College

For students and society, the answer is a resounding "yes!"

The Scrapbook picks on the New York Times quite a lot. Maybe too much. But it’s hard not to. We so often find fatuous and preposterous material that we simply cannot help passing it along to our readers. One such item appeared in the August 16 edition of the paper—or so we thought. Headlined…

Plus, the phone booth baby finds his mom.

Obama officials wanted to shut down for-profit colleges altogether. They almost did.

Plus, don't let the kids run social if you're a serious organization.

Alice B. Lloyd's reunion.

Plus, when 'all you can eat' goes wrong.

We read the big speeches so that you don’t have to.

Liberals and progressives sometimes complain that Republicans win more elections, and they do. But cheer up, lefties—you’ve got a lock on the nation’s elite colleges. The thought occurred to us when we read through Homogeneous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty, a new…

It's not that I agreed with their ideas. It's that they encouraged me to think.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Kids used to goof off by playing video games instead of doing their homework. Today, Junior might want to hone those gaming skills—some colleges are now trying to recruit “athletes” in what are euphemistically called “e-sports.”

Every week brings news of some fresh campus absurdity—tenured professors saying and doing idiotic things, students cursing and attacking speakers while college authorities do nothing about it, schools proudly denying students due process. When news circulated recently that Penn State has forbidden…

Colleges foster smugness on the left and resentment on the right.

The Trump era, if nothing else, has shown that ideological alignments can be fluid and inconsistent. So fiscal conservatives can find themselves backing massive deficits, while evangelicals hand out mulligans for presidential payoffs to porn stars. But even by those fluctuating standards, the…

Press coverage of the acquittal of former Yale student Saifullah Khan on sexual assault charges has distorted the facts of case, jurors say. Khan’s case—an alleged campus sexaul assault that triggered a police investigation and worked its way to criminal court—concerns an encounter between the now…

The numbers are staggering: CBS and Time Warner together pay close to $1 billion a year for the broadcast rights to March Madness. ESPN pays $470 million a year to air the College Football Playoffs and related bowls. Nick Saban will make $11 million to coach the Alabama football team next year—and…

A few months ago in these pages, our Ethan Epstein rhapsodized about his alma mater, Reed College (“My Old School,” November 10). He praised its rigorous academics and one particular course, the decades-old mandatory freshman humanities class that covers ancient Greece, Rome, and the Bible. Because…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Andy Ferguson and Adam Rubenstein discuss "white and black," the craziness raging on college campuses, identity politics, and manufactured controversy targeting Bari Weiss.

“Anthropology 212: Cultural Freedoms: Hate Speech, Blasphemy, and Pornography,” a course on freedom of expression at Princeton University has been “reluctantly” cancelled, Professor Lawrence Rosen informed his students in an email obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Rosen’s email, sent at 2:07 p.m. on…

Day Zero approaches in Cape Town. This Guardian feature about the water crisis in South Africa is fascinating.

A recent study of abuses in for-profit postsecondary education highlights a reputational disparity within American higher education. For-profit programs and colleges are distrusted and maligned. Their proven value to populations for whom traditional college is out of reach and the various…

A recent study of abuses in for-profit post-secondary education highlights a reputational disparity within American higher education. For-profit programs and colleges are distrusted and maligned. Their proven value to populations for whom traditional college is out of reach and various good-faith…

Imagine being repudiated by Stephen Bannon, the most repudiated man since Rasputin. Any ordinary person would feel obliged to slink off to the remotest mountains of Madagascar, never to be heard from again. But Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart News blogger whom Bannon disowned as a colleague 15…

Sometimes The Scrapbook thinks that the D.C. city government exists solely so that Congress won’t be the most incompetent political entity in Washington. We’re no strangers to writing about the effects of terrible regulations, and we really have to give D.C. credit for cooking up this one: The city…

It's long been publicly understood that the International Olympic Committee is a den of jobbery and payoffs. Which only raises the question, just how corrupt does an Olympic team have to be to get the IOC to sit in judgment of them?

I used to despise the relative obscurity of my alma mater, Reed College. The name of the Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school has spurred more than a few quizzical looks in Washington when I’ve mentioned it. “Reed? Where’s that?” This has been a persistent source of chagrin and insecurity about my…

In November 2014, a female member of Brown University’s debate team had oral sex with a male colleague while they watched a movie. Eleven months later, she filed a complaint with Brown, accusing him of sexual assault.

A witness called before the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on campus anti-Semitism is drawing fire from pro-Israel groups for defending comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany and downplaying the targeting of Jewish students.

It was just a few weeks ago that The Scrapbook was goggling over new policies at Middlebury College regarding speakers appearing on the campus. Under the “Interim Procedures for Scheduling Events and Invited Speakers,” potentially controversial invitees have to be cleared by the school’s Threat…

We take a backseat to no one in deploring the effects that social media have on our culture. However, sometimes they provide people platforms to announce to the world that they possess dangerous and/or idiotic beliefs. This can be useful.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on September 22 formally rescinded the Obama administration’s commands that universities use unfair rules in sexual-misconduct investigations—rules that had the effect of finding more students guilty of sexual assault. And she appears also to be preparing for far…

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on September 22 formally rescinded the Obama administration’s commands that universities use unfair rules in sexual-misconduct investigations—rules that had the effect of finding more students guilty of sexual assault. And she appears also to be preparing for far…

How bad is grade inflation in the humanities? So bad that when U.S. News & World Report issued its annual college rankings last week, it gave more credit to schools for graduating students in math and the hard sciences than it did in other disciplines. According to the publication’s press release:…

Middlebury College wants to prevent future violence of the sort visited on professor Allison Stanger by thugs trying to keep author Charles Murray from delivering a lecture. The ever-so-brave administrators’ solution? Don’t let anyone talk who might be the target of violence.

How bad is grade inflation in the humanities? So bad that when U.S. News & World Report issued its annual college rankings last week, it gave more credit to schools for graduating students in math and the hard sciences than it did in other disciplines. According to the publication’s press release:…

When is a college acceptance letter not a college acceptance letter? When a school suddenly realizes that it has 800 more freshmen than it knows what to do with. This is what happened last month at the University of California, Irvine, which—in an effort to reduce that number—started rescinding…

When is a college acceptance letter not a college acceptance letter? When a school suddenly realizes that it has 800 more freshmen than it knows what to do with. This is what happened last month at the University of California, Irvine, which—in an effort to reduce that number—started rescinding…

The Delta Sigma Phi fraternity chapter at the University of Michigan had what it thought was a delightful theme—antiquity on the Nile—for a party kicking off the school year. They invited guests to come as a “mummy, Cleopatra, or King Tut, it doesn’t matter to us. Get your best ancient Egyptian…

In mid-October 1956 I became a visitor to the Middle Ages: I matriculated at Oxford. Robed in gown and white tie (mysteriously called “sub-fusc"), I stood with other freshmen before the celebrated classicist Sir Maurice Bowra, who intoned ritual sentences of Anglo-Latin (no broad "A"s) and we…

The Trump Education Department’s plan to change the Obama administration’s policy on campus rape accusations—a policy that has helped expel countless students who were innocent of any sex crime—set off a frenzied attack by interest groups. In joining this attack, major media outlets have continued…

The Trump Education Department’s plan to change the Obama administration’s policy on campus rape accusations—a policy that has helped expel countless students who were innocent of any sex crime—set off a frenzied attack by interest groups. In joining this attack, major media outlets have continued…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, Preston Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute joins host Eric Felten to find out why, whether good times or bad, the price of college tuition keeps going up.

Free speech may have become a vanishingly rare thing on university campuses, but it turns out that at least one variety of free speech is still protected: T-shirt marijuana advocacy.

Protesting political commencement speakers—presidents past and present, former or current Cabinet members who wax platitudinous on graduation day—is not a new phenomenon. SoVice President Mike Pence knew what he was walking into at Notre Dame last weekend. He came prepared. And while he condemned…

It's that time of year again: Graduating high school students, consumed by "senioritis," are making that all-important decision of which college or university they will attend. And their parents, consumed by anxiety, are aghast at the ever-growing cost of higher education.

It's that time of year again: Graduating high school students, consumed by "senioritis," are making that all-important decision of which college or university they will attend. And their parents, consumed by anxiety, are aghast at the ever-growing cost of higher education.

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, reporter Alice B. Lloyd discusses her recent story "There Is No Easy Way to Clean Up Obama's Title IX Mess."

That liberals run American universities is never going to be a man-bites-dog news headline, but the urgent question ought to be: When are university liberals going to stand up and defend liberalism?

On April 20 I posted about what I called a "simmering, occasionally boiling cauldron of ethnic self-pity, social-justice terrorism, whines about homework, and calls for the abolition of free speech" at the five ultra-elite Claremont Colleges in Southern California. I focused on news accounts about…

To restore free expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas to censorious college campuses, the nation's liberal thought leaders will have to admit we have a problem on our hands. Events of this week presented some encouraging signs that they're getting closer. While restless campuses erupted…

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren voiced her opinion on the controversy behind conservative pundit Ann Coulter's visit to the University of California, Berkeley.

Today in the Daily Standard podcast, editor-at-large Bill Kristol says Berkeley's free-speech failures are giving liberalism a bad name, while Donald Trump's foreign policy is putting many traditional Republicans in a good mood. Kristol also recounts his Coulter-esque ​​experience of getting "pied"…

I’m riveted by the case of the Coastal Carolina cheerleaders.

Three weeks after a coalition of professors publicly defended their right to censor Title IX naysayer and feminist intellectual Laura Kipnis, a Wellesley News editorial has caught viral flak from civil libertarians, conservatives, copy editors, and other sensible sorts for its clumsy defense of…

In the fall of 1977—40 years ago now, when we were freshmen at Georgetown—four of us climbed up to steal the hands off the clock on the tower of Healy Hall, 150 feet or so above the quad.

In the fall of 1977—40 years ago now, when we were freshmen at Georgetown—four of us climbed up to steal the hands off the clock on the tower of Healy Hall, 150 feet or so above the quad.

Allison Stanger, the Middlebury College professor who ended up in a neck brace after protests at the private Vermont institution spiraled out of control, wrote a piece in the New York Times Monday reflecting on the mob scene that transpired.

An appearance by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray at Middlebury College was violently disrupted last week, as Jenna Lifhits reported in these pages. Now, Murray has recounted his experience:

The violent mob protest that greeted Charles Murray's appearance at Middlebury College on March 2 grew out of several days of agitation.

I recently sent an email to the editor of the London Times Literary Supplement complaining about his running a longish lead article by a lunatic-of-one-idea feminist who would cite misogyny as the explanation for the behavior of Lady Macbeth, Lucretia Borgia, and the Wicked Witch of the West. He…

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with reporter Alice Lloyd on how Trump can thank Obama for the ability to defund so-called 'sanctuary campuses.'

One more unforeseen consequence of Donald Trump's election victory: College students who have been spending too much time at binge drinking or television watching now have a handy excuse for not turning in that required paper on time or for being unprepared for that exam. They can blame it on the…

Students at American University burned flags in protest of Donald Trump's election victory Wednesday.

A number of U.S. universities are giving students ample room to grieve in the wake of Donald Trump's election victory Wednesday.

Precious college snowflakes at the University of Michigan-Flint can get the help they need following Hillary Clinton's stunning presidential loss.

Pippa Passes, Ky.

The organizers of an anti-Israel conference held over the weekend at George Mason University restricted press access only to "movement outlets" that support economic warfare against the Jewish State, according to statements provided to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by a media coordinator for the event.

Pippa Passes, Ky.

Students at George Mason University awoke Monday morning to a three-paragraph message warning them that they will not be coddled on campus.

"Zach Wood may look black but as far as I'm concerned, he's white." This was one of many disparaging comments posted on Yik Yak when I invited Charles Murray to speak at Williams College last spring.

"Zach Wood may look black but as far as I’m concerned, he's white." This was one of many disparaging comments posted on Yik Yak when I invited Charles Murray to speak at Williams College last spring.

The Department of Education's proposal to broaden the existing borrower defense to repayment rule will give college students new grounds to sue their schools for loan forgiveness. Underemployed grads and downtrodden dropouts can claim they were misled and never got their federally loaned money's…

In his convocation address on Monday, Northwestern University president Morton Schapiro told wide-eyed freshmen that anyone who dares oppose trigger warnings, or who belittles the pain of those microaggressed, is an "idiot" and a "lunatic."

Over at The Tower, San Diego State University student Anthony Berteaux describes the experience of two Jewish undergraduates who attended the University of California's Students of Color Conference—a self-branded "safe space"—only to be met with overpowering anti-Semitism.

At the end of August, incoming University of Chicago freshmen received a letter from dean of students Jay Ellison, accompanied by a short monograph by a Chicago history professor on academic freedom. The letter, in part, read:

A few cheeky tweets took down the chairman of the board of trustees at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Self-styled student activists started an online shame campaign last week, which led insurance executive and Ursinus alumnus Michael Marcon to quit the board chairmanship on…

At the end of August, incoming University of Chicago freshmen received a letter from dean of students Jay Ellison, accompanied by a short monograph by a Chicago history professor on academic freedom. The letter, in part, read:

What exactly is the ideology that dominates American campuses today, and is increasingly influential off campus? This ideology is clearly intolerant of dissent, but what it actually affirms is so unclear that administrators, faculty, students, and outside speakers are often taken by surprise when…

Among the worst demographic groups for Donald Trump are college graduates and young people. A recent CNN poll, for instance, found that just 25 percent of voters under 30 say they're voting for the Republican nominee—far below the average of 38 percent GOP candidates have received with this group…

A bill targeting California's religious colleges was effectively declawed on Wednesday, after sustained vocal opposition from legal scholars, lawmakers, faith leaders, and university presidents.

Among several things Alexander Astin’s impassioned new study sets in italics is this disconcerting observation: "Most of the students who end up in college are [about] average or even below average." That is, the main business of most colleges and universities is educating average or below average…

A rule of thumb for researchers: If you create a super-smart algorithm to determine, say, the best movie of 2015, and you come back with Mortdecai, that might be a sign that there's something wrong with your research methods—not that the American people inexplicably failed to appreciate the genius…

Two scholars responsible for the prevalence of the neologism "microaggression" told The Chronicle of Higher Education they're sorry for how their research has been misused to end conversations. A microaggression is a minor, unintentional, yet nonetheless punishable offense in liberal social circles…

Mapping out the micro-aggressions minefield may have seemed like a good move amidst the plague of protests at University of Missouri's Columbia campus last fall. But they were bound to miss some: Sure enough Mizzou's glossary of inclusive language has failed to meet its own standards for inclusion.

National Police Week, centered on Peace Officers Memorial Day, has come around every mid-May since President Kennedy dedicated the yearly remembrance "in honor of those peace officers who, through their courageous deeds, have lost their lives or have become disabled in the performance of duty."

Since the New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof has been the butt of Scrapbook humor on -occasion—indeed, was once the subject of a Parody—it's only fair that we give Mr. Kristof credit when credit is due. We're referring, in this instance, to his recent Sunday Times column entitled "A…

Free speech and the tax code are two topics not generally associated with each other. When it comes to university speech codes, however, the two are more related than one might think. That's why the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee held its first 2016 hearing on…

The Scrapbook is old enough to remember without fondness the astounding spectacle of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1987 leading Stanford University students chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!" The witless infantilism of the chant perfectly encapsulated its substantive content:…

Young voters love Bernie Sanders. According to entrance and exit polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders beat Hillary Clinton among voters under 30 by nearly six-to-one.

Another college president has caved. After months of protests at Ithaca College alleging campus leaders are indifferent to racism, President Tom Rochon announced in January he would be stepping down before the end of his contract.

While things on college campuses are less chaotic and violent than they were a few months ago, make no mistake—sanity has not been restored. We got fresh evidence of that when the University of Oregon, in the middle of renovating their student center, debated removing a quotation from Martin Luther…

Since the arrival of Christmas break and J-Term, the screaming campus hordes of November have largely gone the way of summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. The dropping temperatures transform outdoor protests into events suitable only for those of the most iron resolve. Still, there are…

The latest Conversations With Bill Kristol features former Harvard president Larry Summers:

A panel on “Grappling with Campus Rape" was part of the "Hot Topic" program at the American Association of Law Schools annual meeting, held January 6-10 in midtown Manhattan. Indeed, that issue has been the focus of particularly intense polemics in academia. A number of law professors, even some…

As college campuses shut down for winter break, the Maoist insanity that gripped American higher education this fall hit a new high-water mark. At Harvard, little laminated posters began appearing in the student dining halls with instructions on how students should discuss sensitive political…

While the campus grievance mongers cry for Justice! and continue their drive for power and safe spaces, I note an extraordinary story in the latest issue of Stanford, the bimonthly magazine of the Stanford Alumni Association. Take this in very slowly:

In this week's magazine, I have a long piece about the campus protests that engulfed colleges across the country this fall. The story is by turns absurd, comedic, and worrisome.

The College Football Playoff Selection Committee's 4-team playoff field generated very little controversy this season, but the process—and the rankings that it yielded—raised two concerns for future seasons.

At the University of Missouri, feminist professor Melissa Click cried out “I need some muscle over here!” to expel a reporter from the Concerned Student 1950 protest in a public quad. A more apt encapsulation of what conservatives feel ails academia—identity obsession, rights-curbing,…

Next month the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, one of the most important cases this term. In 2008 Fisher, a white high school senior in Texas, applied for admission to the university and was turned down. She sued the school, claiming that its…

The Obama administration—easily the most ideologically progressive in modern American history—has been accompanied by both liberal triumphalism and liberal outrage.

When a flying wedge of Black Lives Matter activists called the Black Justice League invaded and occupied the president's office at Princeton University in late November, they issued the standard list of nonnegotiable demands. And as might be expected, Princeton's president Christopher L. Eisgruber…

No round-up of campus lunacy this week would be complete without a mention of the farcical incident at Vanderbilt University. It was described so well by our colleague Michael Warren at weeklystandard.com (which you should visit often!) that The Scrapook is simply going to reprint his account.

Readers are no doubt aware of the spreading contagion of public demonstrations—largely under the rubric of “Black Lives Matter”—that has agitated campuses from coast to coast. Thanks to modern electronic technology, the spectacle of a Yale college master being cursed to his face (“Who the f— hired…

Having a decidedly anti-romantic view of college, I find myself not entirely opposed to the student radicals besieging campuses across the country.

Finally there’s a protest by campus radicals The Scrapbook can sympathize with. Students at Princeton want to remove the name of the school’s most famous alumnus, President Woodrow Wilson, most notably from the university’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs. Students…

We have yet to find a term for the student protests going on across the country that beats Mona Charen’s “snowflake fascists” and last week the precious little Maoists at Princeton got the biggest scalp since Tim Wolfe: They brought down Woodrow Wilson himself.

As you may have heard, the denizens of Princeton University are in a tizzy over the fact that the school's most famous alum, former president Woodrow Wilson, was a racist. This hasn't exactly been a secret all these years, but college students have apparently run out of more relevant things to be…

For decades, the American university system has been creeping towards both moral and intellectual bankruptcy. But the events last week at Yale and the University of Missouri suggest we are reaching a tipping point, and that campus culture is transitioning from painfully idiotic to wantonly…

Over the past few weeks, students at universities across America have been throwing temper tantrums at the prospect of free speech and open dialogue. On Tuesday, John Kerry justified the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and differentiated it from the Paris attacks, by saying there was "a rationale that you…

Readers are no doubt aware of the spreading contagion of public demonstrations—largely under the rubric of “Black Lives Matter”—that has agitated campuses from coast to coast. Thanks to modern electronic technology, the spectacle of a Yale college master being cursed to his face (“Who the f— hired…

Democrats have won votes by alleging that Republican positions amount to a "war on women." Yet politicians and pundits are now saying that a constellation of liberal policies favored by Democrats, on issues ranging from entitlements and healthcare to education and the economy, constitutes a war on…

Every few years in the Northeast, biologist John Cooley gets famous—because he’s the man who discovered the mating secrets of one of the insect world’s weirdest and most-publicized species: Magicicada septendecim, the 17-year cicada. True to their name, and unlike the bottle-green “annual” cicadas…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on The Self-Destruction of the American University.

A thought-provoking email in response to my editorial, "The Self-Destruction of the American University:"

The president of Purdue University has sent a campus-wide email reminding students and faculty of the school's commitment to its "shared values" of being a "welcoming, inclusive, and discrimination-free community" while also remaining "steadfast in preserving academic freedom and individual…

In August 2012, two rapes by unknown assailants were reported at Harvard University, sending the school into crisis. Police cruisers idled around the campus; uniformed and plainclothes officers came out in force. Students were advised not to walk alone. A member of the undergraduate council called…

The Scrapbook’s expectations of student journalists are not super high (we were one once ourselves, and we had a lot to learn). So we’re always pleased when they rise to the occasion. One who did was Bryan Stascavage, a staff writer for the Wesleyan Argus, who published a column last month mildly…

On a crazy college football Saturday that saw Michigan State pull out about the most improbable win since Stanford’s band came onto the field against Cal 33 years ago, the LSU Tigers beat previously undefeated Florida and claimed the top spot in the Anderson & Hester Rankings.  In three weeks, the…

In his weekly address on September 12, President Obama touted the Department of Education’s new “College Scorecard,” the latest, greatest tool to help high school students and their families make informed (dare we say educated?) decisions when picking a college. The website offers students a means…

Amy Kass was a great reader of George Eliot; she also had the sympathetic imagination so prized by the author of Middlemarch. Even in the difficult, yet beautiful, final weeks in hospice care, Amy found the generous strength to study the novel’s opening pages with her oldest granddaughter, raising…

Nearly everyone recognizes that student debt has risen to a level that will be difficult to sustain, given the nation’s slow-growing economy and the sagging incomes of too many college-­educated Americans. Nearly 40 million Americans carry some form of student debt; more than 7 million are in…

Charlottesville, Va.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell addressed the topic of higher education at a Shelby County Chamber of Commerce membership luncheon. Joe Arnold, political editor for WHAS-TV, tweeted some quotes from McConnell during the event. 

On Monday, Hillary Clinton is unveiling her solution to college debt. The solution is nothing new — it makes taxpayers pick up the bill.

Here are hot tips to help (1) libertarian and conservative students, (2) idealistic liberal female students, and (3) idealistic liberal male students navigate the bizarre world of safe spaces, othering, microaggressions, trigger warnings, alarming victimization statistics, and all the other…

Washington Post reporter Nick Anderson’s response to our June 16 critique of his (and three of his colleagues’) very long front-page articles on June 12 as misleading readers about campus sexual assault is revealing, both for what it says and for what it does not.

At last, a little good news from the academy. Oberlin College has a sense of humor -- or at least its choir does. I don’t know that the subversive (by Oberlin standards!) song they've perormed has a title, but it might well be “Please Don’t Put Me In the Real World.”

Peter Jacobs of Business Insider reports:

Attraction. Pleasure. Attachment. Reproduction. Fulfillment. What is the meaning of sex? The answer lies somewhere in the way we integrate the biological imperatives with the emotional and experiential realities. I’m not going to improve on that answer in the next few pages, but I’ll complicate it…

Every spring, thousands of American higher learning institutions and tens of thousands  of high schools send their graduates off with a commencement ceremony. A centerpiece of the event, as old as American education itself, is the commencement speech. At their best, these speeches furnish students…

Now that the liberals who were once insurgent voices in the undergraduate student body are the presidents and deans of American universities, they’ve decided it is high time for those universities to reevaluate their outdated devotion to freedom of speech.  The proper modern university, they…

Start with those old enough to be graduating from law school. The law business ain’t exactly what it used to be -- so hungry for new lawyers that anyone with a law degree could find work and earn enough to start chipping away at his or her student loan, unless responding to government incentives to…

A front-page story in Tuesday’s Washington Post examines former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s record on ending affirmative action for college admissions. Through a 2000 executive order, Bush banned racial preferences in Florida’s public universities and colleges. The move was controversial at the…

If anyone was unsure of the veracity of Rolling Stone's account of an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, the final nail is now in the story's coffin. Sunday night, the Columbia School of Journalism released its much anticipated blistering report on the magazine's November…

"I can’t have you participate in class anymore.”

It was a story perfectly designed for the new journalism model of “outrage clicks.”

If you pay any attention to the ways in which radicalism dominates the culture of the university these days, you're likely to feel as though you've gone through the looking glass. "White privilege." "Trigger warnings." "Rape culture." All of this (and much else) has turned academia into a bizarre,…

A Jewish fraternity at Vanderbilt University has been the target of apparent anti-Semitic vandalism. The Vanderbilt Hustler reports:

The country’s incoming college students have been exhorted, repeatedly, to major in something “useful,” rather than something intellectual. The idea is that there is a split between “useful” majors, which teach a specific skill (like marketing, computer science, or architecture) and “useless”…

Encouraged by Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin mocked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her Ivy League degree in remarks posted to Kelly's Facebook page.

The president is proposing more higher education (at the community college level) as a cure for our economic woes.  Along with some substantial tax increases, of course.  But is more college the answer?  Or should we, perhaps, be concerned about the quality of the college we already have when, as…

While we earlier estimated the cost of President Obama's "free" community college to be around $34 billion, the White House has finally released its own estimate: $60 billion. 

 Previewing an item from his upcoming State of the Union address, President Obama announced a "Free Community College" plan Thursday evening for "anyone who's willing to work for it":

Know a college student interested in political philosophy, economic policy, or the study of war? Encourage them to apply to the Hertog Foundation's summer fellowships where they can learn from an outstanding faculty, including some names that will be familiar to WEEKLY STANDARD readers -- Bill…

While college football fans were riveted to the two playoff games on New Year’s Day (make that one-and-a-half playoff games, as the second half of the Rose Bowl was hardly must-see T.V.), some commentators could hardly wait to seize the moment to criticize the Bowl Championship Series (BCS),…

Not a lot of good news coming out of Michigan these last few years.  Detroit went broke, people left the state for Texas and other places where they could find jobs, and the University of Michigan football team could not seem to beat Ohio State.

Last week the White House released a first draft for what it ultimately intends to be a report card for the nation’s colleges. And there’s no way this effort will improve the lot of the typical college student.

Most college football fans are happy that the sport has adopted a 4-team playoff.  The method of selecting those four teams, however, is another matter.  This past offseason, McLaughlin & Associates asked self-described college football fans this question:  “As you may know, college football will…

A few hours before kickoff, my wife and daughter and I went to Gladys Knight’s place in Atlanta for the chicken and waffles (can’t recommend the “Midnight Special” enough) and the room was full.  It seemed like every third table was occupied by people wearing crimson or orange.  When they caught…

For the past decade, the Bowl Championship Series unfailingly provided the matchup for college football’s national title game that reflected the public consensus.  (In the six years prior to that, the BCS’s record was spottier, but after 2003-04, its formula was wisely streamlined, and its…

With just two weeks to go before it announces its 4-team playoff field, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee is underrating teams from the two strongest conferences — the Southeastern and Pac-12 — and overrating those from the other three major conferences—the Big 12, Big Ten, and…

Does this week’s battle between Mississippi State and Alabama involve the nation’s #1 and #3 teams, or #1 and #5?  Well, it depends whether you ask the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee or the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings.  Pretty much across the board, the former has a…

A candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, after a debate with his opponent, said that:

When the College Board released a revised framework for Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH), it ignited controversy. Conservative critics objected that the standards evinced a fixation with identity politics, a bias against free enterprise, and a clear partisan preference. Liberal defenders…

In 2009, Bryce Harper—then a sophomore at Las Vegas High School and already the best high school baseball player in the nation—made the unusual and controversial decision to forgo his final two years of high school, on the grounds that there was simply no effective competition for him at that…

Half of this college football regular season (7 of 14 weeks) is now in the books, and neither of the two standout teams to date has won a conference championship, let alone a national championship, in the past half-century.  Each played in a bowl game in Tennessee last year (the Music City Bowl and…

The Council of the Princeton University Community voted on Monday to gut due process for students accused of sexual misconduct. The week before last it was the turn of the faculty to genuflect as the hearse bearing the remains of due process rolled past. This unsavory episode highlights two parlous…

The Factual Feminist warns that a “little army of junior assistant deans and harassment apparatchiks are quietly repealing the free speech protections of the First Amendment.”

Florida Polytechnic “University” (it isn’t accredited) is making headlines this week by opening a bookless library. Instead of checking out traditional codex books, students will be forced to read class material on tablets, e-readers, and/or laptops. According to the middle-aged librarians and…

The University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus has decided it won’t be involved in the White Privilege Conference anymore. Since 2007 the campus’s Matrix Center for Social Equity and Inclusion, directed by UCCS sociology professor Abby Ferber, had lent the controversial conference some…

This week the Factual Feminist takes on the “rape culture” panic that is riling college campuses with help from the media, radical feminists, and too many politicians. Just as in the shameful panic over alleged child abuse at day care centers that sent innocent people to prison in the 1980s, false…

More signs that the dynamism that once characterized the American economy is waning:

Steve Hayes, with Kirsten Powers and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

This is not a good time to be young in America, and soon it will be less so.  The generation that elected President Obama will see the price of that college education which was supposed to open so many doors go up. As Janet Lorin of Bloomberg reports:

Charles Murray says an event he was scheduled to speak at was postponed at the last minute because the university was worried about "hurting our faculty and students of color." The event was supposed to take place tomorrow at Azusa Pacific University.

Attorney General Eric Holder tells the Huffington Post that he had "youthful experimentation" of marijuana. In other words, he smoked pot in college.

As Lori Lowenthal Marcus notes, Brandeis University has in recent years bestowed an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, who called the creation of Israel as a Jewish state “a mistake” and who attacked Israel for ethnic cleansing and for causing “terrible peril in the world.” Brandeis has also…

As Paul M. Barrett at Businessweek writes:

Has there ever been a better season of college football?  The final game of the Bowl Championship Series, which ranks among the finest ever played, further confirms what has been clear for some time:  This is the golden age of college football. 

It was only 10:30 a.m., and already, we were too cold to move, let alone get out of our SUV to tailgate. We’d been parked outside Notre Dame’s football stadium in South Bend, Indiana, in the alumni lot for more than two and half hours, ahead of the university’s last home game of the year against…

Everyone’s angry at American colleges. Parents groan about tuition, students pile up debt and can’t find work, employers gripe that graduates lack job skills, conservatives decry liberal bias, Ph.D.s without a regular post become bitter transient adjuncts, and politicians suspect that tax dollars…

Hardly an academic semester goes by without a high-profile opportunity arising for the right to address pervasive, perennial anti-conservative animus on the American college campus. And hardly an academic semester goes by without the right, reflexively blinded by righteous indignation, blowing an…

The National Security Agency (NSA) is broadening its recruiting efforts for future cyber experts.  An announcement on Wednesday named four new schools chosen to participate in the NSA's "Cyber Initiative."  The press release explains the program:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, on Air Force One en route to New York for the president's education bus tour, had some strong words to say about the prospects of those who don't graduate from high school, and also about those who complete high school but do not go on to college.  While…

As a “millennial” (i.e. one born between 1980 and 2000), I’ve grown used to reading descriptions of myself – written, always, by those much older than I – that I don’t recognize. It’s a bit like hearing my voice on tape – can that really be me? So take, for example, the trendy idea that people my…

It's a well-known fact that on most college campuses, supposedly havens of academic freedom, you really have to watch what you say.

Reprising the "Don't Double My Rate" theme used during the 2012 presidential campaign, the White House is pushing a plan by President Obama this week to prevent interest rates on some student loans from doubling effective July 1.  However, the savings for most borrowers is rather less significant…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Andrew Ferguson, author of Crazy U, on the rising cost of college and whether it's still worth the cost.

Student loan debt runs to about $30,000 per graduate of the class of 2013, as Phil Izzo writes in the Wall Street Journal.  And the total amount of student loans outstanding runs to almost a trillion dollars: more than either credit card balances or automobile loans.  More than any form of consumer…

This is a bad time to be a young American. As Ben Casselman writes in the Wall Street Journal:

In a season when we all become bracketologists, here is an interesting variation that uses the form to conduct a playoff in which the school that costs more to attend wins and moves on to the next round against another institution of absurdly high priced learning.  Another elimination and the…

David Plouffe, a former advisor to President Barack Obama, tells a student newspaper at the University of Chicago that one need not be college educated to do politics. Plouffe states, though, that he thinks "everybody should have a college degree."

Tonight, the 15th BCS National Championship Game will cap yet another extraordinary college football season.  College football is the only major American sport that emphasizes the regular season over the postseason, like baseball did in its glory days (when the two league champions went directly to…

Those who doubt the possibility of comebacks (Republicans, for instance) can take heart from the revival of Notre Dame's football fortunes, this morning's number one college team.

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts has banned a Christian group from campus because the group requires student leaders to adhere to "basic biblical truths of Christianity." The decision to ban the group, called the Tufts Christian Fellowship, was made by officials from the university's…

Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University (AU) in Washington, decided to bring her cold-stricken baby daughter, too sick for the daycare center, along with her to teach her opening class for the fall semester in "Sex, Gender, and Culture." Some 40 undergraduates…

Among the more trenchant lines from Paul Ryan's speech was this:

In response to a statement about the high unemployment rate for those with college degrees, Robert Gibbs, a surrogate for President Obama's reelection campaign, admitted that things are particularly bad for those without college degrees:  

If Governor Romney is embracing Congressman Ryan's budget, that would lead to huge scalebacks ... in access to Pell Grants. We can't cut off our nose to spite our face.  We need a lot more young people having a great start at life. We need a lot more young people having the opportunity to go to…

Like many colleges and universities, Princeton professes its devotion to “institutional equity and diversity.” The university’s website claims that the school “actively seek[s] students, faculty, and staff of exceptional ability and promise who .  .  . will bring a diversity of viewpoints and…

The unemployment numbers have been released and they are dismal and, typically, unexpectedly so. Fewer than 70,000 new jobs and the least scary measure of unemployment rising from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent. According to NPR:

Since I wrote about Naomi Schaefer Riley being fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday, the story has moved along somewhat.

Late last night, in a shameful example of editorial cowardice, the Chronicle of Higher Education fired Naomi Schaefer Riley. Naomi is a good friend of mine, a sometimes contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and a fine writer. And the story of what happened to her is highly instructive.

Mitt Romney's campaign released this web today, contrasting what President Obama promised with reality:

Lawrence Pitts, provost of the University of California, writes this letter to the editor in response to Charlotte Allen's “Boondoggle U.,” which appeared in the most recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

Michael Kaplan, a college teacher, has a thoughtful and intriguing explanation of Rick Santorum's views of higher education:

As his 80th birthday approaches, TWS contributor and friend (and my teacher) Harvey Mansfield is profiled in the Harvard Crimson. It's a perceptive and fair article, and provides further evidence for the hopeful view that today's students are surprisingly open-minded and intelligent despite—or…

Students are riled up at Vanderbilt University, but not in anticipation of a basketball game.