With tuition rates increasing and college attendance rates declining, a new poll from The Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center suggests that Americans’ confidence in the value of a college degree is fading. The survey shows a dramatic decline in the percentage of Americans who believe a four-year college degree is worth […]
George McGovern, the Democratic Party’s 1972 presidential nominee, was a liberal icon. During many years in political office, including as a U.S. senator from South Dakota, McGovern successfully championed loads of regulations, taxes, and mandates in the name of the public good. But as a businessman, he was held back to the point of failure […]
This week, the president of West Texas A&M University canceled a student group’s upcoming drag show. The move was unconstitutional—and he knew it. “I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to […]
Around the country, more and more colleges have seemingly launched a war on fun. At Yale, a law student was pressured by administrators to apologize after inviting students to a party at a “trap house.” At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, three students were suspended in 2021 for attending an off-campus party maskless. And at […]
Last week, Texas Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R–Arlington) introduced House Bill 4736, which would bar citizens of certain countries from enrolling in Texas universities. Similar to other state bills that take aim at the civil liberties of immigrants of specific nationalities, H.B. 4736 would punish foreigners for the sins of their governments—in many cases, the governments […]
In an essay published this week in City Journal, conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that universities—or rather, the state legislatures governing these universities—should shut down “activist” academic departments. But rather than protecting higher education, forcibly shutting down left-wing academic departments would be nothing more than routine censorship. Rufo argued that conservatives don’t have to sit […]
A Florida bill introduced last month that aims to suppress ‘woke’ ideas in public colleges and universities just got worse. On Wednesday, legislators filed an updated version of the measure, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), that seeks to limit academic freedom in Florida’s public colleges. The new version of the bill expands the list […]
Decades of rising tuition and fees may finally be catching up with America’s higher education system. According to data released in October by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSC), total undergraduate and graduate enrollment in the U.S. has declined by 3.2 percent since 2020. “After two straight years of historically large losses, it is […]
Fewer and fewer young people are enrolling in college after graduating high school. However, while many have presented this decline as tantamount to a national emergency, declining college attendance rates may actually be a good thing. Lower enrollment sends the message that four-year colleges need to lower their inflated prices. Plus, the decline may actually […]
Welcome to our regime of political capitalism, where merit matters but political connections matter even more. In an unalloyed capitalist system, money flows to those who offer goods and services of value to consumers. In a political capitalism system, money flows to special interest groups with friends in high places. In his 2018 book Political […]