This Is My Idea of a Nightmare—Even If the Cruise Ship Doesn’t Sink, the Toilets Remain Operable, and Some Sort of Rampaging Illness Doesn’t Leave Most of the Passengers Yearning Desperately for Dry Land and Their Own Beds

Anticipating a favorable outcome to the November elections, the National Review is already advertising its post-election cruise. For about $2,000, you can spend a week listening to and rubbing shoulders with the following line-up of “conservative stars”: Former Congressman Col. Allen West, Acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson, Former US Senators Jon Kyl and Fred Thompson, Former governors Tim Pawlenty (MN) and Luis…

A Message to Parents: How Families Contribute to College Costs

It’s early April and most students have received word from the colleges and universities to which they applied.  They – and their families – have reached one important marker on a road traveled that had detours, bumps, and occasional bad weather.  But, the visibility improved and the direction is clearer now. Congratulations to these applicants…

The Top Issues Facing Higher Education in 2014 and Beyond

Writing for Forbes, John Ebersole, the president of Excelsior College, has identifeid the following ten issues as the most significant issues facing higher education this year: 1. Cost. 2. Renewal of the Higher Education Act. 3. Workforce development. 4. Competency-based education. 5. Accreditation. 6. Assessment. 7. Quality assurance in non-institutional learning. 8. Recognition of the…

The Play's Only One Thing: Renewing the Relevance of Literary Studies

Marc Bousquet writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education of “The Moral Panic in Literary Studies” today. He believes that it stems from “loyalty to a pedagogy from the 1950s.” I think he’s right—and I’ve little sympathy for the handwringers. Though I do think that the shift in English Departments toward Rhetoric and Composition and Digital Humanities…

Go Philosophy! More Good News about a Liberal Arts Education

Pointed out in InsideHigherEd, and The Fiscal Times among several reports, a recent study from the Association for American College and Universities (AACU) stated that “liberal arts majors enjoy comparable long-term career prospects as students who obtain degrees in more “useful” fields. Students who study the liberal arts do about as well as most college…

Why Won’t President Obama Visit North Dakota?

  In August 2013, the National Journal published an article by Amy Harder that begins: “North Dakota is like an overachieving child who attracts the attention of everyone—except Dad. “The oil boom taking over western North Dakota and transforming America’s energy landscape has prompted visits from people around the world—Germany, Turkey, Japan, Dubai, and elsewhere—to…

Higher Education “Reform”: The Price Paid by the Next Generation of Students and Professors

An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ The increasing awareness of—and outrage about–the size of the debt crushing college graduates is, we must hope, a sign that meaningful action to address it may be possible. The numbers alone are staggering.  According to recent reports, the average…

Kent State University Announces Plans to Increase Dramatically the Number of Associates Degrees That It Grants

The Columbus Dispatch recently reported that Kent State University is planning to grant an associates degree to any student who completes 60 credit hours, or about half of the credit hours needed for most baccalaureate degrees. Apparently the university will create a generic associates degree for this purpose. In addition to its main campus in…

It’s All Too Easy to Keep Blaming the Professors

Houston’s KHOU reports that at Lonestar College students enrolled in an introduction to chemistry section were taught instead an advanced chemistry course. Apparently the mix-up was not discovered until almost the end of the semester, at which point almost every student in the course had a failing grade. The news report featured an student who…