In an op-ed published by the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, James Baar identifies “Four Crises That Dog Higher Education”: 1. Inflation of product cost. 2. Deflation of product value. 3. Enablement of social and moral dissolution. 4. Lower-priced, knockoff and fraudulent competition. Given the space constraints on most op-ed pieces, Baar addresses each of…
On March 3 the board of trustees of Sweet Briar College, a small liberal arts college for women in rural Virginia, made the shocking announcement that the school would close at the end of the academic year. After nearly four months of intense fund-raising and legal maneuvering, however, the college was saved. Under the terms…
By Elena Levy-Navarro, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater I write this as the state house leaders announce they have reached an agreement over the Wisconsin budget. If it is agreed upon on Thursday, they will craft the final bill. As of now, all we know about the discussions is what has been reported: namely, that…
The two great parts of American higher education are the students and the faculty. The administrators are only around to facilitate the learning of the former and the teaching and research of the latter. Or that’s the way we imagine it. Over the past fifty years, the students have become customers instead of learners and…
This comes from The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Louisiana State University system’s Board of Supervisors voted last week to uphold the firing of Teresa Buchanan, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction, based on accusations she had engaged in sexual harassment and violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. F. King Alexander, the system’s president, had…
Andrew Delbanco, writing in The New York Review of Books, looks over the state of American universities, noting the promise they once represented but writing that: Today this story is stalled. At the top of the prestige pyramid, in highly selective colleges like those of the Ivy League, students from the bottom income quartile in our…
In a stunning and welcome development on the eve of a scheduled court hearing on Monday, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring announced today that “a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been agreed upon by Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer, Saving Sweet Briar, Sweet Briar College and the Office of the Attorney General outlining a plan…
On March 3, President James Jones of Sweet Briar College shocked the small women’s college’s faculty and students by announcing that the school would close its doors on June 30. Seniors would be allowed to graduate, but all other students would be compelled to transfer elsewhere. Faculty members were provided vague promises of assistance, but…
Chancellor Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shared the following message by email with faculty on June 9 ahead of an emergency meeting of the Faculty Senate. The message was also posted on a web page maintained by the University and devoted to budget issues. As we prepare to meet, I want to again…