The Limitations of Simple Solutions to Complex Problems: Degree Attainment in Indiana

Writing for the Indianapolis Business Journal, J. K. Wall has reported: “Indiana’s public colleges and universities, spurred by pressure from state lawmakers, are pumping out more graduates than ever. “But in spite of a 20-percent increase in degrees granted since 2010, the education level of Indiana’s younger adults has barely budged, for reasons that aren’t…

Some Guarded Good News from Ohio—When Any Good News Is Certainly Worth Celebrating

This post is an elaboration on a message that was sent to the members of our chapter at Wright State University, which itself was collaboratively drafted and developed from a message distributed by the chapter leadership at the University of Cincinnati. (In these kinds of things, it is “collaboration” and “sharing,” not “plagiarism.”) We have…

Sound-Bite Pronouncements on the Present and Future State of Higher Education

Janet Napolitano, the President of the University of California system recently wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post in which she argued that, despite the challenges created by unprecedented cuts in state support for public higher education, it is a gross exaggeration to assert that American higher education is in crisis. Scott H. Levine,…

You Cannot Cite Data That Does Not Exist

This past week, Bill O’Reilly cited, for the second time, statistics that supposedly show that more Whites than African-Americans are killed by police. Although he framed the discussion of these statistics by stating that he was in no way condoning the recent police shooting of an unarmed African-American man in North Charleston, South Carolina, he…

Thomas Perez on the Uneven Economic Recovery, Income Inequality, and the Need for Strong Labor Unions

This is a carefully prepared, persuasive, and at times eloquent speech. It would have been nice if such speeches had been given more consistently at the beginning of the Obama presidency, instead of at the tail end of it, and if they had reflected a broader and louder political focus on protecting and promoting labor rights.…

Getting It Right and Getting It Wrong on the “Real Costs” of Higher Education

In the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, Paul F. Campos has offered his opinion on “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much.” [The whole piece is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0] Campos argues that attributing the rise in tuition costs to reductions in state funding is a fairy tale that administrators have been…

Gay Marriage Religious Freedom, and the Public Discourse

The discussion of the “religious freedom” laws in Indiana, Arkansas, and elsewhere has been seriously skewed by a failure to look very much, if at all, beyond the specific examples offered to justify the laws. This issue is not really about Christian fundamentalist florists or restaurant owners having to provide services to gay couples who…