Free Republic

Colleges are cutting tuition for MBA programs. But it’s not out of charity or because they got another taxpayer-funded subsidy to “fix” exploding higher education prices. Rather, and perhaps counterintuitively, it’s because Uncle Sam finally capped the previously unlimited federal loans for graduate students. At first blush, this sounds like it would make the problem worse. Fewer borrowing options for students seems like it would shift more of the cost of attendance to today, when students are young with relatively low incomes. But that assumes—unrealistically—that the cost of education is fixed, and that colleges don’t respond to changes in the...

The debate over federal control of higher education has once again exposed a deeper question many conservatives have avoided asking: Why is the federal government involved in financing colleges and universities at all? The recent controversy surrounding proposed federal regulations affecting Christian colleges reveals the danger of dependency. Under a new Department of Education proposal, programs whose graduates do not meet government-defined earnings thresholds could lose access to federal loans and grants. Christian colleges are warning that ministry and theology programs could be devastated because pastors and missionaries rarely enter high-paying careers. But perhaps conservatives should ask a more fundamental...

When the United States began its experiment with federally backed student loans in the 1960s, no one predicted that, by the early 21st century, students would have run up over $1.8 trillion in debt and that many of them would be unable to repay what they owe. We were told over and over that college debt was good debt because of the huge increase in lifetime earnings that a degree was supposed to guarantee. The Tar Heel State has its own set of unique problems when it comes to student debt loads. North Carolina ranks among the top 10 states...

College radio used to have great music, from experimental jazz to progressive rock to fusion country to classical music. But then the Corporation for Public Broadcasting promised to help pay their bills... as long as they passed that money onto NPR. Your local university allowed its radio station to essentially launder money to NPR (and other even further-left organizations like Pacifica Radio). So when NPR claimed it received only 1% of its funding from the federal government, they meant only 1% came DIRECTLY from the federal government, but it nearly all came from the federal government. To the extent they...

When I graduated with a degree in journalism three years ago, I'd hoped to have a full-time, salaried job in my field by now. Instead, most of my days are a hectic blend of part-time and unpaid roles. I often find myself running to my retail job in the morning, catching the train in the afternoon to pick up the kids I nanny for, coming home for a quick dinner, and then wrapping up the day with a few hours at my unpaid, remote internship. It's not exactly how I envisioned spending my 20s in New York, but here we...

Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. Still teaching at the age of 94, he has just published a collection of essays, Where Harvard Went Wrong: Fifty Years of Commentary that Fell on Deaf Ears. The book is a collection of his articles, speeches, and book reviews going as far back as 1975. He expounds on themes familiar to Martin Center readers, including grade inflation, the decline of merit and standards, the erosion of the curriculum, and the harms done by the obsession with affirmative action. Mansfield is proud to be conservative, one...

Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika called on the next generation of Christian scholars to follow in her husband’s footsteps and pursue truth and “defend liberty” during her commencement speech at Hillsdale College Saturday. Kirk kicked off her speech with a story about her and Charlie Kirk’s honeymoon, which they both agreed would be a “disconnected” vacation, meaning no computers or cell phones. Charlie Kirk, however, used the emergency phone to keep up with the free, online courses he was taking at Hillsdale College, a breach of the newlywed’s agreement that Kirk said she was more than happy to allow. “He really...

For years, universities have embraced accreditation standards that echo their own ideological commitments, especially around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). These standards haven’t felt like external requirements so much as mutual reinforcement—accreditors writing expectations that colleges already agree with and colleges pointing back to those expectations whenever they want to justify a decision. Because of this, it is no surprise that universities are now pushing back against the Trump administration’s effort to end illegal university-accreditation demands for DEI. Last month, Department of Education undersecretary Nicholas Kent sent letters to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Commission on...

As the U.S. birth rate continues to plummet to record lows, data shows that a significant percentage of liberals are deprioritizing the importance of marriage and having children, especially among teens. Among conservatives, however, the phenomenon does not appear to be occurring. In an article published last week by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), sociologists Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey highlight how the aspirations that many liberals claim to have about marrying and having children are not lining up with their real-world behavior, which appears to be heavily influenced by negative media narratives. They note that mainstream media outlets...

My recent article “A Roadmap to Take Back Higher Education” got a mixed reaction from tradition-minded professors. They liked the general framework of the scale of the problem facing the humanities, the suggestion to support the new autonomous schools being developed rather than individual professors, and the suggestion that philanthropists dedicate large-scale grants for these schools. They didn’t like my suggestion that philanthropists need to focus on supporting teaching, not research: If [philanthropists] fund professors with 2-2 teaching loads and a half-dozen worthy books to their credit, they will have wasted their money. Their dollars will be far more effective...

We’re past the furious early salvos of Trump vs. Higher Ed. Fifteen months into Trump 2.0, the early clashes have settled into a Cool War punctuated by more modest skirmishes between the administration and brand-name universities. As the research freezes have thawed and the settlements have slowed, higher ed’s stunned disorientation is subsiding (even as red-state legislation, ongoing federal investigations, student-lending reform, and the overhaul of accreditation mean that things are very far from settled). The pace and tenor of change is less intense now than a year ago. This means that campus leaders have less political cover (it’s tougher...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WACH) — Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette stood firm on Wednesday when being asked about being disinvited from SC State University's commencement following days of student protests. Evette stood by her characterization of student protestors as a "woke mob" and said she would not be apologizing. "Let's just start calling things for what they are," she said. "I don't plan on apologizing." She also questioned whether all of the protestors were SC State students.

Over the last decade or so, computer science seemed like a pretty safe bet when it came to choosing a major, but a recent Washington Post analysis reports that enrollment growth in computer science has begun to stall or decline as students rethink what artificial intelligence means for coding careers. Today we’re going to delve into why computer science majors are on the decline, along with what it could mean for students and recent graduates looking to start careers in computer science. Let’s begin. Why Computer Science Enrollment Is Cooling OffIt’s not as if tech jobs disappeared overnight, so what...

Plenty of people are concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI. Two of our four kids are freelance graphic artists, and they are (legitimately) worried about their incomes being yanked as more people use AI for simple graphics chores like designing logos, and increasingly for more complicated work, like graphics for television programming and websites. It's a fair thing to be worried about, but as I have advised them both, that genie ain't going back in the bottle, so they'd best figure out how to work with it - or find another line of work. These kinds of...

The president of Turning Point USA’s University of Georgia chapter says the organization has strayed from the mission it had under the leadership of Charlie Kirk. Caroline Mattox wrote on Instagram that she could not in good conscience stay with an organization that has “strayed so far from its original purpose and principles.” Mattox is not the first TPUSA chapter president to express dissatisfaction with the organization’s current direction. The University of Arkansas chapter cut ties with TPUSA last month. Former President Dino Fantegrossi also expressed the sentiment that TPUSA had strayed from its original mission.

A liberal group is looking to counter the influence of conservative Turning Point USA on college campuses by launching its own club that invites students to fight back against “authoritarianism” and “corporate greed.” More Perfect University (MPUniversity), founded by the liberal media group “More Perfect Union,” made its big launch on Monday, saying students in all 50 states joined MPUniversity in the six days leading up to it. The launch featured a livestream and interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose advisors founded More Perfect Union. “Mainstream media, politicians, and universities are bowing down to the 1%. We’re organizing on...

As a professor of the classical liberal arts, I began reading Bob Pepperman Taylor’s new book, Liberal Education and Democracy, with interest. Taylor, who teaches law and politics at the University of Vermont, surveys a wide range of thought leaders, describing their foundational ideas in detail. One notable example is Taylor’s paraphrasing of Michael Oakeshott: “Liberal learning is learning to understand and perhaps even participate in a conversation that transcends a particular moment, a conversation that reflects on the human condition from a wide variety of times, places, and perspectives.” That’s well said. Taylor’s thesis begins with liberal-arts authors and...

News recently came out of Chapel Hill that the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina had adopted a new policy that allowed administrators to record class proceedings at will and without giving notice to professors. Predictably, faculty expressed serious reservations about what they perceived as a new climate of surveillance and aggressive oversight regarding the content of their courses. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, the pressure from faculty was enough to force the administration to scuttle the new policy. That’s unfortunate. Even before the policy was nixed, it wasn’t very intrusive: UNC stipulated that the practice would occur only in...

Men will be barred from using parts of an on-campus gym at the University of Southern California under a new initiative to make women and non-binary gym-goers feel more comfortable while working out. The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment (SAGE) pushed for the new rules in partnership with the Lyon Center, a recreational facility controlled by the university. SAGE describes itself as a “programming assembly and intersectional feminist organization under the student government, committed to uplifting all voices oppressed by the patriarchy.” The plan excludes men from working out in portions of the Robinson Room at the Lyon Center on...

The University of Virginia fired its head women’s basketball coach, Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, in a shocking move after the Cavaliers made a surprise run to the Sweet 16, though reports suggest a toxic culture had developed within the program. Virginia had been coming off one of the program’s most successful seasons in recent memory – reaching the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000 – when the school made the announcement that Agugua-Hamilton was out in a terse statement released over the weekend. But behind the scenes, Agugua-Hamilton was the subject of an internal investigation, USA Today reported. The outlet...