Free Republic

Merrimack College is offering undergraduates an opportunity to earn a degree in social justice and experience “real-world learning in the field.” According to the program description, the school “offers majors the chance to turn their passion for change, human rights, and a more just world into a career.”

According to a press release issued Monday, “Bunker Hill Community College" has eliminated its unconstitutional restrictions on free speech that prevented Navy veteran Jeff Lyons from passing out copies of the U.S. Constitution...... Additionally, the Massachusetts Community College System, which includes Bunker Hill, has agreed to review similar problematic policies at 6 of its other campuses.” This was the modern battle at Bunker Hill where a Navy veteran was told he needed permission to hand out copies of the very document he risked his life for,” said YAL President Cliff Maloney. “Free Speech does not require a permit and we...

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey shuttered their world-famous Clown College in 1997, twenty years before America’s largest circus closed for business this year, after almost a century and half of entertaining us. But, fortunately for connoisseurs of the absurd, America’s progressive academics have stepped into the breach, beclowning themselves with fields of study so deranged that they seem comic, at best. The endless search for new reasons to declare personal oppression has met the infantile fascination with private bodily functions, and the results are as absurd as any sideshow attraction. However, the impetus behind the lurch leftward is grim...

The president of the University of Southern California is the highest paid college president in California and among the best paid in the country. In 2015, C.L. Max Nikias made nearly $3.2 million to lead the Los Angeles-based private school, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s recently updated roundup of executive pay. The publication analyzed data from more than 600 private universities and nearly 250 public colleges.

When academics look for male role models, you never know what they’re going to find. "For one thing, there is not much substantive evidence that male role models are decisive in healthy boys’ development," Michael Kimmel writes in the December 15, 2017 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. "They might be nice to have, but the male role model--the elementary-school teacher, the father, the stern but supportive coach--by himself, as a single variable, doesn’t really have much of an independent effect on a boys development." "And that's why single moms, lesbian moms, female teachers, and female coaches can provide...

I have been in school for more than 40 years. First preschool...Thanks to tenure, I have a dream job for life...Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, has convinced me that it is a big waste of time and money.... How, you may ask, can anyone call higher education wasteful...those with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, 73 percent more than those who have only a high-school diploma, up from about 50 percent in the late 1970s. The key issue, however, isn’t whether college pays, but why.... Educators teach what they know—and most have...

No one seems especially shocked. Last week on WAMU, the National Public Radio affiliate that broke the story, the Washington Post’s Robert McCartney called it “fraudulent” and “a terrible embarrassment.” But he quickly added, “It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, though, to anybody who has been following District schools for any length of time.” In an analysis for the Post, Valerie Strauss concluded, “It is, unfortunately, familiar.” The “it” involves Ballou High School, described as “a historically troubled school serving some of the city’s most disadvantaged students in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.” However, earlier this year...

Fellowship grants were used to rank students according to their value to the schoolHalf the students at Stanford University’s elite, $70,000-per-year business school receive fellowship grants. For years, the school has made it clear that the money goes to those who might otherwise be unable to attend, or who might be forced — against school recommendations — to work part-time during the Master of Business Administration program. ”All fellowships are need-based,” says promotional material from the Graduate School of Business. “It’s important to understand that we do not negotiate fellowship amounts or eligibility.” But now, thanks to a huge breach...

It seems odd that a tax bill purporting to boost economic growth would take resources away from the institutions most vital to promoting it. But that’s just what the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which has passed the House and is heading to a vote in the Senate, does. The legislation takes the unprecedented step of taxing the income of certain private universities—specifically, it imposes a 1.4 percent tax on net endowment income for universities with endowments larger than $250,000 per full-time student. Some commenters have applauded the tax, as if it would rectify everything they consider amiss with higher...

Our universities are no longer committed to educating the young. Rather, the professorate has betrayed America’s future, and there is little more than lip service paid to learning in the noble sense of the word. What now matters most is the profit motive and filling students with a strange delusion called “social justice.” The problem is not only that there is no such thing as social justice -- all justice being context-specific, that is, determined by relations between individuals -- because the young are not taught that culture is a way of life, and a far better one than the...

Outnumbered male college students in Texas have created a sharp gender gap in statewide completion rates – and, according to the state’s higher education commissioner, a campus cultural problem for men. “We’re getting to the point where males feel uncomfortable on some college campuses,” said Raymund Paredes, who leads Texas’ higher education coordinating board. Paredes spoke Thursday at the University of Houston System’s board meeting to address progress toward broader statewide goals of having 60 percent of young adults in Texas earn a post-secondary degree or certificate by 2030. He identified several target populations that are lagging in achieving those...

There are two very different pictures of the students roaming the hallways and labs at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. At the undergraduate level, 80 percent are United States residents. At the graduate level, the number is reversed: About 80 percent hail from India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries. For graduate students far from home, the swirl of cultures is both reassuring and invigorating. “You’re comfortable everyone is going through the same struggles and journeys as you are,” said Vibhati Joshi of Mumbai, India, who’s in her final semester for a master’s degree in financial engineering....

Georgetown’s website proclaims it is “the oldest Catholic and Jesuit institute of higher learning in the United States” and is “deeply rooted in the Catholic faith.” One campus group is learning, however, Georgetown’s roots might not be deep enough. Love Saxa is a recognized student group on the Georgetown campus, and it exists “to promote healthy relationships on campus through cultivating a proper understanding of sex, gender, marriage, and family among Georgetown students.” Given the emphasis the Catholic Church puts on these issues (for example, see here and here), and Love Saxa’s alignment with church doctrine, one might believe it...

Following the removal of historical monuments across the country and the summer violence in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia Commonwealth University has said it will audit “exclusionary” symbols and monuments on campus. How will it evaluate what is exclusionary? The public university in Richmond has declined to specify for the past two months.

Four floors above a dull cinder-block lobby in a nondescript building at the Ohio State University, the doors of a slow-moving elevator open on an unexpectedly futuristic 10,000-square-foot laboratory bristling with technology. It’s a reveal reminiscent of a James Bond movie. In fact, the researchers who run this year-old, $750,000 lab at OSU’s Spine Research Institute resort often to Hollywood comparisons. Thin beams of blue light shoot from 36 of the same kind of infrared motion cameras used to create lifelike characters for films like Avatar. In this case, the researchers are studying the movements of a volunteer fitted with...

Besides defending his father, Trump Jr used much of his 35-minute address to mock the culture on most of the nation’s college campuses, which he said teaches young Americans to “hate their country” and “hate their religion” while squelching conservative voices. He noted instances where conservatives have been denied speaking opportunities or encountered protests upon their appearances. “Today’s conservative speech is violence. Unprovoked liberal violence is self-defense,” Trump Jr complained. “Words have lost their meanings.” He continued: “‘Hate speech’ is that America is a good country ... that we need borders ... anything that comes out of the mouth of...

Good news for college men: You’re welcome again on campus. On Friday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ripped up the Obama administration’s one-sided rules on how colleges and universities handle accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. The rules, imposed in 2011, were so stacked against the accused — usually young men — that dozens of innocent male students were branded as rapists, kicked out of school and robbed of future job opportunities. Those with sufficient money and fortitude managed to get their names cleared in real courts of law — where rules of evidence, due process and reasonable standards of proof...

The corruption of American higher education has been in the news a lot in the last few years. “Snowflakes” and “safe spaces,” crowds of thugs shutting down conservative speakers, craven administrators caving in to demands of activist students and faculty have become increasingly common since the rise of Donald Trump sparked a “resistance” movement. Even progressives who have run afoul of campus Robespierres are writing books about free speech now that their revolutionary children have started devouring their own. What David Horowitz has been warning about in his books and speeches for more than thirty years -- the ideological hijacking...

Mormon church-owned Brigham Young University ended a six-decade ban Thursday on the sale of caffeinated soft drinks on campus, surprising students by posting a picture of a can of Coca-Cola on Twitter and just two words: "It's happening." The move sparked social media celebrations from current and former students, with many recalling how they had hauled their own 2-liter bottles of caffeinated sodas in their backpacks to keep awake for long study sessions. "I drank a lot of caffeinated beverages while I was here but none of them was purchased on campus," said Christopher Jones, 34, a visiting BYU history...

Facing an estimated $200 million deficit, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) encouraged his state’s universities to cut unnecessary degree programs to help balance the state’s budget. In a speech to the Conference on Postsecondary Education Trusteeship on Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky, Bevin suggested that the universities and colleges could "find entire parts of your campus...that don't need to be there.”