Yesterday, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) spoke at The Heritage Foundation as part of National School Choice Week and to mark the release of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Report Card on American Education. The report ranks America’s K-12 schools in terms of performance and progress over the past year, as well as reforms and education policies. Senator DeMint says that in seeking to improve education, policymakers could take some lessons from the free market — a system that has served America well: “We were the only country that was …
Guess how many top-tier universities offer a course on Lady Gaga? Four! The University of Virginia, the University of South Carolina, Wake Forest University, and Arizona State University all now offer semester-long explorations of Lady Gaga’s apparently profound influence—since 2007—on music, fashion, and the LGBT lifestyle. Yet none of these universities requires students to take a course in U.S. history before graduation. Professors and faculty at top-ranked institutions are giving preference to frivolous classes at the expense of true education. In a new study by the National Association of Scholars, …
On Wednesday, President Obama is expected to make an announcement regarding student loan debt. He is expected to propose relief for students struggling to make student loan payments. While it’s unclear what exactly President Obama will propose, economist Richard Vedder calls the idea of student loan forgiveness “the second-worst idea ever—the worst was the creation of federally subsidized student loans in the first place.” And he’s right: It is unfair to forgive student loans on the backs of waitresses and construction workers and the nearly three-quarters of Americans who didn’t …
Anywhere else it would have been grounds for dismissal. But when J. Michael Bailey, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, allowed demonstrations with sex toys as a part of a course, he was immune to firing, let alone outside pressure, because he had tenure. That was just one of the examples author and former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Schaefer Riley gave while discussing the problems of university tenure in her talk “The Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For,” held Wednesday …
On Tuesday, Senator Mike Enzi (R–WY) took a stand against the Department of Education’s (DOE) assault on the for-profit college sector, walking out of a hearing on the DOE’s new regulations limiting access to higher education. The new “gainful employment” rule issued by the DOE on June 2 restricts access to student loans for students attending for-profit universities. Enzi noted in a statement released after the hearing: Many of these affected schools provide important training for those who choose to become mechanics, plumbers and electricians. This rule uses a heavy …
Among the speakers at this week’s Heritage Foundation Bloggers Briefing, the consensus was clear: College students could stand more exposure to conservative ideas. The inherent contradiction of the liberal political consensus among students is mystifying, the speakers said. American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin put it this way: “Young people have supported [President] Obama in droves, even though they’re at a point in their life when they’re typically most rebellious — and he is going to tell them how to run every part of their life.” “Why aren’t college students …
President Obama wants to see the U.S. lead the world in the number of college graduates by 2020. But new regulations being proposed by the Department of Education would undermine that goal by presenting more obstacles to students seeking to attend the higher education institutions that work best for them. For-profit institutions, which would be most affected by the new regulations, serve a student population that has been underserved by traditional higher education. New regulations pertaining to how colleges are authorized could potentially further burden higher education institutions generally and …
Across the country, college students are starting classes, but that does not mean they are receiving an education. The American Council for Trustees and Alumni’s latest report and website What Will They Learn reveals that most colleges and universities are not providing students a well-rounded education. Of the 719 colleges and universities analyzed in this report, only 16 institutions of higher education (that is, 2% of colleges) provide a coherent, content-rich general education or core curriculum. These few “A” rated schools require students to take courses in composition, literature, a …
President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan want the United States to lead the world in the percentage of people who graduate college by 2020, which will mean increasing by at least 8 million the number of students completing college over the next 10 years. President Obama noted in a speech yesterday that by “making college affordable … we’ll reach our goal of once again leading the world in college graduation rates by the end of this decade.” But new proposals for regulating the for-profit higher education industry outlined by …
The New York Times and Washington Post are reporting that an agreement has been reached to include a federal takeover of student loans as part of the forthcoming reconciliation package. The New York Times reports: Democratic Congressional leaders struck a tentative agreement on Thursday that breathes new life into President Obama’s proposed overhaul of federal student loan programs. The deal would bundle the bill into an expedited budget package along with the Democratic health care legislation, which would allow for both measures to be passed by the Senate on a …
