Category: Education (higher ed)
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Bacon Bits on a Snowy Day
Another free clinic closes. Harrisonburg’s Free Clinic is going out of business after 30 years of providing medical care to low-income, uninsured adults. The clinic’s board attributed the decision in part to the decline in the number of patients resulting from Virginia’s Medicaid expansion. The clinic had 600 patients before expansion and 90 patients afterward,…
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Hell Has Frozen Over!
by Dick Hall-Sizemore I just can’t help myself — the Washington Post editorial page and Bacon’s Rebellion conservative contributors and commenters (that is to say, the bulk of the blog) are in agreement on an issue! In an editorial in today’s issue, the Post opposes the wholesale forgiveness of student loans. Now the two groups disagree…
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University of Chicago Principles, Freedom of Expression and Virginia’s Universities
by James C. Sherlock Where does education stop and indoctrination begin? A useful demarcation line is freedom of expression. Many Virginia colleges and universities have crossed that line. Students, faculty and administrators live in fear of reprisal for speaking their minds. Some institutions maintain anonymous tip lines that lead to non-judicial procedures through…
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What Must Jim Ryan Do to Earn a $100,000 Bonus?
by James A. Bacon When the University of Virginia hired Jim Ryan as president in 2018, the terms of his employment were spelled out in a contract. Anyone can obtain a copy of the document under the Freedom of Information Act, as Bacon’s Rebellion has done. You can view it here. Among other things, the…
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Darkness Descends upon Mr. Jefferson’s University
by James A. Bacon In the previous post I gave a chronological account of how a classroom joke delivered by Associate Professor Jeffrey Leopold in University of Virginia business class exploded into a full-fledged racial controversy. The post was a straightforward, just-the-facts-ma’am narrative of what happened. I made every effort to give all sides of…
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Anatomy of a Racial Incident at UVa
by James A. Bacon Jeffrey Leopold, a University of Virginia assistant professor, was assigned this fall to teach “COMM 1800 — Foundations of Commerce,” a prerequisite for students entering the McIntire School of Commerce. On October 22 he lectured the class on the topic of globalism. His purpose was to explain the necessity of adopting…
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Bad Student Loan Debt: $435 Billion and Counting
by James A. Bacon “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen said many years ago. With the passage of time and inflation, we might need to update the quote to “a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there…” But even by the debased standards of…
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Mark Herring’s Worst Thanksgiving – Conspiracy Against EVMS may lead to Federal Involvement
by James C. Sherlock Scandals are sometimes overrated. Not this one. I have reported here before on the strange case of the EVMS-ODU merger. I posted here on Nov 1, Nov 2 and Nov 3 with my own concerns on the subject. Many of my assessments came to fruition. On November 13 and 20, the Checks…
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Stewart Gets Last-Minute Gift From Trump
Peter Galuszka Corey A. Stewart, a conservative firebrand from Prince William County, is getting a last-minute going-away present from President Donald Trump. As Trump’s administration comes to an end, Trump has created a position on trade at the U.S. Commerce Department that is just for him. In 2016, Stewart headed Trump’s Virginia election campaign before…
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The Failure of University Governance
by James A. Bacon In his new book co-authored with Richard J. Cebula, “Runaway College Costs,” James V. Koch goes beyond the usual lamentations about how out-of-control costs are making colleges and universities increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible to millions of Americans. He describes how higher-ed governing boards have largely failed in their fiduciary duty to…
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Cancel the Student Debt? Kiss the Working Class Goodbye.
by Kerry Dougherty We only have ourselves to blame. Baby Boomers, that is. We were the progeny of the Greatest Generation, but growing up in their houses, with their rigid rules and endless chores, our folks didn’t seem like the greatest. They seemed heartless when they sided with teachers over us and when they doled…
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How to Promote Ideological Diversity at Washington & Lee
by Neely Young It is well known by now that the professoriate at many colleges and universities, particularly the more elite ones, is dominated by politically liberal faculty. American higher education needs ideological diversity in classrooms, particularly in those that touch on political and social issues. Disciplines like sociology, history, political science, literature, and philosophy…
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What Works: Helping Students Complete their College Degrees
by James A. Bacon In Virginia, nearly 30% of students who enroll in community college or four-year college fail to complete their degrees within six years. There is widespread agreement across the political spectrum that it would be a good thing if more students completed their degrees and fewer dropped out of college after loading…
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Some First Amendment Rights More Important than Others
Cartoon circulating among University of Virginia alumni…