Free Republic

Higher education is suffering from many woes, and the federal government (and sometimes Donald Trump in particular) often gets much of the blame for them. But one factor that, in my judgment, is ultimately responsible for much contemporary collegiate angst probably cannot be primarily blamed on the feds: the effects of grade inflation. I would submit that this affliction is the predominant single factor in the precipitous decline in student learning in American colleges and universities. Combined with long-term rising fees for college attendance, grade inflation has made universities an increasingly dubious value proposition: Attendees, their parents, and the public...

Since its founding in 1923, Hillel has become the most important Jewish campus organization in America and abroad, with a presence on more than 800 campuses across the world. Its programs and leadership are central to campus Jewish life and, looked at a certain way, reflect the broader failure of colleges to educate students these days. Hillel was established on the premise that Jews themselves need to take responsibility for Jewish prospering by participating in cultural events and social programs and by being intellectually challenged in in-depth classes and seminars. The organization also sought to respond to campus antisemitism and...

In Cypress, Texas, a Houston-area suburb that lures families with its high-quality education, Republicans used their two years of control on the school board to ban textbook chapters on climate change, diversity and vaccines. This month, Democrats took over the majority, picking up three seats on the school board and ending the conservative reign. From Texas to Pennsylvania to Ohio, Democrat-backed candidates ran successful campaigns in some of the nation’s largest school systems and in political battlegrounds. They emphasized test scores and bus safety over debates about which bathrooms transgender students use and banning books from school libraries. The result...

The Battalion student newspaper at Texas A&M university does not seem to be a fan of conservative student thought. An analysis of the 60 opinion pieces focused on politics published since November 2024 found that nearly all of them — 50 — leaned liberal (35), left-leaning (5), far-left (5), and liberal satire (5). Only 7 of the opinion political pieces were moderate or neutral, and a total of three were conservative, or a ratio of almost 17 to 1 liberal to conservative. The research was conducted by student Justino Russell, who was inspired to dig into the analysis after the...

This is absolutely wild, y'all. 🚨#BREAKING: A white, liberal, Charlotte NC teacher with a nose ring says the hallways of her school are now a "ghost town" after Border Patrol's immigration enforcement.She also begins crying about how the school has only sent out videos, "in English..." pic.twitter.com/NTfziEN84T— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) November 20, 2025Yes, she's literally crying about THIS message from Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools 👇 Over 30,000 students were absent in the Charlotte area while ICE was in town. School officials say illegal aliens have "constitutional right" to "free" education. The feds show up in a few North Carolina cities and...

The University of California system went “test-free” five years ago. SAT and ACT scores aren’t considered in admissions. The percentage of new students who can’t meet high school — or middle school — standards soared. At UC San Diego, where remedial math enrollment went from 30 in 2020 to 900 this year, a tutor said students can’t think their way through a word problem. “We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up,” Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told...

At many of the country’s most prestigious universities, an “A” has become a default instead of a distinction. It used to be a mark that indicated academic excellence and proficiency, yet lately it seems like almost everyone is “exceptional.” Now, Harvard’s much-remarked-upon grade-inflation report, released late last month, confirms what many have suspected for years: Grades at elite colleges have lost their meaning. According to the report, in 2005 “A’s” accounted for 24 percent of all grades given at Harvard College. In 2025, that number jumped to over 60 percent. Even the cutoff mark for summa cum laude status has...

Suppose you’re a controversial left-wing speaker. Who do you think would be more likely to let you voice your opinions on campus: a slightly conservative man or a democratic socialist woman? Now suppose you’re a controversial right-wing speaker. Who do you think would be more likely to let you voice your opinions on campus: a slightly liberal man or a somewhat conservative woman? It may seem obvious that, regardless of gender, someone with a similar ideology would be more tolerant of your views. But recent data gathered by FIRE suggests that’s not always the case. Amazingly, it turns out that...

How many times does an undergraduate economics student hear the name “Hayek” in his or her courses? The answer, in most programs, is close to zero. This is surprising. Friedrich Hayek remains one of the most cited Nobel laureates in economics—second only to Kenneth Arrow in mentions and citations in Nobel lectures, according to research from King’s College London. His ideas on the knowledge problem and the economic calculation debate are fundamental to understanding the limits of central planning and the role of markets. And yet, in most classrooms, Hayek’s name never appears. Why? Because economics education today is not...

Of the many controversies currently raging in higher education, few arouse as much passion as the place of politics in universities. For years, the Right denounced the Left’s dominance over campus culture. After Donald Trump’s reelection, it was the Left’s turn to cry political interference. The North Carolina General Assembly has attempted to address this issue by mandating a policy of institutional neutrality in the University of North Carolina System, though even this policy is sometimes viewed with suspicion. Yet, amid this controversy, there has usually been agreement on one point: Overt campaigning on behalf of a candidate or party,...

A woman broke down in tears during a Thursday school board meeting in Royal Oak, Michigan, where multiple left-wing speakers demanded that a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter be shut down. Officials at Royal Oak High School approved the chapter on Oct. 21, according to Fox News, prompting protests from left-wing students and groups, including a walkout. During the meeting, the woman claimed that the conservative-leaning student group would promote “radicalization” of students. “I’m a lifelong Royal Oak resident, a supporter of the Royal Oak community, as well as an advocate for young people. I too came to speak about...

The largest changes in college enrollment by black students have nothing to do with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), which banned affirmative action (“diversity”) in undergraduate admissions. SFFA practically only affects the narrow sliver of elite colleges. For most black students, the question remains the same as it is for all American students: Is it worth going to college at all? Many black students are saying no—because many American students are saying no. Kimberly Wilson writes in Essence (“Where Black Women Come First”) an article about the decision to enroll in college that applies just about word for...

PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA !! We are interested in hearing from any Christian individual who has the experience of living and working (or having lived and worked), for 1,000 days or longer, inside of a country governed by a totalitarian or authoritarian system or regime; that governing system/regime being either religious or atheistic. When we say, totalitarian or authoritarian, we give as examples: communist, National Socialist, authoritarian military junta, Islamic or Mohammedan, or the like. If otherwise, you may describe your own situation, and we may find that it applies. We hope to form a...

France and England in North America is a multivolume history of the European colonization of North America, written by Francis Parkman. The series highlights the military struggles between France and Great Britain. It was well regarded at the time of publication and continues to enjoy a reputation as a literary masterpiece.

The sabotage of K-12 education is easily implemented by rejecting methods that work, while simultaneously forcing phony substitutes into classrooms. QED: the experts embraced a far-left ideology that prefers control and leveling. Weirdly enough, our Education Establishment ends up promoting anti-education agenda. Here are the five most egregious examples of this totalitarian strategy in action. 1) Sight-Words Versus Phonics. All the main European languages are phonetic. You first learn the alphabet, then the sounds represented by the letters; and then the blends of those sounds. This approach has always worked. It's the method used in Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician, Greek, and...

A young woman named Hannah Shvets, a Cornell student, was elected to the Ithaca Common Council last week. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Communist Party USA. She has also participated in anti-Israel protests, which is now standard for anyone on the left. The New York Post reports: Upstate NY city one-ups Zohran Mamdani by electing communist student, 20 The leaves aren’t the only reds upstate this fall. After socialist Zohran Mamdani won last week’s New York mayoral race, an upstate city has gone one better by electing a full-blown communist. Hannah Shvets,...

Artificial intelligence has democratized knowledge more than any invention in history. Anyone can now solve a problem in physics, medicine, or Greek literature instantly. Yet the safeguards that once verified a student’s mastery of a subject have been replaced by compliance rituals that only simulate it. [...] What once required thought, practice, and time now takes a single click. That isn’t evolution; it’s a breakthrough, disruptive technology doing what it is meant to do: collapsing the distance between skill and result. In higher education, this transformative technology has created a perfect storm where tools that make cheating effortless have collided...

For too long, merit has taken a back seat in American higher education. Under the banner of DEI, admissions policies at many institutions have prioritized demographic balancing over academic excellence. But the pendulum is swinging back. A growing number of selective universities—including Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale—have recently announced they will once again require standardized test scores for admission. These decisions reflect a broader reappraisal of merit-based criteria, driven not just by partisan pressure but by internal reviews of academic outcomes and fairness. The message is clear: Excellence matters, and the most promising students deserve a fair shot. Increasingly, qualified students...

From the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, this depressing statistic: 34% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have a favorable opinion of communism: To say you like communism, you have to be a moron. And you have to know absolutely nothing about history. And you must be getting your information from ill-intentioned, malicious sources. What sources might those be? The public schools. What other explanation is there for young people developing a fondness for communism? I think we have reached the point where it is a serious question whether, on balance, our public schools do more harm than...

Within academia, there seems to be a growing consensus that the peer-review system—once the backbone of academic scholarship—is broken. But is it irreparably so? Perhaps. At the very least, the breakdown of its current form is worth exploring. However, rather than abandoning the entire endeavor, we believe we have a novel solution. First, though, let us examine where the system went wrong. In the Middle Ages, most scientific research was self-published, as scholars shared their findings among themselves. But, as the profession grew, that became impractical, and the scientific journal was born as a way of disseminating information. A scholar...