The Student-Debt Crisis Is Real—the Result of Short-Term Ideological Choices and an Impediment to Solving Long-Term National Issues

The Progressive news site Nation of Change has today run an article titled “Four Charts with What Everyone Should Know about the Student Debt Crisis.” The full article is available at: http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/04/four-charts-with-what-everyone-should-know-about-the-student-debt-crisis/ I think that the most telling of the charts may be this one, which shows the incredible increase in government-backed student debt: The…

No Apology for Business

Benjamin Franklin includes  this list in his 1731 “Apology for Printers”: I request all who are angry with me on the Account of printing things they don’t like, calmly to consider these following Particulars That the Opinions of Men are almost as various as their Faces; an Observation general enough to become a common Proverb,…

Making the Case for Our Values

The following letter was published in the Toledo Blade this past week. It was written in response to a seemingly well intentioned and fairly thoughtful op-ed on the increasing tuition and fees being paid students and their families, which unfortunately suggested that faculty compensation and the leverage provided by unionization were among the main culprits:…

I Have Grown Fat Reading Poetry

But that is the fault of neither the poets nor their poems. (Except perhaps for one or two poems about delicious meals.) Truth be told, I would probably have gotten fat even if I were illiterate. Probably fatter. Poems are high-calorie brain food, but they so fire the mind that the calories burn off as…