BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE For ten years before I retired at the end of 2021, I regularly taught a course called Corporate Power in America. The course examined how corporations shape politics, culture, and everyday life in the United States. I sometimes used my own university, North Carolina State, as an example of how corporate partnerships…
BY JEFFREY SOMMERS A half century back, as noted in the fall 2020 Academe article I coauthored, “A Marshall Plan for Rebuilding Higher Education,” the United States began its retreat from public investments that had originally made it the world’s premier power. No longer wishing, or even thinking it possible, to retain its position of…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Many public research universities face a dilemma: how to balance a commitment to educate in-state students with the value that out-of-state applicants contribute to the university. As Nick Anderson illustrates recently in the Washington Post, the facts are clear. Public (and private) research universities contribute mightily to a state’s economy, providing a…
In last week’s iteration of his syndicated column, Robert Reich takes on college rankings. After noting that the Obama administration has decided to give up on the idea of providing some sort of federal rankings to U.S. colleges and universities, Reich describes the most widely promoted college guide, that produced by U.S. News and World…