A college degree is the key to unlocking many of the best careers in the modern labor market. But more than 20 million working-age adults in the United States are college dropouts, failed in some way by institutions that collectively receive hundreds of billions of dollars in public funding every year. For the last few decades, the […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Revised data shows Community Colleges have been underappreciated
South Africa can’t afford to see its universities pitch over the precipice
For the past two years the actions of government and protesting studentshave slowly started squeezing South Africa’s universities into a shadow of their former selves. In his book “As by Fire” prominent educationalist Jonathan Jansen argues that South Africa is witnessing the end of its universities. He explains that this doesn’t mean the doors will close. Registration will […] … learn more→
The month of hell (TM)
I first saw the film of David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross(1992), as an undergraduate pursuing a degree in literature and film, around 2004. It chimed with my ideas about the sort of working future I didn’t want to have, and the meaninglessness of labour under capitalism, but otherwise I thought little more about it – […] … learn more→
The problem with “taking offense”
The notion that college student protesters are reacting to “offensive” speech has held outsized influence in national debates about free speech and student unrest on campus. The right’s preoccupation with the idea of the “offended” student—the “crybully,” the “snowflake,” the “little fascist”—is so integral to conservative political identity in the Trump era that it’s elevated […] … learn more→
How should Australia respond to China’s influence in our universities?
The federal government is concerned about Chinese influence in Australia, particularly on universities. While we don’t know exactly how deep this influence runs, we do know quite a bit. Financially, many Australian universities depend on international students from mainland China. It was recently suggested that 16% of the University of Sydney’s revenue comes from these students. Over the past two decades, this […] … learn more→
Middlebury College intimidated by students
Conservative speaker Ben Shapiro gave a “successful” talk at Berkeley recently. It’s a sad state of affairs that we now call a talk by a non-Leftist as “successful” if it satisfies the condition of “no Leftists rioted.” The secret to the success? Not telling the police to stand down. It’s a good start, but another […] … learn more→
Nearly 2/3rds of public U’s have become less accessible since 1990s
Since the late 1990s, nearly two-thirds of selective public universities have reduced the share of students they enroll who come from families in the bottom 40 percent of the income scale, according to a new report that New America released today. The report, Moving on Up?: What a Groundbreaking Study Tells Us about Access, Success, and […] … learn more→
Will universities become a redundant archipelago?
In the early days of the World Wide Web, management author Peter Drucker predicted that long-distance learning would end higher education as we know it. Quoted in Forbes, Drucker predicted: “Universities won’t survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.” It is a message that is […] … learn more→
Students will suffer if Australia and New Zealand change tertiary fee agreement
New Zealand’s new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has asserted that the current tuition fee arrangements for Australian students in New Zealand will end if the policy does not remain reciprocal. In a debate during the general election campaign, Adern stated: If [Australia] lock us out of tertiary education, we will lock them out of it here. […] … learn more→
Tackling the reproducibility crisis requires universal standards
Reproducibility is the conduit through which scientific discoveries become future innovations, cures and commercial opportunities. It is also the central pillar of scientific integrity: the barometer by which future generations can independently validate all the progress that came before them. But, as is now widely acknowledged, reproducibility is in crisis. A 2016 Nature survey, for instance, found […] … learn more→
