Category: Education (higher ed)
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Higher Ed to General Assembly: More, More, More
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The 2022-2024 biennial state budget that became effective on July 1 included more than $1 billion in general fund appropriation for capital projects for institutions of higher education. This was in addition to at least $1 billion in general fund-supported appropriations in the previous biennial budget. One would think that more than…
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Time to Throw the Spotlight on Virginia’s Education Schools
by James A. Bacon My Bacon’s Rebellion colleague Jim Sherlock has brought much-needed attention to the link between the Wokeness revolution in Virginia’s education schools and the collapse of learning at the state’s public schools. Virginia’s education schools increasingly see their role as less about teaching teachers to teach and more about bringing about the…
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Want a Woke Version of UVa History? Go on a Student-Guided Tour
by James A. Bacon In June 2022 a University of Virginia alumnus took his college-bound daughter to visit Mr. Jefferson’s university. UVa was one of the young woman’s two top choices, and she looked forward to a tour of the Lawn and the Grounds. But disillusion set in quickly. At the orientation, a senior assistant…
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Outrage Is No Substitute for Thought
UVa students push back against learning about other viewpoints. by Shaun Kenney WARNING! This is a long one . . . so pour your favorite scotch or cup of coffee and be prepared to consider alternate viewpoints that may offend. As the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick remarks, “My thoughts do not aim for your assent,…
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Why Washington & Lee Needs Viewpoint Diversity
by Neely Young In the summer of 2020, following the Board announcement to consider changing the name of Washington and Lee University, the faculty voted by about 80% to 20% to change the name. The Law School vote was unanimous for a change. The faculty are certainly entitled to their point of view on this…
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Blacks Don’t Always Think the Way White Cultural Elites Think They Do
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin’s popularity in Virginia was the top-line story from a new Virginia Commonwealth University poll. The survey, published yesterday, found that 49% of Virginians polled approve of his job as governor compared to 38% who disapprove. It’s not surprising to see his popularity holding up so well. Virginians tend…
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Liberal Democracy, Illiberal Institutions
Maybe no one wants to work for a public education system that hates our values. by Shaun Kenney Carl Schmitt isn’t precisely a household name. The German political theorist was a deep reader of Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes, whose evolution of thought occurred during the fratricidal tumult of Weimar Germany in the 1920s. One of…
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Wonders Never Cease: WaPo Gives Fair Treatment to Alumni Rebellion
by James A. Bacon Every once in a while The Washington Post reminds us of the kind of newspaper it used to be — capable of producing balanced journalism. Education reporter Susan Svrluga has published an article describing the rise of what I (not she) call the alumni rebellion. She cites the concerns of Virginia-based…
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$8 Million a Year for Higher-Ed’s Non-Lobbyist Lobbyists
by James A. Bacon When Donald J. Finley retired from the Virginia Business Higher Education Council (VBHEC) earlier this year, Virginia’s higher-ed industry lost one of its most effective advocates in Richmond. As Charles Kelley with McGuire Woods Consulting tweeted at the time: “Don is the best example of a true public servant, and he’s…
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VCU Seeking Prof to Teach Black Queer Antiracist Anticolonial Feminism
by James A. Bacon Virginia Commonwealth University is hiring an assistant professor to teach “Race in Arts/Media, queer of color critique and Black feminist media studies.” That’s quite the academic specialty. I can’t imagine there are many such scholars around. Once upon a time, I would have questioned whether there was any demand for graduates…
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The Crisis of Reducing Costs and Maintaining Standards at Virginia’s State Colleges and Universities
by James C. Sherlock Virginia’s state-funded colleges and universities are too expensive. Tuitions are the headline numbers. But student fees and food and housing costs are as important to the budgets of families and individual students as tuition. Costs within the college system have gone up because of a general lack of management systems and…
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College Admissions and the Legacy Dilemma
by James A. Bacon The issue of legacy admissions to prestigious colleges and universities poses a ticklish problem for conservatives who support meritocratic criteria and oppose racial preferences. There is nothing meritocratic about giving preferential treatment to family members of alumni who, by virtue of having graduated from a prestigious institution, already enjoy a leg…
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The Governor’s Tuition Freeze Request and the Board at UVa – It’s Complicated
by James C. Sherlock Much has been made of a recent request by Governor Glenn Youngkin to eliminate a tuition increase at the University of Virginia and the Board’s decision not to honor it. The tensions between means and ends that have to be resolved in producing a budget at any large and complex university…
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The Only Thing “Systemic” About VMI Is the WaPo’s Cherry Picking of Data
by James A. Bacon Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira was up to his old tricks in an article published over the weekend about Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointments to the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors. Predictably, he portrayed the divisions at VMI as between rival camps of those who “support change” and “those resisting it”…
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A Letter to an Old Friend
by James C. Sherlock This article is rendered as a letter responding to an old friend and mentor, the University of Virginia, my alma mater. I can imagine the University’s response to my last article on its culture: The changes we have experienced in the culture of the University, its pervasive progressivism, which some may…