See Thru Edu is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D., Editor in Chief and Director, Center for Higher Education, Texas Public Policy Foundation
Federal subsidies for college have simultaneously lowered educational quality and increased the number of Americans who have college credentials but little useful knowledge or skill.
Oberlin has supplied teachers with a trigger-warning guide, advising them to consider not assigning works that could spark upset because of their “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.”
How far the sustainability movement has spread into American higher education is the subject of a deeply researched study by the National Association of Scholars, Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism.
“I think we can all agree that U.S. colleges and universities should not be outsourcing academic control, faculty and student oversight, or curriculum to a foreign government — in this case a dictatorship.”
The “trigger warnings,” “the safe spaces,” the entire racket is just an expedient way to wield political power. It’s a pretext for enforcing ideological censorship.
We went past the point of diminishing returns in public higher education long ago. More spending does not increase benefits from it, but diverts resources better employed elsewhere.
Senate Bill 4, voted out of committee last week, would enable some low-income students to escape from failing schools. Such an exodus would send a healthy message to those failing schools, its administrators, and legislators. It would serve as a positive example.
At Chicago and Princeton, at least, academic freedom lives!
As a country, we need to confront not only how we can compete in a global economy, but also what kind of future we can construct when a sizable segment of our future workforce is not equipped with the skills necessary for higher-level employment.
Because economics discourages the drawing of conclusions based on emotion and emphasizes the need to fully consider the results of action — the opportunity costs and the unintended consequences — it makes the student less inclined to fall head over heels for leftist panaceas such as the minimum wage, “free” medical care, and so forth.
