At the South by Southwest education conference in Austin, Texas recently, on a panel entitled “What’s Next for Access and Affirmative Action?” administrators such as Anne-Marie Nunez from the University of Texas (UT) system revealed…
Events
Kiss of Debt
Beth Akers of the Brookings Institution, co-author of controversial research on the status of student loans, downplays the significance of the more than $1.3 trillion in debts held by Americans. “Debt is increasing steadily across…
Pre-K Progressive Push
On a panel promoting pre-Kindergarten programs at a conference recently in Austin, Texas, a pair of government officials–one local, one federal–made their case. Representing the City of New York, Richard Buery suggested that employing universal…
Creativity and Common Core
This SXSWedu session’s description sums up the matter: “What if job performance was measured by a year-end test aiming to boil all of our work down to a single score? As meaningless as that would…
UT-Austin Unrepentant on Affirmative Action
For higher education administrators, affirmative action remains a topic of concern. In Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race can be a determining factor regarding student admission….
School Choice: The Milwaukee Magnet
When it becomes successful in their own backyards, even die-hard liberals support school choice. “I support [means-tested, not universal] vouchers, I support homeschooling, I support charter schools, I support changes in the traditional system, [and]…
A Modest U.N. Proposal
Can it be that students gather annually around the country to construct a “Model United Nations” because the real one has failed so miserably? “What good does it do?” Judge Jeanine Pirro asked a packed,…
What if Abe Lincoln Lived?
Would the Civil Rights movement have taken place if Abraham Lincoln survived the assassin’s bullet delivered by John Wilkes Booth? Allen Guelzo, a civil war era professor at Gettysburg College, posed this question in a…
Deconstructing Hillary Clinton’s Inbox
Late last month, a law professor at American University remarked upon the legality of whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton illegally removed official e-mails since holding that office. “It depends upon what the meaning…
Colleges Eliminating Self-Esteem Courses
Something that should give would-be education reformers pause but probably won’t: when ephemeral education fads finally come in for much-needed criticism, they have already done their damage. Case in point: the self-esteem courses popular 15-20…