February 22, 2012, 5:20 pm
By Richard Kahlenberg
The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to hear a new challenge to affirmative action may be the beginning of the end of higher education’s heavy reliance on race in student admissions. As I argued in an article yesterday on Slate, given the conservative makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, a decision in the case, Fisher v. Texas, is likely to sharply curtail the ability of universities to use race in admissions.
But does that mean an end to diversity efforts? Not at all. In states where public institutions have been banned from using race by voter initiative or court order, colleges and universities have, to their credit, responded by instituting alternative forms of affirmative action – giving a leg up to economically disadvantaged students, for example, or admitting students in the top of their high-school class irrespective of SAT or ACT scores.
Some leading voices in higher …
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February 16, 2012, 11:57 am
By Peter Wood
At the end of December, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Teresa Wagner v. Carolyn Jones. The case involves a claim by Ms. Wagner that the University of Iowa’s College of Law had illegally discriminated against her in 2006 in violation of First Amendment rights when it turned her down for an appointment as a full-time instructional position in legal writing. The 8th Circuit overturned a district court ruling of “summary judgment” against Wagner, and allowed her claim to proceed to jury trial.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has followed the story since January 2009 and mentioned the appellate decision here, reversing an earlier declaration that “Court Clears U. of Iowa Dean of Political Bias in Hiring.” My fellow Chronicle blogger (and NAS board member) Mark Bauerlein commented on the case as well, linking the New York Times’ account. But unless you…
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February 15, 2012, 6:13 pm
By Peter Wood
The most conspicuous part of President Obama’s agenda for higher education is his plan for gigantic increases in enrollment. Obama announced this goal very early in his term. In February 2009, in a speech to a joint session of Congress he declared, “by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” Translated into actual enrollments, that would mean more than doubling the number of domestic students attending the nation’s colleges and universities.
Last week in Obama’s Higher-Education Agenda I said I would in a series of posts examine the eight majors components of that agenda, and then try to put them together as a whole. His dream of gargantuan expansion comes first both as first-announced and as the foundation for everything else.
The idea of gargantuan expansion did not pop out of the blue. Rather it popped out of the…
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February 14, 2012, 11:23 am
By Marybeth Gasman
I’ve been thinking about constructive criticism–the kind we give to graduate students or mentees–and how they receive it. Over the past few years I’ve noticed a bit of push back from students and mentees. My faculty friends and colleagues have told me they get the same kind of push back. Now, don’t misunderstand me, there is nothing wrong with push back–you have to stand up for what you believe. However, I’ve watched individuals struggle and have difficulty with their job search while neglecting to follow any of the advice their mentors have given them. Sometimes these students are headstrong. Other times they are convinced that they know what is best and that they know how to build a faculty career. Here are a few examples:
I have had students and mentees who present at academic conferences on a regular basis but they don’t publish the resulting papers. Many time…
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February 13, 2012, 5:14 pm
By Richard Kahlenberg
Today’s announcement by President Obama to create an $8-billion Community College to Career Fund to train 2 million workers is very welcome news. For years, community colleges have been asked to educate with the fewest funds those students with the greatest needs. According to a report of the Delta Cost Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, in 2009, the average community college spent roughly $10,000 per student, compared with almost $19,000 a year at public research universities and $41,000 a year at private research universities. Excluding research funding and other expenses and focusing exclusively on instruction, community colleges spent about $5,000 per pupil compared with $10,000 at public research universities and $20,000 at private research universities.
The president is politically smart to connect community-college funding directly to the nation’s need to boost…
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February 13, 2012, 4:27 pm
By Richard Vedder
Joe Biden admitted at a talk at Florida State University the other day that, yes, federal student-financial-assistance programs probably did contribute to rising college costs. That was newsworthy, and I suspect a statement that was not vetted by the White House (not the first Biden rhetorical faux pas from the Administration’s perspective.)
The Biden statement flies in the face of the generally perceived wisdom among supporters of the federal student-loan and grant programs, namely that these programs really have little impact on college costs. The Biden admission, however, implicitly agrees with those who argue the gains from these programs to college students are significantly dissipated by the fee-raising behavior of the schools enrolling the affected students.
Biden, in effect was embracing an idea first vocally proclaimed by Bill Bennett, then Secretary of Education, in 1987…
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February 12, 2012, 10:15 pm
By Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson
Struck by all the hoopla about the irrelevance of college education to success in our new world of technology, we decided to ask two talented research assistants from the Spencer Foundation, Charles Kurose and Amato Nocera, to look into the matter. Here, in their own words, is what they found.
In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Will Dropouts Save America?”, Michael Ellsberg gives an increasingly popular argument against a college education. The argument runs something like this: wildly successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs dropped out of college. They didn’t need a college degree or the kind of skills that are learned from textbooks or in the classroom: passion, creativity, and a revolutionary idea fueled their success and gave the world two of its greatest tech companies: Microsoft and Apple.
Although the anecdote about Gates and Jobs is true, the…
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February 12, 2012, 9:57 pm
By Marybeth Gasman
The Obama administration has been bold in its pursuit of higher-education goals. Most of us are familiar with President Obama’s 2020 goals – by 2020 he wants the United States to be first in the world in higher education. He wants every adult American to have at least one year of college or career training.
In order to meet the goal, the Obama administration has issued a Request for Information (RIF) aimed at gathering and disseminating strategies for improving retention and degree attainment. Throughout the country at myriad colleges and universities, there are superb practices for engaging students and ensuring their success. We often know what works but we fail to replicate positive approaches and strategies.
As most of the traction to meet the 2020 goals must take place at community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions,…
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February 9, 2012, 6:01 pm
By Richard Kahlenberg
Advocates and opponents of affirmative action have been eagerly waiting to see whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the use of race in admissions in the case of Fisher v. Texas. Many observers thought the Court would announce whether it would grant or deny a cert petition in the case last month, but the Court deferred a decision, leaving advocates on both sides hanging. A decision is expected some time after the Court returns from its winter recess next week.
In the meantime, major voices are weighing in on the case. Last month, Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger published an op-ed in the Washington Post urging the Supreme Court not to take the Fisher case. Soon after, the New York Times editorial board defended the status quo on affirmative action in a lead editorial. Both Bollinger and the Times editorial writers championed the importance of diversity …
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February 8, 2012, 12:28 pm
By Peter Wood
The ten miles between Rutgers in New Brunswick and Princeton (in Princeton) cover more than the distance between a large state university and the rarefied atmosphere of one of the nation’s top undergraduate institutions. Route 27 inches south, stoplight by stoplight, through a Mexican-American barrio (El Gallo Loco), a Guatamalan area (Productos Centros Americas), and a neighborhood built by refugees from the aborted Hungarian revolution of 1956 (the Magyar Bank is still in business). Then come long stretches of gray commercial sprawl which offer testimony to the efforts of numerous small-time entrepreneurs: Crandle Custom Car Cleaning, Meat Town, Quietly Kept Bail Bonds, D & J Fashionistas. Eventually Route 27 opens into broken countryside, with housing developments named to evoke Olde England (Whitehall Gardens, Somerset Mews, Carriage Run) but home to lots of upwardly mobile south…
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