Articles and Archives

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NO BIG DEAL...but many small ones

How campaigning-for-credit undermines academic value

Facebook and the Future of the University

Will social networking sites like Facebook remove the extracurricular responsibility of the university?

Unbuttoned in Illinois

The University of Illinois has issued a strange notice concerning its employees' buttons and bumper stickers.

Losing Altitude: Leftist Ideologies on the Decline

People are less and less interested in topics like Marxism and deconstruction, but which new ideological trends are replacing the old?
2 comments - Last on 10/01/2008

What Does a Chief Diversity Officer Actually Do?

Comments on Williams and Wade-Golden's prescriptions for the role of the "diversity messiah"
4 comments - Last on 09/29/2008

How Preferences Have Corrupted Higher Education

This is an article from the "Future of Race Preferences" issue of Academic Questions (vol. 21, no. 3). It is an address that was originally presented at “Race and Gender Preferences at the Crossroads,” a conference organized by the California Association of Scholars.

America’s Financial Crisis and Higher Education

Student loans going the way of home mortgages could have serious consequences for the university. A call to academe to pay attention to what's going on in American finance.
1 comment - Last on 09/26/2008

The Effects of Proposition 209 on California: Higher Education, Public Employment, and Contracting

This is an article from the "Future of Race Preferences" issue of Academic Questions (vol. 21, no. 3). It is an address that was originally presented at “Race and Gender Preferences at the Crossroads,” a conference organized by the California Association of Scholars.

Lazere v. Gelernter

On the Sometimes Difficult Task of Setting the Record Straight or Getting Heard Above the Din Especially if Your Points Are Prolix

Crying Out Loud

Scholarships for cheerleaders but none for history readers

About Face in Amherst

Here's what really happenned when U Mass tried to cover its tracks after getting caught offering students academic credit for volunteering in the Obama campaign.

The Extracurricular Sector of the University: Unappreciated and Soon To Be Unneeded

With the rise of online education, will student affairs and residence life programs become obsolete?

Observations at Manchester

What does NAS have to say about a private Christian college? NAS takes a tour through Manchester.
3 comments - Last on 09/24/2008

College Credit for Campaign Volunteers

Students are earning academic credit for helping out in the presidential campaigns.
1 comment - Last on 09/22/2008

Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing: A Business-as-Usual Group Tries on the Rhetoric of School Reform

One education organization seeks to solve an unnamed crisis by paying teachers more and sending more students to college.

Fairy Tales for Freshmen: Mile-High Propaganda

Once upon a time, a professor of freshman English imposed his politics on the class. Actually, it was only last week at Metro State College.

Dis-honoring Yeshiva

Yeshiva ousted James Otteson, who had just been hired to found and direct the university's academic honors program. Rumor has it that his pseudonymous blog was what turned the Yeshiva administration against him, but we don’t know. Could it be that he was blackballed for his high standards for scholarly excellence?

“Hurray! We Got Noticed!” ACPA’s Response to NAS Residence Life Statement

The American College Personnel Association responded to NAS's statement Rebuilding Campus Community: The Wrong Imperative by reaffirming its 1994 document, the Student Learning Imperative and "savoring the moment."

Disruption:
Advising the Next President


Experts predict global trends of the future and academics give advice to the future U.S. president, but what will become of higher education?
1 comment - Last on 09/23/2008

NAS Cheers "Enduring Questions"

NAS hails with appreciation the announcement of the National Endowment for the Humanities' new "Enduring Questions" program.

9/11: A Remembrance

Let us remember 9/11 and rouse from academic detachment from the real world.
1 comment - Last on 09/15/2008

Is College Driving Students to Drink?

Why is binge drinking such a problem on college campuses? What factors lead certain students to consume more than others?

Activists Only: Reading Between the Lines of an Academic Job Ad

U Mass Amherst is looking for a new linguistic anthropologist who fits with the university's politically correct policies and its commitment to a "racialized" outlook. Where does such a job description leave qualified non-minority applicants? Where does it leave anthropology students?

What You Learn Depends on What (and Whom) You Ask

Does diversity in the medical classroom enhance students' ability to care for minority patients? A new study supposedly provides evidence to that effect. But the survey omits some essential elements and thus fails to take an accurate pulse.

A Couple of Curiosities

A note on two interesting pieces of education news: PBS hosts the “Teaching & Learning Celebration 2008” and Cambridge says it's not the university's job to promote social justice.

How We Spent Our Summer Vacation

A handy guide to the highlights of the first season of NAS's new website. Come here first to see what we've been up to and find the best of NAS since our web upgrade!

Protecting the Prickly: La Raza Studies

NAS takes a look at La Raza studies, a public school program in Tucson, where the cactuses are plentiful and so is the bitterness.
2 comments - Last on 09/06/2008

Night Makes Right: Stanley Fish’s Candelabra of Truth

In his new book, Save the World on Your Own Time, Stanley Fish writes, "If you’re not in the pursuit-of-truth business, you should not be in the university." But what does he mean by "truth"?
1 comment - Last on 09/09/2008

She Do the Plagiarists in Many Voices: An Anthropologist’s New Rationale for Academic Dishonesty

It seems the Internet generation of students has a novel excuse for plagiarism: "I was exploring the ever-changing version of my self." In a world of Wikipedia, YouTube, Blogspot, and Second Life, can authorship be "fluid"?
2 comments - Last on 09/03/2008

Take Back the Classroom from PowerPoint

Restrict PowerPoint use in teaching to pictures and videos, writes Jason Fertig. Too much PowerPoint usurps professors' authority and accustoms students to lazy thinking.

Collegiate Press Roundup 9-2-10

Student journalists examine topics from presidential speeches to campus smoking bans.

Will You Promote Diversity? Virginia Tech Tests Faculty Candidates’ Commitment

A major public university has fashioned a “diversity” litmus test for faculty hiring

FIRE Educates for Free Speech on Campus

FIRE will offer a Free Speech Seminar in NYC on September 14.

University Speaker Series: Arab Feminism, Black Feminism, and "A Southern Queer Love Story"...No Comment

A program on gender and diversity at the University of Richmond will explore "emancipatory ideas of social justice" this fall.

How Scholarships Morphed into Financial Aid

This excerpt from Jackson Toby's latest book, The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Financial Aid Should Be Based on Student Performance, will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of Academic Questions (vol. 23, no. 3).

Common Reading Controversy at Brooklyn College

Is Brooklyn College using freshman reading for ideological goals?

Question of the Week: How Many Colleges Should You Apply To?

To answer, leave a comment on this article, email us, or respond via Facebook or Twitter (no more than 140 characters).

Atlas Black Shrugs

The first comic book textbook combines management jargon and theories and packages them into a story about a slacker student's attempt to become an entrepreneur.
1 comment - Last on 08/27/2010

Collegiate Press Roundup 8-26-10

Student journalists have a look at the Ground Zero mosque controversy, reducing your carbon footprint and the pitfalls of "sexting."

A Regulatory Assault on For-Profit Higher Education

How the attacks on for-profit higher ed are squashing needed competition.

New Excellent Programs: Tocqueville Program and Center for Statesmanship

Check out our list of excellent programs as we add new ones at Indiana and Richmond.

The Glut of Academic Publishing: A Call for a New Culture

This article will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of Academic Questions (vol. 23, no. 3). A short version of this paper appeared under the title “We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research” in the June 13, 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education.
1 comment - Last on 08/25/2010

Building a 21st Century Syllabus

Professors these days have to cover their backs when writing syllabi, writes David Clemens.
2 comments - Last on 08/20/2010

Question of the Week: Why Did You Choose Your College?

We're starting a new "Question of the Week" series. We'll have a new higher-education-related question every week. To answer, leave a comment on this article, email us, or respond via Facebook or Twitter (no more than 140 characters).
2 comments - Last on 08/20/2010

Dictatorships and Double Standards, Part II

Professor Paquette responds to the controversy generated this summer after Hamilton College sought to censor his NAS article.

Real Ethics Education

Ethics courses should make moral decisions personal, argues Jason Fertig.

Collegiate Press Roundup 8-18-10

Student journalists tackle gay marriage, weird psycholgy studies and state liquor regulations.

5 Consequences of Administrative Bloat

What happens to higher education when universities are dominated by administrators?

Ravitch Repentant

Peter Cohee reviews Diane Ravitch's book, a partial volte-face, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

 

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