For the past two years, American professors have been explaining how they misread “the Arab Spring” that began on the streets of Cairo two years ago. Those who have grown up in the Middle East were not so surprised.

“I learned from our fight for freedom in Egypt that compromise would endanger our lives; I knew that being a strong horse was our only mean of survival,” Egyptian human rights activist Cynthia Farahat, who has since relocated to the United States, says. “I’m only alive and safe in this great country that I love dearly because I understood that you could not fight evil by tolerating it. “

“That it takes a victim to create a victimizer; and it creates a willing slave to create a fascist. I know that the only superpower in the world today is the individual.” Farahat, the author of the political novel, Cognac, will speak at the next Accuracy in Academia Author’s Night on May 30, 2013.

Complementary food and beverages will be provided at the AIA event which will take place in the Van Andel Center at the Heritage Foundation.

Thursday
May 30, 2013
6-8 PM
The Van Andel Center
The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Ave., NE
Washington, D. C.

AIA’s author’s nights are free for all Capitol Hill and Washington, D. C. –area interns but please R. S. V. P. mal.kline@academia.org or call (202)364-3085 so that we can get a head count for food.

This event is part of The Frank A. Fusco Conservative University Lecture Series this year, made possible by a generous grant from The Frank A. Fusco and Nelly Goletti Fusco Foundation.

Although academics have never been in short supply to discuss political scandals, there seems to be a caveat: They tend to be crises in which Republicans are the alleged malefactors.

Thus, from Watergate to Iran-Contra, professors have been ubiquitous in offering commentary on current events. In striking contrast, they seem to have been on sabbatical while the Obama Administration emerged at the vortex of three controversies in May involving the IRS, Benghazi and the monitoring of AP stories and sources. Maybe it was finals week.

“Nevertheless, what the IRS did to Tea Party groups was wrong, just as what the IRS has done for years to liberal groups was wrong,” John K. Wilson wrote on the Academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors.” What this absurdly overwrought ‘scandal’ should result is in a much stronger commitment to freedom of political speech, including by nonprofit organizations.”

Wilson is probably one of the more reasonable voices at academe. Nevertheless, he notes that the IRS under Bush investigated Obama’s Church. Perhaps, but did they ask what Jeremiah Wright read?

Yet and still, don’t expect any latent curiosity in academic circles about whether power was abused, by who, and how legal it was. The Poynter Institute presented a conference at the Washington Post last weekend which featured WaPo blogger Ezra Klein on the topic, “Hard Facts, Easy Reading.”

“On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing,” Klein wrote on May 16, 2013. “Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out.”

“There’ll be more hearings, and more bad press for the Obama administration, and more demands for documents. But — and this is a key qualification — absent more revelations, the scandals that could reach high don’t seem to include any real wrongdoing, whereas the ones that include real wrongdoing don’t reach high enough.”

And this is a key qualification—yet.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

Or vice versa. A group of academics decided to track what happens to bright kids over the course of a quarter-century and found that few of them wound up in academia. They might ponder why this is so.

“Although it would be difficult to quantify participants’ collective accomplishments in a single number, by any standard, it appears that many individuals identifiable by age 13 as having profound mathematical and verbal reasoning ability develop into truly outstanding contributors in their respective fields,” three professors from Vanderbilt wrote in a study which appeared in the journal Psychological Science. “Not only did participants choose prestigious occupations by age 38 but the organizations employing them were impressive as well.”

“ Although a number of our data counts do not reflect the quality of participants’ contributions, the organizations employing participants (e.g., Fortune 500 companies, major law firms, large medical facilities, and research universities) and bestowing awards on them (e.g., the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, the National Science Foundation, Intel Corporation, NASA, and The Wall Street Journal) afford reasonable quality appraisals of their creative products as well as the responsibilities, resources, and trust that they have earned. More than 7% of participants held tenure at research-intensive universities (including many considered the best in the world) by the time they were age 38.”

Psychological Science is published by the Association for Psychological Science. The study was co-authored by Harrison J. Kell, David Lubinski and Camilla P. Benbow of Vanderbilt. All three are psychologists.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

Today, students have easier access to college than their parents ever did, and more opportunities to go broke paying for it, former Obama Administration economist Cecilia Rouse observed at the Brookings Institution recently.

Net tuition has increased slowly, due to cuts in state education subsidies, she claimed.  Rouse is the dean at Princeton.

She noted that:

• At public 2-year colleges, 40% of students borrow after 6 years
• At public 4-year colleges, 60% of students have taken loans out over 6 years
• Up to 88% of students in for-profit colleges in 2009 took out loans.
• Fifty percent of students after 6 years have not completed their degrees.

Rouse also made note of what she calls a  “cost disease,” in which as the wages of skilled workers rise, the college faculty’s wages also increase. She also suggested that e-learning and technology can bend this cost disease curve, in economic terms.

She even praised the role of for-profit colleges, because they adjust to the needs of the students and private sector, quick to change and respond, adopt e-technology but is heavily reliant on federal student aid.  This last observation was particularly interesting given the Obama Administration’s antipathy towards for-profit education.

Rouse is one of many Obama Administration officials who exited the government for academia before the regime retired, a record even for a Democratic administration.

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

We are constantly told that America needs to import its engineers from abroad—specifically China and India—in order to make up for a perceived talent deficit in the United States.

As with most nuggets of current wisdom, this bromide loses some of its zing on closer examination. Pooja Bhatt, portfolio manager from Accenture specifically working with development initiatives, shared some disturbing Indian education statistics at a Brookings Institution conference.

Out of the 500,000 engineers who graduate per year from India, only 2.6% are employable and over 50% don’t have skills to succeed.  Moreover, About 80% of Indian students have not mastered the basics of reading or mathematics, Ashish Dhawan, CEO for the Central Square Foundation, said in remarks made at that same symposium.

One wonders if the other 20 percent are in schools such as the ones managed by Baishali Bomjan and her mentors at the CCS Academy.

Finally, while one of the ostensible goals of the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top program is to make the U. S. more competitive internationally, another speaker at the panel discussion expressed skepticism about it as a model for India. Subir Gokarn, Brookings India research director, said that Race to the Top-like programs are dangerous for India.

Gokarn is wary of Race to the Top’s “one size fits all” approach that fails to take into account demographics, caste systems and gender inequality. It will result in significant trial and error, and he asked whether it would be viable for Indian education to undertake this type of plan.

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

Morehouse College’s president, John Wilson, Jr., is deciding how to balance President Barack Obama speech at graduation ceremonies a day after a Morehouse alumnus and Obama critic speaks to graduates.

Rev. Kevin Johnson leads a Baptist church in Philadelphia and will speak at the baccalaureate ceremony on May 18, the day before Pres. Obama speaks on May 19. Johnson wrote an article published in the Philadelphia Tribune, titled, “A President for Everyone, Except Black People”, that lambasted Obama for discriminating against blacks in his new presidential cabinet. Johnson also said that Obama “has not moved African-American leadership forward, but backwards”.

Instead of the original plan, which was to feature Johnson as a speaker, Morehouse’s president decided to place Johnson as a part of a three-person panel, “to reflect a broader and more inclusive range of viewpoints.”

The Chronicle for Higher Education reports that critics oppose this change in the ceremony and charge that Wilson is too close to Obama, having served as the chief of the White House’s program on black colleges before taking the position at Morehouse, which is based in Atlanta. Wilson denies the allegations of censorship because “these allegations are fundamentally deleterious and are undeserved.”

Wilson, in turn, joins the unprecedented exodus of Obama appointees rushing out of the Administration and into academe before the U. S. president’s term is up.

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

The president of the prominent Carnegie Mellon University is under fire for a parody of the Pope that involved a young woman wearing papal robes and very little else, Debra Erdley reported in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

“A young woman, wearing mock papal robes from the waist up but naked from the waist down, handed out condoms,” Erdley wrote “Her pubic hair was shaved in the shape of a cross.”

“ Another student parodied an altar boy.”  Jared Cohon, the university president, apologized for a “highly offensive” parody of the Pope.

This parade let to outrage as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh demanded action over the incident.  “I think we all know that when we’re growing up we do stupid things but to cross over the line in this instance shouldn’t happen with anybody,”Bishop David Zubik said.

Cohon said he will not comment while the matter is under investigation. Officially, Cohon said, “I regret that this occurred, and I apologize to all who were offended by this, for religious or other reasons, and especially to those who witnessed this behavior.”

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders have a higher percentage of full-time, tenured faculty positions, announced a report released by the American Council on Education, but are not found among the high leadership positions in higher education, Nick DeSantis reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“In their report, the American Council on Education said only 1.5% of college and university presidents are Asian-American and Pacific Islander,” DeSantis writes. “They make up 7% of full-time, tenured faculty but only 2% of chief academic officers and 3% of academic deans.”

They conclude that possible hurdles are racial bias, a disparity in mentoring and even (gasp!) stereotypes.

Is academia color-blind? Maybe not as much as it thinks it is.

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

WASHINGTON – According to researchers, disgust, dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the U.S. public school system is on the rise, so much so that the number of homeschoolers is on the rise.

“Since 1999, the number of children who are being homeschooled has increased by 75%,” Julia Lawrence reports in Education News. “Although currently only 4% of all school children nationwide are educated at home, the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.”

It does not look like this trend will dissipate anytime soon and could threaten the existence of public schools in the next decades.  Think that homeschooled children underperform in standardized assessment exams? Think again.

“Data shows that those who are independently educated typically score between 65th and 89th percentile on such exams, while those attending traditional schools average on the 50th percentile,” Lawrence relates. “Furthermore, the achievement gaps, long plaguing school systems around the country, aren’t present in homeschooling environment.”

“There’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels or race/ethnicity.”

Homeschoolers typically score higher on the ACT than their public school counterparts and have higher grade point averages (GPA) than other students once they are in college. Nevertheless, homeschoolers are schooled by their parents at a cost around $500-$600 per year. In public schools, the cost per student averages $10,000 per year.

Recruiters from colleges are noticing the trend, since the majority of homeschoolers graduate and obtain a four-year bachelor’s degree at a much higher rate than public school and some private school competitors. Colleges such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Duke have begun recruiting homeschooled students.

Another knock on homeschoolers is that they miss the socializing aspect of student life. According to a
National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) survey, homeschoolers have “healthy social, psychological, and emotional development, and success into adulthood.” Homeschoolers typically have core groups of students and do not operate completely alone, contrary to popular perception.

Dr. Brian Ray, researcher at NHERI, said we can “expect to observe a notable surge in the number of children being homeschooled in the next 5 to 10 years.”

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.

Teacher’s union chief Randi Weingarten has come out against linking test performance to teacher evaluations under the Obama Administration’s Common Core standards, according to Associated Press reporter Karen Matthews.

Weingarten is the head the American Federation of Teachers, a union that claims 1.5 million members. She told a business group that, “the fact that the changes are being made nationwide without anything close to adequate preparation is a failure of leadership, a sign of a broken accountability system and, worse, and an abdication of our responsibility to kids, particularly poor kids.”

Though Weingarten says she’s a supporter of the Common Core standards, her lone complaint is that it is basing student and teacher evaluations on this year’s test results. Instead, she suggests that the states wait on the evaluations until the standards are fully implemented.

In total, 45 states including the District of Columbia (which is notorious for its failing public school system) have adopted the Common Core standards, Matthews reports. Supporters call it a way to fix a broken education system, ignoring the role of teacher’s unions, public education testing and curriculum and a variety of other factors, according to Matthews.

New York has reported that the Common Core standards are too tough for students, with complaints ranging from too little time allotted to complete sections of the test and even children crying from undue stress.

However, Andrew Kirtzman, spokesman for the New York City Department of Education, said that the resistance to Common Core comes from a “special interest cell” whose members are trying to protect their own jobs. New York’s Board of Regents chair, Merryl Tisch, said that the same percentage of teachers would be rated as “effective” under the new system as in years past. She also claimed that the state will not fail schools under this year’s test results.

Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.

If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.