Tag: University of Virginia
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A New “Landscape” for UVa Admissions
by Walter Smith With the recent U.S. Supreme Court restricting “affirmative action” in college and university admissions, an all-consuming question in Charlottesville is how the University of Virginia might change its policies and guidelines for admitting students. While prohibiting the use of race as a decisive factor in admissions, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts allowed…
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Setting the Stage for the Great Race-in-Admissions Debate
by James A. Bacon People have been asking me what I think about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting colleges and universities from using race as a specific basis for admitting students. I’m not a legal scholar, so I won’t offer any opinions on the legal or constitutional merits of the decision. I speak as…
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Who Guides the Guides?
by James A. Bacon In the spring of 2022 University of Virginia alumnus Warren Lightfoot emailed Rector Whitt Clement, a fraternity brother, to share the experiences of a friend and friend’s daughter during a university tour. Among other negative observations about UVa, reported Lightfoot, the student tour guide had made a point of noting that…
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Men Need Not Apply
by James A. Bacon Mark R. Perry, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has filed 841 complaints over the years against universities whose policies and practices discriminate against men. So far, the Office of Civil Rights has opened 28 investigations just based on more than 100 complaints he’s filed for Do No…
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Probing UVa’s Gender Gap: Is It an Admissions Problem?
by James A. Bacon As highlighted in our last post, the University of Virginia admits significantly more women than men. The split in the undergraduate student body is roughly 54/46. My aim in pointing out the disparity was not, as some readers presumed, to argue for special preferences for men; admission to UVa should be…
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The Incoherence of DEI Ideology: the Gender Gap
by James A. Bacon Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the University of Virginia is incoherent in theory, arbitrary in practice, and riddled with contradictions. Nowhere is DEI policy more muddled than UVa’s treatment of men and women. UVa’s long-term goal is to recruit a student body that “looks like Virginia” in its racial/ethnic composition. Yet…
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Back in Vogue at UVa: Viewpoint Diversity
by James A. Bacon The University of Virginia leadership normally keeps its Board of Visitors meetings running on such a tightly scripted schedule that board members rarely get an opportunity to engage in free-wheeling discussion. But Rector Whitt Clement and President Jim Ryan made an exception Friday during the board’s June meeting: they set aside…
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UVa Board Trims Next-Year Tuition by 0.7%. Big Whoop.
by James A. Bacon Responding to a Youngkin administration request for Virginia’s public colleges and universities to curb tuition increases, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors voted this morning to reduce a scheduled 3.7% tuition hike next year to 3.0%. As explained by Chief Operating Officer J.J. Davis, the shaving of $5.5 million from…
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DEI Presentation at Tomorrow’s UVa Board of Visitors Meeting Attempts to Deflect the Discussion
by James C. Sherlock Tomorrow, June 2, there will be a meeting of the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia. The University has published a preview of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion presentation to the Board. That presentation is designed quite clearly to deflect the conversation from the true issues. It attempts to:…
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Equity: Equal Outcomes or Equal Opportunity?
by James A. Bacon University of Virginia President Jim Ryan begs to differ with critics of “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.” The term “equity” has become a lightning rod in the debate over DEI, he writes in an essay recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Somehow, he muses, people got the idea that equity…
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Ryan Calls for a Kinder, Gentler DEI
by James A. Bacon As the University of Virginia Board of Visitors gears up for a discussion of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at its June board meeting, President Jim Ryan has made the case for a kinder, gentler DEI in an essay recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Forgoing the rhetoric of “anti-racism”…
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How UVa Offsets Bureaucratic Bloat
by James A. Bacon College Simply‘s 2023 Best Value Colleges in America ranks the University of Virginia as the 2nd “best value” among public colleges and universities in the United States in 2023. The best-value distinction is conferred upon institutions that provide students the most academic prowess for the money (defined as net tuition after financial…
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Is Stingy State Funding to Blame for UVa Tuition Increases?
by James A. Bacon In explaining the cause of rising tuition & fees at the University of Virginia, we described last week how the driving force over the past 20 years has been a relentless increase in spending. Expenditures in the academic division of the University of Virginia, fueled by an expansion in salaries, increased…
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UVa’s 20-Year Expenditure Explosion
by James A. Bacon Tis the season for Virginia’s universities to announce how much they are raising tuition & fees for the upcoming academic year. Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors has jacked up tuition by 4.9% and the College of William & Mary by 4.5%. Virginia Commonwealth University is considering an increase of 4% to…
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Daily Mail Picks up Bettinger Story
The Morgan Bettinger case is gaining national notoriety. After Reason magazine detailed the travesty of the University of Virginia student who was punished for using the words “speed bumps” in a way that militant leftist protesters construed as threatening, the Daily Mail has picked up the story. The Daily Mail does not add much new…