From The New Republic, Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League by William Deresiewicz The sign of the system’s alleged fairness is the set of policies that travel under the banner of “diversity.” And that diversity does indeed represent nothing less…
Read MoreFrom The New Republic, Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League by William Deresiewicz Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual…
Read MoreDear Class of 2014: Thanks for Not Disinviting Me by Stephen Carter at Bloomberg. excerpt: In my day, the college campus was a place that celebrated the diversity of ideas. Pure argument was our guide. Staking out an unpopular position…
Read MoreFrom Victor Davis Hanson, The Death of the Humanities, at Defining Ideas. Excerpts: A final irony was that classical liberal education—despite the fashionable critique that it had never been disinterested—for a century was largely apolitical. Odysseus was critiqued as everyman,…
Read MoreFrom Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish, The Miseducation of Education Reformers Selected excerpts ( please follow the link and read the entire piece) : It’s an article of faith that our schools are failing our children. But most educational reformers…
Read More“Expert problems (in which the expert knows a lot but less than he thinks he does) often bring fragilities, and acceptance of ignorance the reverse.3 Expert problems put you on the wrong side of asymmetry. Let us examine the point…
Read MoreIs the MBA Going Away? by Megan McArdle But that doesn’t mean that the MBA is losing its value–when I returned to Chicago in October 2011 for my 10th business-school reunion, I saw no signs that Booth graduates were having…
Read Morefrom the Wall Street Journal, 4/6/13, Ben Casselman writes Number of the Week: Youth Unemployment at 22.9%? Excerpt: Perhaps no group has been hit harder by the recession and grinding recovery than the young. The official unemployment rate for those…
Read MoreJeff Jacoby writes The College Money Pit for the Boston Globe, 4/29/12. Excerpt: Year in, year out, Washington bestows tuition aid on students and their families. Year in, year out, the cost of tuition surges, galloping well ahead of inflation.…
Read MoreWhile our students perform poorly on standardized tests relative to other countries, we have the most desirable institutions of higher education in the world and have a disproportionate share of Nobel Prize winners. How is this so and do we…
Read More“You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library.” From the movie Good Will Hunting. Among the lessons we are still learning from the…
Read MoreIf the concept of wealth is properly expanded to include human capital, not just homes and stocks, it is clear that total wealth has become far less concentrated and more widely dispersed than it used to be. Percentages of narrowly…
Read Morefrom the ‘never waste time killing those who are busy committing suicide’ files…. NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin explains what is truly important to the teacher’s union:
Read MoreAfter a long day of helping my daughter move into her apartment in Bloomington, Indiana, before classes start we went for a late bite at Applebee’s. Apparently Indiana has a new law that EVERYONE gets carded if you order a…
Read MoreIn 1940 55% of college educated female workers in their thirties were employed as teachers. As opportunities for women broadened the best and the brightest left teaching and went into other higher paying fields. The school teaching profession experienced a…
Read MoreI just finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He has a knack for insights and thinking that most of us miss. The premise is that success is less a matter of IQ and talent and more a matter of culture, opportunity…
Read MoreIt is politically fashionable to predict the demise of America as a global power and I imagine it will happen some day but here are some of the reasons it may not be as soon as many wish or predict:…
Read MoreOne can now major in Informatics, the newest program at Indiana University. It is in repsonse to the need to understand, organize and utilize the vast information at our fingertips. Yes, I feel as outdated as when I view a…
Read MoreIn American Thinker Christopher Chantril writes May 25, 2008US Can’t Pass English 101Excerpt: Since we are worrying about “larger implications” let us escape from the bell jar of liberal thinking and wonder why it is that after a century and…
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