Free Republic

Today, all Americans are told, "Go to college!" President Obama said, "College graduation has never been more valuable." But economist Bryan Caplan says that most people shouldn't go. "How many thousands of hours did you spend in classes studying subjects that you never thought about again?" he asks. Lots, in my case. At Princeton, I learned to live with strangers, play cards and chase women, but I slept through boring lectures, which were most of them. At least tuition was only $2,000. Now it's almost $50,000. "People usually just want to talk about the tuition, which is a big deal,...

A federal court has ruled that four Christian universities based in Oklahoma will not be penalized for refusing to provide health care coverage for the birth control services they consider contrary to their religious beliefs. In 2013, Mid-America Christian University, Oklahoma Baptist University, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and Southern Nazarene University filed suit against the Obama administration over their mandate that forced most employers, regardless of religious convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and contraception. A decision released Tuesday by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted relief for the four universities, in large part...

Students at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, are demanding the removal of white and European authors from a mandatory humanities course at the college. Reed College caved to student protesters in April after they demanded that white authors be removed from the college’s Humanities 110 course. Now, the course will focus primarily on ancient Mediterranean authors. Reed College professors have responded with confusion at the allegation that the Humanities 110 course is “too white.” “The idea that Hum 110 is a ‘white’ course is very strange to me,” Jay Dickson, a professor of English, recently said in a comment to...

Several African American graduates at the University of Florida are speaking out after a white faculty member forcibly rushed them off stage at one of the school's commencement ceremonies on Saturday. The students said they were observing a long-held tradition among black fraternities and "strolling" after getting their college degrees when the usher grabbed them and roughly shoved them along. University of Florida President W. Kent Fuchs apologized after videos of the incidents went viral online.

After logging enough miles to hike around the world more than four times, Penn State has decided it's too risky for the campus Outing Club to go on student-led outings. A risk assessment by the university led to the decision, says a statement on the Outing Club's web page. The club's outings were deemed to be "above the University's threshold of acceptable risk for recognized student organizations," said the statement. This spring, campus recreation, a division of student affairs, decided to evaluate its 79 student-led programs, said Lisa Powers, Penn State spokeswoman. It found 20 clubs had "elements of risk,"...

Kent State University hosted an event Tuesday titled “Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion?” The event featured various cosponsors such as the Impact Movement, UHURU Magazine, the Jude 3 Project, and the university itself. The event featured a panel of 3 speakers: Lisa Fields MDIV, the founder of the Jude 3 Project, Sho Baraka, and Vince Bantu PhD.

A conservative student at Siena College is facing a disciplinary hearing after he posted 600 flyers around campus of an email in which a professor called conservative students “miserable” to work with. The "Notice of Charges" accuses Zachary Butler of actions that "adversely [affected] the health, welfare, and/or safety” of campus community members "or the name and/or reputation of the College."

While we were working as a nation to cleanse the American body of the poison of racism against blacks — a long, painful endeavor that was finally finding considerable success in the latter half of the 20th century — a different poison was being introduced into the body: racism against whites. Full out, white people are inherently, genetically evil racism. That statement may have sounded extreme a few years ago. No more. It is mainstreaming now right under our noses and, like so many damaging ideas of recent years, it is flowering among the leftists that oppress our nation’s college...

David Hogg might not be good enough for the University of California -- despite his activism -- but he's now got something in his back pocket ... a possible full ride in New Mexico! TMZ has obtained an acceptance letter from the Dean of the Honors College at New Mexico State University. Dr. Miriam S. Chaiken was pleased to inform Hogg he was welcome at the campus ... and so are all the other Parkland student leaders. In the letter, Chaiken says she's been inspired by the work David and his fellow students were doing in the wake of the...

It will come as no surprise that this year Hillsdale College has chosen to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass fled north to freedom in 1838. Eventually, he became a celebrated orator, and a leading figure in the abolition movement. Douglass also became a friend of Hillsdale College. He was twice an honored guest of the college. His first visit took place in January 1863, a few weeks after the final issuance of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. On that occasion, Douglass delivered an address entitled “Popular Error and Unpopular Truth.”...

The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology and Spanish — while adding programs with “clear career pathways” as a way to address declining enrollment and a multimillion-dollar deficit. Students and faculty members have reacted with surprise and concern to the news, which is being portrayed by the school’s administration as a path to regain enrollment and provide new opportunities to students. Critics see something else: a waning commitment to liberal arts education and a chance to lay off faculty under new rules that...

Subsidies reduce motivation, distort the education market, and often end up reducing students’ motivation. The “free college” movement, fueled to a large degree by Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential bid, is a response to concerns about increasing college-tuition rates, concomitant stagnation in state and federal grants, and a corresponding student-loan debt load that has ballooned to roughly $1.4 trillion. Indeed, inflation-adjusted data provided by the College Board shows that the average sticker price of higher-education tuition (excluding room and board) over the past ten years has increased 32 percent for two-year public colleges, 37 percent for four-year public colleges,...

Most efforts to reform state universities have ended in failure. Texas regent Wallace Hall was almost impeached when he tried to investigate political clout used to get favored students into the University of Texas. An innovative voucher plan in Colorado was quashed by political forces. The governing board of the University of Virginia was forced to reverse course when it carried out its legal right to terminate the sitting president. There’s better news in North Carolina, however. Slowly, sporadically, and facing strong opposition, the Republican-backed legislature is taming the 16-campus University of North Carolina system. In 2012, Republicans obtained majorities...

Dear Montana Representatives:On February 13th, I had the opportunity to speak in Dennison Theater at the University of Montana (UM). Events leading to the speech as well as events occurring during the speech made it clear that the Montana legislature must act to restore respect for freedom of speech on its publicly funded university campuses. I write today to ask that you pass specific free speech legislation we have already adopted in my home State of North Carolina.Prior to my speech, in a bizarre statement to the entire university community, UM president Seth Bodnar stated, “Ours is a university driven...

The President of Evergreen State College announced this week that the college is predicting a 20 percent drop in enrollment for the upcoming fall semester. Evergreen president George Bridges announced this week that the college is facing a 20 percent drop in enrollment for the upcoming fall semester. The school currently boasts a student body of 3,800, but with the graduation of the current class of seniors this spring and the introduction of a smaller freshman class this fall, the total student body will drop to 3,100 students. The college was also hit with a five percent drop in enrollment...

The president of the embattled Evergreen State College — where racial unrest last spring thrust the small Washington campus into the national spotlight — is predicting that the public institution will see a nearly 20 percent drop in student enrollment come fall.

James Comey, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director who was fired last year by U.S. President Donald Trump, will teach a course on ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, the school said on Friday. “Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth,” Comey said in a statement released by the college, the country’s second oldest. Comey graduated from William & Mary in 1984 with a double major in chemistry and religion, and will teach for...

“I have had enough bullshit,” wrote Notre Dame sociology professor Christian Smith in a recent piece about the systemic problems of American Higher Education. “The manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and integrity.” This forward, in-your-face commentary on the state of today’s higher education caught the attention of many in the realm of the Ivory bell tower, but should also serve as a wake-up call to those who don’t follow higher ed...

A frequent point I have made in past columns has been about the educational travesty happening on many college campuses. Some people have labeled my observations and concerns as trivial, unimportant and cherry-picking. While the spring semester awaits us, let's ask ourselves whether we'd like to see repeats of last year's antics. An excellent source for college news is Campus Reform, a conservative website operated by the Leadership Institute (https://www.campusreform.org). Its reporters are college students. Here is a tiny sample of last year's bizarre stories. Donna Riley, a professor at Purdue University's School of Engineering Education, published an article in...

Academia turns a blind eye to the reality of actual socialism, the ideology practiced by Marxists while they sought the perfection of communism...someday. Socialism is ruining Venezuela today, and the whitewash pervades elite culture, even when the evil strikes close to home for an elite American small college. I attended Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio) in the mid-1970s. I enjoyed my time there, made some great lifelong friends, and graduated with a sincere appreciation of the benefits of having a liberal arts education as it was practiced at the time. Over the years, my political perspective has moved well away from...