higher education
391 pieces tagged “higher education”, newest first.
Naughty List: University Says Nativity Scenes, Mistletoe Not Inclusive
The folks over at Cornell University are worried about "inclusive seasonal displays." That's academic code for Christmas decorations. Cornell warned students that some "winter holiday displays" are not consistent with the university's "commitment to diversity and inclusiveness."
The Death of Gratitude
The Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero insisted that gratitude was "the parent of all the other virtues." Cicero did not define gratitude as Mafia-like loyalty or mutual back-scratching. He was not referring to a pop socialism where all supposedly owe their successes to the government. Instead, gratitude is proof of humility and offers perspective. It is an appreciation for others, often now dead, who have helped to make us what we are. Without it, we are narcissists and self-absorbed amnesiacs.
Scourging Scalia: The Left's Latest Hissy Fit
In other words, instead of students attending colleges that match their academic background, training, and credentials, the racially discriminatory admissions programs of universities like the University of Texas push many students into universities where they are in the bottom of the class from the very start of their college careers. This leads to lower grades, lower graduation rates, and students dropping out of more academically rigorous disciplines like science and engineering – black and Hispanic students abandon those areas of study at much higher rates than whites.
Higher Education Is a House Divided
Although he is just 22, Andrew Zeller is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in mathematics at Purdue University. He is one reason the school is a rare exception to the rule of unreason on American campuses, where freedom of speech is under siege. He and Purdue are evidence that freedom of speech, by which truth is winnowed from error, is most reliably defended by those in whose intellectual pursuits the truth is most rigorously tested by reality.
'Mismatched' Black Students Pay the Price of Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is once again before the Supreme Court. The case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, arose from the usual scenario: A white student applied to the university but was denied admission, while black applicants with weaker academic credentials were admitted because of racial preferences designed to favor minorities. It's no mystery why Abigail Fisher, the rejected student in this case, would object to that racial double standard and take her protest all the way to the Supreme Court. What's less clear is why the University of Texas embraces such a double standard.
Attacking the Truth: Part II
The case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, involving racial double standards in admissions to the University of Texas at Austin, has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality that has been all too common in other Supreme Court cases involving affirmative action in academia, going all the way back to 1978. Plain hard facts dissolve into rhetorical mysticism in these cases, where evasions of reality have been the norm.