That is what John Rosenberg calls a recent New York Times piece by Nancy DiTomaso, a sociologist affiliated with the business school at Rutgers. She contends that one reason for high unemployment among minorities is that they’re shut out of the job market by the actions of whites, who use networks to ensure that only other whites get jobs.

DiTomasi’s argument would be slaughtered in a high-school debate, but American academics suffer no penalty for advancing ridiculous ideas, so long as they don’t upset any of our “protected groups.”

In this Forbes article, my Pope Center colleague Jay Shalin argues that federal student-aid programs subsidize waste and redistribute income — redistribution in a way that “progressives” shouldn’t like, namely toward wealthier people. Absolutely right.

In today’s Pope Center Clarion Call, John Maguire explains how he gets his students to write well. Rather by accident, he tossed aside the book on writing and started by teaching his students how to use active verbs and build good sentences.

Why don’t youngsters learn that early in grade school?

In this Forbes article, I argue for a simple, commonsensical fix to our wasteful system of financial aid. By combining merit and need criteria, rather than having aid programs based on criteria of pure need (such as Pell Grants) or pure merit (such as Georgia’s Hope Scholarships), we could cut a lot of expense, waste, redistribution, and bad incentivizing. Obviously, there are lots of people who will hate the idea, particularly entrenched interests, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about doing it.

Also, I accept any abuse hurled my way for the title of this blog post.

As we read in this Boston Herald editorial, UMass-Dartmouth, the school where the Tsarnaevs and their friends were, um, studying, is hiding behind its “interpretation” of FERPA to refuse to reveal information pertinent to them.

Hat tip: Doug Schneider

Five years ago I remarked that the highly touted Voluntary System of Accountability (by which major universities were going to reveal “student outcomes”) had not caught fire.

Some measures exist, such as the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Productivity, but many schools are reluctant to reveal their scores. At least that seems to be a major reason why “College Portrait,” the online version of large universities’ Voluntary Accountability System, is not yet available.

Progress is still slow, as Inside Higher Ed recounts today. Indeed, the resistance by large universities to posting student outcome data is almost breathtaking in its effectiveness. Doug Lederman reports that “scores” of schools have opted out “primarily because they did not like the system’s dependence on standardized measures that allow for comparability across colleges.”

Not much has changed since the then-president of the University of California system, Robert C. Dynes, explained why the university decided not to join in 2007 (as quoted in the IHE story): “The university has concluded that using standardized tests on an institutional level as measures of student learning fails to recognize the diversity, breadth, and depth of discipline-specific knowledge and learning that takes place in colleges and universities today.” Q.E.D. 

As recently as a few months ago, UNC–Chapel Hill also declined to post its Collegiate Learning Assessment results, even after having been instructed to by the UNC system. Why? Because “campus leaders/faculty believed the test results weren’t representative,” the university said. This, even though the study used statistically sound and publisher-recommended sample sizes, as Jenna Robinson pointed out earlier this year. Under pressure (possibly from our reporting) the university recently posted its finding with this disclaimer: “We posted the results to our College Portrait, but didn’t find them useful in contributing to campus discussions about student learning outcomes.”

By the way, I sympathize with the view that a single test can’t capture the full panoply of impacts of four years of college. But to resist revealing assessments that could inform students about the value of their potential investment is something that only a cartel of socialistic enterprises can get away with.

That’s the message in the letter by some professors at San Jose State, with reference to online courses. Roger Kimball has a good take on it in a PJ Media post.

Hat tip: Geoff Hawkins

It seems that every time you blink, there is a new front-runner in the annual contest between the “Studies” departments to come up with the least objective, most politically inspired, most anti-intellectual nonsense. By becoming the first academic unit to officially support the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement, the Association for Asian-American Studies might have edged into the lead against perennial favorites Gender Studies, Environmental Studies, and African-American Studies.

As Ursinus professor Jonathan Marks points out in Commentary, the thing that makes the AAAS decision especially egregious is the inclusion in their resolution of language written by 9/11 “Truther” (and emeritus Princeton professor) Richard Falk, who recently got himself back in the news for suggesting that the U.S. had it coming in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Of course, we still have a long way to go before this year’s winner is decided, and the competition is fierce.

The Chronicle post in question makes much ado over “a series of racial incidents at Oberlin College.” While the author acknowledges that Oberlin is “historically progressive,” it does not occur to her to doubt the truth of the supposed incidents. Peter Wood does so in this NAS article.

There is good reason to think that the Oberlin administration made a mountain out of a molehill, if even that. But, assuming that the Oberlin situation were entirely true — that a liberal college with a 28 percent “minority” student body finds itself plagued by racial antagonism — are we to believe that Oberlin could solve this problem by further increasing its minority “representation”? That would seem to follow only if the few whites who were responsible for the alleged incidents were the ones who were filtered out by the move to increase the school’s diversity. And if Oberlin could recruit more minority students, that necessarily means fewer of them for other schools, thus making the situation worse for their remaining minority students.

A recent Chronicle post by a Cornell professor (of African, feminist, gender, and sexuality studies) makes one of the most ridiculous arguments for continuing racial preferences that I have ever seen and John Rosenberg tears it apart on his blog.

Cornell grads should weep.

There’s a sharp piece today at The Freeman. The writer, who got through college without going into debt, is opposed to transferring the debts of students who borrowed lots to the rest of America (or those of us who pay taxes, anyway). If we must “forgive” student debts, he suggests that the cost fall on Warren Buffett. But even if he liquidated his entire portfolio, that wouldn’t make more than a small dent in the vast accumulation of student debt.

The writer says that we need to find a solution, but the only solution I can see is for the feds to stop financing higher ed.

A well-paid high-tech job is the goal for many college students (and tech-school students and community-college students). Dan Carpenter got one right out of high school — but wanted something more. He took courses at his local commuter school (UA-Anchorage), hoping to find some subject that he could study and learn passionately. Only he couldn’t figure out what that “something” was. He gambled on quitting his job and attending a Great Books program in another state. You’ll have to read the rest of the story to find what he discovered there and what lessons he has to offer.

Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, writes, “My college actually took me away from logical thinking.” He laments that so many young American exhaust themselves trying to get into an elite college (and drain the family’s resources if they succeed), when they’d learn more and spend much less at a community college. (He earned his degree in political science at Stanford.) Karlgaard foresees fruitful collaboration between community colleges and online education. “This affordable alliance will be a fantastic blessing for late bloomers — and America.”

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran an article by Michael S. Roth entitled “My Global Philosophy Course.” Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and found that while many students who signed up for his course (on Coursera) dropped before the end (only 4,000 of 30,000 stuck it out), there was remarkable intellectual energy among those who persisted. He writes, “I am sure that many of those enrolled in the online version have also discovered texts and people that are having profound effects on their lives.”

I was struck by the remarkable diversity of the students who wanted to learn philosophy with Roth. “Study groups in Bulgaria and India, in Russia and Boston made me giddy at the reach of this kind of class.” Ah — the invisible hand at work. Without any official trying to guarantee “diversity” (on account of ancestry), Roth got a remarkably diverse group of students who had one crucial thing in common, namely the desire to learn what he wanted to teach. Officials at Wesleyan and elsewhere should keep that in mind. Bring together a group of students who want to learn and “diversity” will take care of itself.

One thing I love about research is finding golden nuggets in unexpected places. Consider this quote from management guru Peter Drucker’s 1957 book of societal forecasts, Landmarks of Tomorrow:

Society must [also] demand that education be considered by the educated as a responsibility rather than a right, and as a high responsibility by the highly educated.  It must demand of them commitment and dedication, the attitude “What can I contribute?” rather than “What’s in it for me?”

Drucker was not writing as a socialist; he saw the ability of education to prepare students for work that does not yet exist – through providing the ability of learning how to learn, not through vocational training for jobs (that already exist). 

While this position is given lip service today, it’s largely lost when exorbitant tuitions force students to see schooling in terms of the college wage premium.

Drucker’s book contains a whole chapter titled “The Educated Society” that is a must read for anyone interested in education reform, as it provides another example of how the problems we face today are not unique to the 21st century. 

In this piece (posted at Minding the Campus and SeeThruEdu) I write about an interesting NYT article about academic fraud. I suggest that we stop subsidizing academic research and let it pass the test of the market; that would get rid of not only most fraudulent research, but also most of the non-fraudulent research that is useless.

The retrial of Amanda Knox is a judicial catastrophe. She is the American student who was accused, along with two young men, of murdering her roommate in some kind of Halloween sex orgy in Perugia, Italy, in 2009. Her trial was a travesty to begin with, and the guilty verdict was thankfully eventually overturned, although not before she had spent four years in an Italian prison. That should certainly have been an end to it, but the prosecution and the lawyers for the parents of the murdered girl, Meredith Kercher, have succeeded in getting the case reopened.

Because of extreme mishandling of evidence and the hysterical and quasi-religious delusions of the prosecutor, the idea was planted that more had to have happened to Meredith than actually happened, and her parents were baffled when the killing turned out to be more “ordinary” than at first projected. Meredith surprised a local wastrel who had broken into the apartment she shared with three other girls. He expected that no one would be home the night of November 1, the day after Halloween and a holiday in Italy, and that cash would be around due to rents coming due at the first of the month in the student-saturated city. He then attacked, raped, and killed her. Awful, awful enough, but no sex orgy gone awry. The killer fled the city and was captured some days later. He was tried, convicted, and imprisoned; his sentence an unjustly short 16 years. That too should have been an end to it.

Part of the scenario cooked up by the prosecutor depended on the brief foray into free and casual sex that Amanda had undertaken abroad, and had written about in her journal. This somehow fit into the idea that she lured the two boys to force Meredith into sex and they wound up killing her when she wouldn’t comply. There is quite an irony in the idea of free sex being held against an American college girl, when everything in our campus and popular culture practically dictates it. Here, for example, from the preface to What Does Bowdoin Teach: How a Contemporary Liberal Arts College Shapes Students, the extensive report on Bowdoin College from the National Association of Scholars,  is the conclusion of a play presented during an orientation of new students in 2011:

Whatever you decide you want your relationship with sex to be about there are opportunities out there. Whether you want to have sex or you don’t, you’re looking for love or a one-night stand, you’re gay or straight or somewhere in between, it’s all possible. And whatever happens remember to be safe, get consent, and watch out for your friends.

As NAS president Peter Wood observes of this passage:

The crude content leads to an emphatic message that the only requirement for “any healthy sexual encounter” is “consent.” To help things along Bowdoin makes sure that a generous supply of condoms is conspicuously available on every floor of every dorm and in other public places as well. This is not just encouraging safe sex, it is encouraging sex.

Indeed, as Wood adds, it is “market[ing] sexual promiscuity to . . . students.” And yet in a different cultural context, this same kind of behavior takes on an almost gothic coloration, is coupled with murder, and is used to destroy lives. The postmodern and up-to-date meets the pre-modern and primitive. In no way did Amanda deserve what has happened to her, but clearly young people are owed a better “sex education” that is currently on offer.

Statistics show that Asians (including Pacific Islanders) are underrepresented when it comes to administrative positions in higher ed. This Chronicle post conveys the disturbing news. Will this lead to an immediate response from the higher-ed establishment, seeking to eliminate this distressing gap? Do we not need to study this social inequity to find its causes? If this were some other group, we know there probably would be lots of hysteria over the data.

Why aren’t there more Asians — a proper representation — among higher-ed administrators? I would guess that most of them prefer actual academic work to the life of an administrator.

As we read here, many teachers and school administrators in Wisconsin recently met at a conference where “white privilege” was a key topic. Some teachers are upset that not all students buy this ridiculous notion and feel the need to “crush resistance.” Where do such ideas come from? I think that ed schools play a big role.

In a new SeeThruEdu post, Jeremy Kee writes about the weaknesses of college students in job applications. One of the most often noted problems is that they can’t even spell correctly. Pretty sad state of affairs — college grads can hector you all day about social justice, sustainability, environmentalism, and so forth, but they can’t spell words.