A friend who was no fan of George W. Bush read his memoir and was impressed. I asked him if Bush addressed in the book the many puzzling questions left by both his actions and his rhetoric regarding the promotion of freedom and democracy around the globe, especially in the Mideast. Did he show himself thoughtful about all that? I asked. My friend said yes, but only to a point.

The recent opening of the Bush Library in Dallas sparked numerous articles on the ex-president and his legacy. Many of his supporters insisted, as they have before, that while Bush may not be generally favorably viewed by the American people at present, he will eventually be vindicated by history. But instead of encouraging Bush to rest on the vindication of history, which would seem to feed his natural tendency to intellectual complacency, why not encourage him to vindicate himself now, rethinking and reexamining the ideas he promoted as president and answering the questions that remain about his actions?

For example, how might the chaos in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq have been avoided; why was the looting of government offices allowed to take place with the American Army looking on; is the idea of freedom burning in every human heart really sufficient for the formation of  liberal self government everywhere right now, or must civic and cultural institutions precede it; is it possible that the universal vision he promoted made it impossible for him clearly to name the enemy we were fighting in the two wars we spent so much blood and treasure to wage; why was he so enthusiastic about the possibilities for democracy everywhere in the world when many of  our wisest leaders have tended more to caution in that regard? Ronald Reagan, for example, spoke of freedom as “fragile and rare” and as never more than one generation away from being lost.

Revisiting these questions, together with the debate they would undoubtedly arouse, would constitute a tremendous civic education for the American people about the nature of their government and of the values their country upholds.

North Carolina governor Pat McCrory took a lot of heat for suggesting that education isn’t about “butts in seats but how many of those butts can get jobs.” Some conservatives rushed to defend his comments — which were, in fact, merely the logical extension of the “college grads make more money” justification given by liberals to further subsidize college loans — but Gene Edward Veith, professor of literature and provost at Patrick Henry College, asks us to step back a moment and look at students’ choices through the lense of vocation:

[Vocation] has become a synonym for “job,” so that colleges debate the extent to which higher education should be primarily vocational training or whether it should have higher goals, such as cultivating the intellect. But vocation is simply the Latinate word for “calling.” It is one of those theological words—like inspiration, revelation, mission, and vision—that has been taken over by the corporate world and drained of its meaning. The idea is that what you do for a living can be a calling.

Some conservatives like Nathan welcome the rise of MOOCs as a solution to the problems that plague higher education. Veith offers a (heavily) qualified defense of how higher ed is currently structured:

Part of the genius of higher education is that its structure usually allows you to try things. Most people come to college with little sense of what fields even exist and have only a slim idea what they are good at. Here the much-maligned liberal arts requirements can be enormously helpful. . . . Studying history and your cultural heritage can help you in your vocation of citizenship. Learning to read, write, and think deeply can make you better at whatever profession you are eventually called to. And taking courses with so many different methodologies — hard science and social science, literary analysis and quantitative research — can give you a sense of what intellectual activities you find most rewarding, which can help direct you toward a major, perhaps one you never even knew existed.

Read the rest at the Intercollegiate Review.

The story begins with 50 freshmen girls starting out at the University of Indiana. Exactly how many of them finished their senior years, we don’t find out. But in a new book by a pair of sociologists, entitled Paying for the Party, we get a good idea of what happened to them the next few years, and with some exceptions it wasn’t pretty.

Many of them got sucked into the party culture that dominates almost all large state flagship campuses and either dropped out or graduated with near-worthless degrees. George Leef reviews the book for this week’s Clarion Call and adds a few thoughts of his own about students who would be better off at smaller regional public schools but just can’t resist the allure of the flagships, where every night is Friday night.

Jill Biden – or, as she prefers “Dr. Biden” — provided fodder for Charles and Kevin on the “title-inflation” beat. As Solomon put it, there’s nothing new under the sun. Back in 1903, William James identified vanity and the “love of titles” as two of the motivations that fed the “Ph.D. Octopus.” It’s worth remembering that the Ph.D. as we know it today was a German import in the 19th century. Soon thereafter, universities saw this new credential as a “mere advertising resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public’s eyes” — basically, nothing but signaling. Something to bear in mind as the chorus for reform grows louder and louder.

The cost of college students’ switching majors is high: for them, for taxpayers, and for the economy. It often extends their education by one, two, or more semesters — prolonging the time before they start their careers and the time that taxpayers or parents must subsidize them.

One possible solution is to have them take tests to assess their abilities and interests at the start of their college careers, writes Jenna Ashley Robinson. She took one such test recently — called the Birkman Method — and found it to be a worthwhile exercise that accurately predicted her professional interests (at least in hindsight) and recommends that colleges adopt it or some similar assessment tool.

In fact, high schools might want to start using such tools as well to determine whether students should go to college in the first place, or whether they should enter apprenticeships, join the military, or just go to work until they have a better idea what they want to do. Right now, it seems they often get no serious direction at all.

To pick up on Nathan’s and Robert’s earlier discussions, there does seem to be a difference between conservatives and liberals on the issue of campus rape. Conservatives tend to sympathize with unfairly accused males, while liberals worry that women won’t speak up. But both sides have a lot to agree on. One is that those “honor court” proceedings are all wrong. As Harry Lewis and I wrote at the Forbes website, “The Office for Civil Rights should get out of the business of dictating the terms of college sexual assault trials. Colleges should stop the practice of ‘he-said-she-said’ trials.”

But there’s a more fundamental issue, and that is the fact that “acquaintance rape” (sometimes called date rape, but dating is rare these days) is caused by a troubled campus environment. Two specific factors foster acquaintance rape — alcohol and the hookup culture. University administrators encourage both.

They generally look the other way when it comes to alcohol. As for sex, see the latest report by the National Association of Scholars on the once-staid Bowdoin College, where a “generous supply of condoms is conspicuously available on every floor of every dorm and in other public places as well,” and where “‘consent’ is the central ethical vision of sex and sexuality,” say Peter Wood and Michael Toscano. “The overarching message of the performance [Speak About It, an explicit play about sex at Bowdoin, mandatory for new students] “is have sex freely, in the form that you deem desirable, but make sure that your sexual partner or partners agree that this form of sex is agreeable.”

In this environment there will be instances in which the question of consent is impossible to answer.

There is broader cause of acquaintance rape and its aftermath, however: immaturity. College students tend to be immature. Since colleges have given up serving in loco parentis, there’s no voice of caution or reason and, afterwards, little suggestion that their experiences should teach them a lesson.

Rather, the honor court is there to spur you to litigate — to blame someone else. The last person you are taught to blame is yourself. As Harry Lewis and I wrote (and his book Excellence without a Soul has much more about this): “Part of growing up is learning to avoid situations that should not be dangerous but are. The fairest and most sensitive judicial process is no substitute for responsible choices made in advance.”

Unfortunately, the adults who are supposed to help students learn this lesson have abdicated any role in doing so.

Nathan: I think we’ve both made our points and I don’t want to drag this out, but I would like to note a few things.

First, there’s a simple explanation for the statistical anomaly you point out: The number for college-attending Hispanics is starred in the report, meaning it’s based on a tiny sample size (ten or fewer crimes reported, meaning each report swings the outcome substantially). When you’re looking at a crime with an annual incidence rate of 2 in 1,000 for women ages 12 and up, and then breaking the data down so far you’re looking at Hispanic college students in a narrow age range, even a huge sample size like the National Crime Victimization Survey’s won’t always do the trick.

Further, it’s a survey, not a collection of actual crime reports. It includes crimes that were not reported to police, though some respondents still might fail to report crimes against them or claim crimes occurred that didn’t.

Finally, I’m not sure that conservatives have ceded this issue: We’re the tough-on-crime people. Not only are we the people encouraging women to put hollow-points in rapists’ foreheads, we’re the people saying the Surpeme Court was wrong to take the death penalty off the table, the people clamoring for longer prison terms, etc. There is no reason we can’t also be the people pointing out the utter ridiculousness of defining all drunken sex as rape and then churning out statistics based on that definition. Defining rape down is not a sign that one takes rape seriously.

So this happened . . .

SAN DIEGO – The University of San Diego – a large, private Catholic college – hosted a drag show in its campus theater Thursday night, prompting a protest by students and local residents who called the event an aberration to Catholicism’s values, while others on campus defended the performance.

“A drag show is not consistent with Catholic teaching,” student protestor and sophomore Ailsa Tirado, 20, said in an interview with The College Fix. “Why call yourself a Catholic school? It’s in direct contradiction with explicit Catholic moral teaching.”

Tirado said more than 4,000 students across the nation signed a petition against “Celebration of Gender Expression – Supreme Drag Superstar 2,” which was organized by PRIDE, the college’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer student-support group…

It’s the second consecutive year the university has hosted the show. Posters advertising the event that peppered the campus boasted bright, glossy red lips and a Vegas-inspired font, an image that looked starkly out of place next to statues of the Virgin Mary and ornate white buildings adorned with large crosses.

The performance starred Manila Luzon, described on his personal website as an “Asian Glamasaurus” drag queen…

Read the full story here.

Robert, there are a lot of ways to slice and dice the statistics, made more complicated by the fact that many cases go unreported. And there are odd anomolies. For instance, the study you cite that shows college-attending women are a bit less likely to suffer rape than non-college attending women actually shows that that’s true for all ethnic groups save one. For some reason, the study shows that Hispanics are more than twice as likely to be raped if they go to college than if they don’t. Does that make sense? I can’t even begin to guess why or why not, or what conclusions one should draw from that. Plus, that study leaves out cases of “attempted rape,” which were included in the CDC study.

My main point is that I wish conservatives, as a group, would balance their rhetoric. By all means, let’s aim for accurate statistics as best we can. But let’s not merely talk about the need for accurate statistics. Let’s also talk about the ineadequacies of the criminal-justice system, as well as training that might help young women to be shrewder and better at self-defense, for instance. Let’s talk about the disintegration of the family structure and societal morals, the new kinds of sexual scripts and confused sexual expectations established by the modern college hookup culture — all things that contribute to sexual assault.

Sexual-assault prevention is one of those issues, like environmentalism, that conservatives have almost completely ceded to the left out of a partisan reflex. In reality, conservatives care just as much, but the conversation is dominated by the Left. That’s a shame, in my view. We saw conservatives briefly bucking this trend during the recent gun debates, during which conservatives did a good job of pointing out how handguns can offer women critical protection against assault. I’d like to see much more of that kind of message coming from the political right — and not merely when, conveniently, there happens to be a gun-control debate raging in Congress.

When the topic is rape, if nearly all conservatives have to say about it is “it’s not as common as liberals and feminists say it is,” then that’s a big mistake. The end result is that liberals end up with all the public credibility on the issue, when in fact, as I argued in my original post below, they are doing more than anyone else to radicalize the sexual culture on campus and ultimately put women at risk.

Here’s the last paragraph in the editorial:

Universities that want to improve their selection procedures by identifying talented people (of any colour or creed) from disadvantaged backgrounds should be encouraged. But selection on the basis of race is neither a fair nor an efficient way of doing so. Affirmative action replaced old injustices with new ones: it divides society rather than unites it. Governments should tackle disadvantage directly, without reference to race. If a school is bad, fix it. If there are barriers to opportunity, remove them. And if Barack Obama’s daughters apply to a university, judge them on their academic prowess, not the colour of their skin.

Nearly a year ago, Jay Schalin argued in a three-part Pope Center piece that there really isn’t the shortage of STEM (science, technology,engineering, and mathematics) graduates that everyone assumes exists (and that the government has been  pouring in money to correct). While the article received plenty of comment, the topic didn’t get much traction in the larger media world.

That changed this week when the Washington Post revealed a study showing the same thing. As the Post said, “A study released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reinforces what a number of researchers have come to believe: that the STEM worker shortage is a myth.” Basically, the study says, wages are flat and some technically trained workers can’t find jobs.

The politics of this are murky, with a number of players. Why does a “left-leaning institute” study this? Certainly, high-tech companies such as Microsoft are trying to expand the H-1B visas that bring in foreign workers on the grounds that there aren’t enough technically trained people in the United States. And those companies are trying to distinguish themselves (the Post says) from “out-sourcing” companies that re just looking for people “who will work for less.”

It’s hard to see through the multiple veils of self-interest, but the numbers do show that Microsoft’s (and other companies’) claims may, at best, be incomplete.

One of the mysteries of academe is why English departments have self-destructed. We understand how it happened — professors moved into esoteric literary theories based on Marxism, feminism, and other -isms, neglecting their traditional duties such as teaching freshman composition. (That’s now handed off to graduate students and adjuncts; what they don’t accomplish is left to “writing across the curriculum” policies.)

But why? From self-interest alone, you would think that teaching the basics of writing would be wise because well-taught introductory courses (especially when required) bring in new students. Some will become majors in the department and expand the department and provide job security. But the number of English majors has taken a nose dive.

Whatever the reason for their decline, English departments have a chance to revive. Burt Wallerstein, a businessman who mentors college graduates (and others), urges English departments to regain their role as a core element of higher education by teaching communication — writing, speaking, and listening. If they don’t, he warns, others (inside or outside of the university) will take over that job and English departments won’t even keep as many students as they have today.

New campus, same story. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill welcomed the Students for Life’s Planned Parenthood Tour with the vitriol usually reserved for Duke fans during basketball season. Not only was a box full of materials stolen (presumably by pro-abortion partisans), but pro-choice advocates proudly tweeted about tearing up the group’s flyers and, even better, a graduate teaching assistant approached the group yelling that their event was “horses**t” and that the students were “spreading lies.”

It’s true, as a representative from the group reported, that many of the pro-choice advocates were respectful. But the reaction by a number of pro-choice students was telling. A post on the official “Spotted at UNC-Chapel Hill” Facebook page succinctly summed up their attitude: “Anyone know if the anti-Planned Parenthood crosses are still on the ground in the quad? Because I’d love to go rip them out right now.” This post received almost 200 “likes.”

The university was understandably circumspect, responding to my queries regarding the incident by affirming the university’s support for free speech and civil campus dialogue. The episode at UNC comes on the heels of two other high-profile pro-life campus controversies. In February, Kristopher del Campo, president of DePaul University’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter was put on probation for publicizing the names of students who vandalized YAF’s memorial to aborted babies. In March, Johns Hopkins University Student Government denied recognition to the university’s pro-life group. That decision was ultimately overturned by the student judiciary.

For UNC at least, it doesn’t look like things will be getting any better. When left-wing students interrupted a campus event at Dartmouth, interim president (and UNC chancellor-elect) Carol Folt canceled classes for a day of discussion. Not a good precedent for the students who acted immaturely this year — perhaps next year they will feel emboldened to actually disrupt the event safe in the knowledge that the new administration will fold.

People pay tuition to send their kids to Florida Atlantic University to “learn” from this guy?

Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy is defending his controversial blog posts that question whether the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown and Boston Marathon bombings were staged events.

Tracy, who teaches courses on communication and conspiracy theories at FAU, wrote on his blog “  Memory Hole ” that he questions many aspects of what happened the day of the bombings.

“We have the official narrative that this was carried out by two individuals, two Chechen immigrants, but it could be more complex than that,” Tracy told NewsChannel 5. “The government was carrying out drills on that day. We don’t know exactly what was taking place, what the dynamics were.”

In his blog, Tracy states he believes there is evidence that contradicts what is being reported about the bombings. He even dissects the force and direction of the explosions, questioning the amount of damage they could have caused.

“What exactly took place on April 15 at the Boston Marathon is unclear, yet what is now evident is a stark divergence between the narrative description of excessive carnage meted out as a result of the explosive devices and at least a portion of the video and photographic documentation of the bombing itself,” Tracy wrote.

Tracy said he is skeptic of the way the media has portrayed the suspects involved.

“Look at the way that it has overall been handled,” he told NewsChannel 5. “We have really a breakdown of due process. We’ve got a public lynching of these individuals. It’s very serious.”

No due process? The judge traveled to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s bedside for his first hearing, making his constituional rights crystal clear. What a joke.

Nathan, you concede that rape statistics are often exaggerated for political purposes, say the debate shouldn’t be about statistics . . . and then proceed to bolster your case with an unreliable statistic.

As I explained in 2011 when the study you cite was released, its numbers are way out of whack with the estimates of superior studies, even if you exclude the “alcohol facilitated” rapes (a gray area that often includes consensual drunken sex in addition to the type of assaults on unconscious women you describe). Jacob Sullum pointed out other problems as well. And let’s not forget that college-age women seem to be safer from rape when they go to college than when they don’t.

Rape isn’t an “epidemic” on college campuses; it’s part of the human condition everywhere. It deserves serious punishment — and also serious statistics.

SUNY Geneseo professor Theodore Everett stirred up a high-octane campus protest and a 1,600 signature-strong online petition condemning him for a lecture he delivered last night entitled “Against Sexual Assault Awareness.”

“Sexual assault is receiving too much attention relative to other serious college problems, like alcohol abuse, which has claimed a human life here at Geneseo every other year,” Everett said.

Everett says while sexual assault is a serious problem, it has been exaggerated to a point where women see themselves as vulnerable, and have become afraid of “ordinary. decent men.”

The professor may be contradicting himself in a roundabout way. What he may or may not realize is that alcohol abuse is a major contributing factor to on-campus sexual assault. The formula is obvious: You get two people together, one or both with lowered inhibitions, impaired judgment, reduced awareness and motor faculty (i.e. near passing-out drunk) — it’s a recipe for rape, plain and simple. Doesn’t excuse the perpetrator one bit, but let’s not ignore the role alcohol abuse plays in so many of these cases.

Sexual assault is an epidemic on our college campuses — just as it is in our culture at large. I wince when I hear conservatives dismissing the issue as so much feminist noise. I admit, statistics about campus sexual assault are sometimes exaggerated for political purposes, and there is a dangerous presumption of guilt on many campuses today — but rape is a real problem. Let’s not act as if it isn’t. And let’s not reduce the discussion to a debate over statistics.

A recent government survey found that nearly 1 in 5 American women reported having been victims of rape or attempted rape. Whatever the exact number is, it’s far too high.

It bothers me to think that rape is so common. Actually, it enrages me.

Reducing sex crime should never be considered a “liberal” issue. On the contrary, secular liberals have done more than anyone else to undermine the sexual morals of our culture, to break down the natural protections for women that stable, two-parent families provide, and to discredit the religious values that are designed to restrain the base, selfish, and destructive instincts and urges of man.

Our colleges and universities, with their disciplinary committees and student “consent” workshops, have no solution for the problem of sexual assault. That’s because most of them ignore the moral sickness that lies beneath the epidemic. More often that not, they are busy actively corrupting the young people in their charge. They teach moral relativism. They encourage young people to cast off all moral restraint, with only one exception–consent. Then they are surprised when that last exception gets quickly cast aside as well.

Bottom line, sexual assault is not a made-up problem. It’s real. Furthermore, it should not be dismissed as a mere political issue. It’s an issue of tremendous moral importance in our day and time. Anyone with a college-aged sister or daughter can appreciate that.

Higher education is about to change; the existing institution, with its high costs, low standards, and extreme politicization, is becoming increasingly hard to justify. The real question is whether the reform will come in gradual increments or in a tidal wave of radical change.

On today’s Clarion Call, George Leef interviews one of the leading proponents of radical reform, Dale Stephens, the founder of “Uncollege.” Stephens has a new book out called “Hacking Your Education,” in which he offers advice on how to gain the knowledge you need or want without spending four or more years on campus and without the five- or six-figure price tag.

Governor Rick Perry’s effort to bring accountability to the Texas university systems is constantly hitting roadblocks. The latest example is the intervention by Republican (that’s Perry’s party) legislators to defend the president of UT-Austin, Bill Powers, by reducing the power of the Regents (nominally, Powers’s boss). Jay Schalin abstracts from this situation to say that this “Texas standoff” is not just an intra-party squabble (although that’s part of it). It also “reflects a division specific to academia, between those who recognize the need for serious reform and those who believe that reform is unnecessary.”

Senator Rand Paul suggested in a letter to Harry Reid that we should.

But is that really a good idea? I don’t think so. Maybe I’m being idealistic, but I’d like to think that our student-visa program functions as a handy institutional goodwill ambassador of sorts. As the young elite of the world come to study here, prior to going back to rule their various nations, they get a taste of genuine American life, American freedoms, American people. Maybe the veil of ignorance about this nation that permeates so much of the world is lifted just a little. Maybe those students are less disposed to want to blow our innocent children to bits if they’ve had to look our little children in the eyes on the way to McDonald’s every weekend for four years.

Then again, that sort of cultural immersion didn’t help in the case of the Boston bombers. They were as Americanized as any terrorist could be. They attended American high schools and American colleges. Dzhokhar, the younger brother, set off a bomb with the sole intention of killing as many Americans as possible, then went to a party with some of his college buddies two days later. Nothing in his years’ worth of social interactions did a thing to lessen his hatred or his will to kill. Still, I hold out hope that, for most foreign students, especially among the ruling class elite who make up most of their number, giving them an opportunity to live in America can mean good things for America’s image an interest abroad in the years to come.

Anyway, as far as Senator Paul’s suggestion goes, freezing the student-visa program wouldn’t have changed anything in Boston, since both of the Tsarnaev brothers were permanent U.S. residents.

When I advise students, I often feel like H&R Block when discussing the university core courses.  All too often, students only need help checking boxes and filling out schedules. They think such courses will not help their careers; they are only “getting them out of the way.” There is certainly a great deal of fluff in that core, yet students fail to realize that a good education can be more beneficial than a business school credential.

I’m not alone is this frustration.

The Real Clear Politics essay “Good Thing I’m Not a History Major” by Professor Michael Hepner also laments this marginalization of “general education courses,” which deserves a louder drumbeat in education reform circles.

Hepner reports that only 25 percent of his students know the name of our current vice president, and that one student thought “Vince Carter was a peanut farmer”; this mirrors my own experiences. I’ve had students confuse Mao Zedong with Yao Ming. I’ve also had a few past students push back at my grammatical corrections on their work because “this isn’t an English class.” I wouldn’t be surprised if more students related the name Napoleon to Dynamite than to Bonaparte.

But this issue is not all the students’ faults.

High tuition costs force students and parents to view college in terms of its ROI; they see more dollar signs in marketing as opposed to history. If colleges want to retain the “life of the mind,” whole-person education, that mission needs to be effectively communicated to this current generation because they are not receiving that message. We have to face the reality that the majority of students are conditioned to go to college “to get a job.”