Ever since the Newsweek cover story “The Trouble with Boys” by Peg Tyre, the “boy problem” in school has been a media subject. People have gone back and forth on the extent of the problem, for example, this counter-story in Time, but the college enrollment numbers are impossible to ignore.

According to the Department of Education (and covered by the Chronicle here), the total number of enrollments in 2004 of men was 7.3 million, of women 9.8 million, a 2.5 million gap. By 2014, the Department projects, the gap will reach 3.3 million.

When we look at degrees conferred, things look worse. The number of bachelor’s degrees in 2004 for men was 586,000, for women 814,000, a larger difference in...

One of the popular programs in college is a mandatory experience for every entering student. It’s the “one book” reading assignment in which freshmen read one book over the summer and discuss it in blogs and meetings during the year. A few stories have appeared on the subject (

As the kids making up the Class of 2011, the largest in history, left high school and entered college this semester, here are some of the courses they took to fulfill general requirements:

•At Brown, English 110 turned students into “sensitive and agile readers” by having them do “critical readings of television shows (Big Brother, Seinfeld, and Sex in the City), films (The Godfather, The Hours, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and even architectural spaces (Starbucks and the shopping mall).” A Comp Lit course on “Che Guevara: The Man and the Myths” “compare[s] the development of Guevara’s theories to posthumous uses of his work and image.”

•A section of English 111 at Wake Forest, “My Friend Flicka: Companion Species in American Culture,” examined the “intimate connection” between Americans and their pets. Darwin serves as a starting point, but gives way to “adored animals such as...

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, for every 100 ninth-graders, 68 graduate on time, and 40 of those go to college. But by the following year, 13 of them have dropped out. Why so many?

It is natural to examine the academic lives of students for answers — the kinds of courses they take, the skill and knowledge deficiencies, the emotional adjustments of freshman year. But we might look at their leisure habits, too, and the most important one is voluntary reading. Statistics from the Department of Education make the correlation between reading for pleasure and academic achievement crystal clear (see this document, pp.50-55). The more kids read on their own — anything, that is, not just classics and books — the...

I know someone who reads five different languages. Poetry is his passion, and he has translated works from Latin, Italian, German, and Romanian. He writes literary essays, too, some in national periodicals and some in little magazines, wielding knowledge of poetic tradition matched by few professors working in literary studies.

He never earned a doctorate, though. He entered a Comparative Literature program in the Ivy League but left after two years. Each day after classes ended, he remembers, the graduate students would drift outside for coffee and a cigarette. They huddled in twos and threes, shoulders stooped and faces drawn, voices muted. He mingled with them, joined the exchanges on Wallace Stevens, shied away from Derrida, then walked across the campus to his apartment. On the way, he passed by the business school and always paused, for the scene in front was entirely the...

The word “diversity” has acquired so many psychopolitical overtones and undertones that a reasoned and evidence-based discussion of diversity policies is nearly impossible in public settings. One way in which proponents of diversity policies have gotten around the tension is to assert as a proven fact that diversity produces better learning, with students in multiracial, multiethnic, multiregional etc. classrooms enjoying greater intellectual benefits than do those in mono-classrooms.

For instance, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion in the Michigan affirmative action case accepted that “numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes.” In that case, too, Michigan insisted vigorously on the “educational benefits” of affirmative action policies, and university administrators echo the assertion all the time.

Here’s a

When the AAUP issued its report on academic freedom last September, Taking Back the Classroom, lots of conservative critics weighed in with rebuttals (see here). But one group was strangely silent, and they are a large and vocal one most of the time.

I mean the folks who praise interdisciplinarity, who cast it as the better way, the opening of disciplines to innovative thinking and inquiry. And why should they have been distressed? Because the AAUP document defends disciplinary boundaries so urgently, treating disciplinarity as the best safeguard against critics of the professoriate. Indeed, it asserts over and over the role of disciplinarity in establishing truth and maintaining professional teaching standards:

•...

Are humanities professors still waiting for the “Next Big Idea”? That’s the title of a New York Times story from July 2001 that got a lot of circulation. The author, Emily Eakin, formerly of Lingua Franca, heralded Hardt and Negri’s tome Empire as the Grand Theory of the new decade, comparable to Levi-Strauss and Structuralism in the 60s and Derrida/Foucault in the 70s. She talked about Hardt as, possibly, “academia’s next master theorist,” his co-authored book “sending frissons of excitement through campuses from São Paulo to Tokyo.”

At the same time, though, the article pushed a skeptical reply, noting “the need in fields like English, history and philosophy for a major new theory.” In fact, it quoted one thoroughly deflating voice: “’‘Literary theory has been dead for 10 years,” said...

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) has received a lot of attention lately, partly because of the rise of accountability in higher ed discussions. It asks students questions about their workload, homework hours, papers written, contact time with profs, etc.

It also asks a lot of questions about leisure activities, and a few of the results are particularly depressing. In 2006, when asked if they “Attended an art exhibit, gallery, play, dance, or other theater performance,” seniors replied:

Never: 31 percent

Sometimes: 45 percent

Often: 15 percent

Very often: 9 percent

A feeble outcome, expecially considering how much the average campus provides in arts offerings, much of it free.

And when asked about “Number of books read on your own (not assigned) for personal enjoyment of academic enrichment,” seniors scored:

None: 20 percent

1-4: 54 percent

5-...

Last week the Modern Language Association issued a report on enrollments in foreign language courses. The authors found reason for optimism, noting that enrollments jumped 12.9 percent from 2002 to 2006. Spanish gained by 10.3 percent, Arabic 126 percent, while French inched forward 2.2 percent, German 3.5.

These are absolute numbers, though, and they don’t look quite so strong given that total U.S. student enrollments went from 16.61 million in 2002 to 17.65 million in 2006.

And if we extend the comparison further back, it looks a lot less so. When the authors calculate language-course enrollments per 100 total enrollments, they come up with 8.6 in 2006, a solid gain over 2002 (8.1) and a larger one over 1995 (7.7). But back in 1965, the ratio was 16.5 language enrollments for every 100 enrollments. That...