Free Republic

The University of Michigan continues to exponentially grow the number of staffers dedicated to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, with at least 241 paid employees now focused on DEI and payroll costs exceeding $30 million annually, according to an analysis conducted for The College Fix.The payroll costs are $23.24 million for salaries and $7.44 million for benefits, or $30.68 million, an amount that would cover in-state tuition and fees for 1,781 undergraduate students.Thirteen DEI staff members earn more than $200,000 and 66 earn more than $100,000 when factoring in benefits.In addition, 76 faculty or staff members work part-time as “DEI...

Just how has Taylor Swift and pop culture impacted public policy and its overall role in the media landscape? Students at one Western New York university will get an opportunity to find out the answers to those questions through a new course being offered this upcoming semester. Dr. Richard Lee, a professor at St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication designed the course and will teach it. According to the university, Lee views the class as an opportunity to integrate the elements from his career in journalism, government, and academia. “From the protest music of the 1960s to the phenomena...

For a long time now, the debate has raged as to whether it’s worth going to college anymore. The libertarian view on this question has typically been along the lines of… if people are foolish enough to waste money on worthless degrees, the world will soon enough teach them another lesson. While valid, that view ran aground on the Democrat vote-buying scheme to insulate those with useless degrees from the consequences of their poor choices and indebtedness, with our tax money. The cynical motives behind this ploy aside, I very much doubt many students enroll in college with the intention...

Comparably sized but more prestigious Cornell paid far less this fall, suggesting big payouts could continue into 2024. Cheers from GWU law professor who encouraged students to sue university. Class-action lawyers may have frowned when Cornell University agreed to pay just $3 million last fall to settle a lawsuit seeking tuition refunds from its shutdown of classroom instruction early in the COVID-19 pandemic – a far cry from Ivy League peer Columbia's $12.5 million payout for the same actions two years earlier. They are likely grinning now that a comparably sized but less prestigious private university, blocks from the White...

One of the seldom discussed aspects of the ongoing revolution in contemporary higher education is the problem institutions are having filling courses that are designed to impart the DEI message to students. In the mediasphere, the conversation on DEI in higher ed is mostly about, e.g., the fear that conservative “politicization” will drive enrollments down. Students, it is claimed, just won’t stand for conservative reforms of the type instituted by Florida’s Ron DeSantis. This, of course, overlooks all the work that higher-education institutions have been doing for decades to politicize curricula and drive enrollments downward via their own politicized mechanisms....

No. 2 Washington survived an improbable late comeback attempt to secure a 37-31 win over No. 3 Texas and a matchup with No. 1 Michigan for the national title on Jan. 8. The Huskies (14-0) outscored the Longhorns 16-10 in the second half after the teams were tied at 21-21 at halftime. Grady Gross’ third field goal of the game with 2:44 to go gave the Huskies a two-possession lead at 37-28.

Bring Back Standardized TestingWhen university campuses shuttered in response to COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, other parts of the higher-education complex quickly followed suit. Most notable was the so-called “suspension” of standardized testing. At the time, it seemed to make sense. Students weren’t allowed to gather in groups at testing centers, and student performance, some claimed, wouldn’t be predictive anyway because of the significant education disruption. That disruption, which we once thought would last just a few weeks, has continued to affect all aspects of education. K-12 students are still behind on reading and math, with fewer than expected...

Faculty said they felt trapped in an ‘alternate reality’ when trying to navigate the college’s ‘toxic’ DEI environment.. College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus. But if you are shocked at how students are subject...

The Pop-Tarts Bowl celebration did not disappoint 😂

Colleges and universities keep telling us that they teach “critical thinking” skills, but in reality they are deeply complicit in the destruction of the ability to think at all. They’re the source of a kind of mental contagion called “cancel culture,” an anti-intellectual phenomenon that encourages people to silence and punish those who disagree with them. Rather than teaching students how to rationally argue, our schools (and not just colleges) are teaching that dissenters can and should be silenced. That is the big, frightening point of a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, The Canceling of the American...

The decline in college enrollment among U.S. young adults in the past decades is being driven in part by fewer young men pursuing higher education, according to data analyses by Pew Research Center. Roughly 1 million fewer young men are in college compared to 0.2 million fewer young women in the past decade, Pew senior researcher Richard Fry wrote, citing new data from the U.S. Census Bureau pertaining to 18-to-24-year-olds’ college enrollment data. “As a result, men make up 44 percent of young college students today, down from 47 percent in 2011…” he wrote. “This shift is driven entirely by...

Florida State University held a Board of Trustees meeting Friday morning to discuss the future of the athletic department and its affiliation with the Atlantic Coast Conference. The board voted to file a legal complaint against the ACC.

A record number of students are failing to reach college-readiness benchmarks. The data, from testing giant ACT, come as scores fall for the sixth straight year. ACT’s college-readiness benchmarks aim to predict student preparedness by setting scoring standards commensurate with a reasonable degree of success in college courses. ACT claims that students meeting the benchmark for a particular subject on its flagship test have a 50-percent chance of attaining a B and a 75-percent chance of attaining a C in the corresponding college class. However, a record number of students are failing to meet any of the ACT’s benchmarks. 43...

Christian colleges' support for abortion and Planned Parenthood increased by 10% since 2021, and one in 10 have maintained some relationship with America's largest abortion provider, according to a study released by a national pro-life group. Students for Life of America's Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement recently assessed 767 colleges and universities affiliated with Christian churches in the United States as part of the pro-life group's "Christian Schools Project."SFLA's Strategic Initiatives Team spearheaded the research. Outreach for the study was conducted between Nov. 1 and 30. The list of schools was compiled using Niche's 2024 Best Christian Colleges in America...

Another busy National Signing Day is in the books and with that are winners and losers on the day. Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney takes a look:

One of the most striking aspects of the “woke” domination of our education system is the way anyone who is perceived as a dissenter is likely to be targeted, much as members of a primitive tribe will attack someone from an enemy tribe who happens by. Overwhelmingly, the philosophy in our colleges is not “live and let live” but “agree with us or suffer.” If you thought the fine arts might be more mellow, think again. In a pair of cases, music educators have been subjected to academic “herd culling,” as one administrator honestly described his efforts at ridding his...

What is racism’s limiting principle? At times, the answer has to do with practicalities: Xi Jinping would presumably enslave every last Uyghur if geopolitical and administrative circumstances allowed it. Or perhaps religion gets involved: One shudders to think, for instance, how the internment of Japanese Americans might have unfolded had not the nation’s residual Christianity stayed certain hands. In most places, thank God, there are not only pragmatic and religious limits on bigotry but social ones, as well. Yes, we humans egg each other on to evil, but we also keep one another in check, perhaps especially where public morality...

Ah, here we go. Just like we thought would happened. Almost like we wrote the script ourselves. And all the excuses the Biden administration put together for absolutely forgiving student loan debt coming to life in one irresponsible package. Of course, when you’ve already got a get-out-of-credit-report-jail-free card handed to you by Crusty Claus and his gang of thieving education elves, whut? You worry? Aw, hell to the nah. 🚩Red flag in student loan payments: 40% missed their payments in October this year, a stark jump from 26% in 2019. An overlooked warning of economic stress? pic.twitter.com/NqpofkJN0y— Michael Burry Stock...

mostly remained unaware of the Senate sex kerfuffle. The ick factor was strong with that story .. was brought to us by the party that wants to "bring back decency." If you want a real laugh .. NBC News has decided that conservative media is somehow responsible for a Democrat making a sex tape at work. In more disturbing news, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas cancer on college campuses is even worse than many thought. ... The Harvard Center for Political Studies and Harris released a shocking poll about Israel ... 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 said...

If you haven't been worried by the reactions of so many American students, professors, and university presidents over the Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7, then maybe you haven't been paying attention. Antisemitism has run rampant on many campuses, and when three top school heads appeared before Congress, they failed to condemn "protesters" who were harassing Jewish students, shouting "intifada revolution," and calling for the extermination of the entire country.But the news about the poison being spread in our system of higher education just keeps getting more disturbing as a new Harvard-Harris poll shows that an astonishing 51...