged with hiring attorneys to explore “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions,” the Times reported. The project’s reveal prompted immediate concern from civil rights advocates, with Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law calling the action “deeply disturbing.” “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them...

To “solve the problem of meritocracy,” one professor argues that elite universities should use an “admissions lottery” to select which students they accept. Joseph Soares, who teaches in the department of Sociology at Wake Forest University, advanced the claim in an article for the Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies, in which he argues that college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT “are predictively weak and biased, stigmatizing minorities as underperformers” and should therefore be disregarded.