Professor Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins, the nation’s leading critic of administrative bloat in higher education, has a modest proposal worthy of Jonathan Swift himself.  If we’re going to have the MOOC to cut costs, why not the MOOA--massive open online administrations--too? Instructional ...

Is NYT columnist Bill Keller right that it is “a blessing in disguise” for “a supporter of diversity” for the Supreme Court to restrict even further “the use of race as a factor in college admissions?” The Court has said since Regents v. Bakke (1978) that the only reason race can be used in ...

One thing that distinguishes us conservatives from libertarians is that we’re actually worried about growing inequality in America. We’re not that obsessed by the bare fact of economic inequality, but we are concerned about decreasing mobility. And we’re particularly concerned about the breakdown ...

So if you want to read a really thoughtful and combative commencement speech, here's Leon Wieseltier's (the literary editor of the New Republic) deep and inspiring intellectual defense of the humanities against scientism and technologism.  I'll leave it to you to read the speech.  It's short, after ...

So I’ve been criticized for saying that our country is, more than ever, a meritocracy based on productivity. One of the threaders, in fact, said we’re a plutocracy based in pseudo-meritocracy. I’m actually sympathetic to that (exaggerated) criticism, especially if the evidence used to support ...

So America, let me repeat, is more than ever a meritocracy defined by productivity.  Now, that’s not all we are.  And it’s far from bad news that we’ve gotten over so many prejudices that we’re about seeing merit according to an objective, measurable standard.  It does mean, however, that in some ...

So what young conservative blogger/essayist would you recommend to challenge those who believe they’re smarter than every conservative in the world?  Well, SAM GOLDMAN. Sam’s not the only one by far, but he’s my choice for today. After all, who else is outing “the spiritual crisis of the ...

Ross Douthat, the only conservative columnist for the New York Times, reports some good news and some bad news. The good: The Americans are becoming less criminal and less violent. There are fewer murders. And I’m adding or guessing that right as we become attuned to the dangers of bullying ...

So libertarians are rightly outraged by the Obama administration’s new Puritanical speech code.  But others have either praised or blamed that same administration for its “aggressive libertarianism” when it comes to sexual behavior—its promotion of the right to contraception, its opposition any ...

Here’s a good article that offers six explanations  for why “median-income men in America” are “in distress.”  Their incomes are dropping.  Lots of “prime-age men” have been “dropping out of the workforce altogether.”  Maybe most importantly, men have been disappearing from our institutions of ...

R.R. Reno,  quite an astute conservative public intellectual, claims that those with eyes to see know that the big news these days is the global victory of capitalism.  I'm not following Reno in every respect here, but going with what I would say in support of his position. The good news is that ...

So Peter Sacks, author of the excellent Generation X Goes to College, explains what's really wrong with the likely MOOCification of higher education. Studies show that learning through MOOCS and related online delivery systems isn't worse than that through the more traditional or personal ways ...

So here's a funny article on the sheer silliness and passive-aggressive hostility of the jargon that dominates the worlds of management, consultants, marketing, and all that.  That world, it seems to me, is divided between people who use that language earnestly in the belief that it is a sign of ...

So let me remind you that The Atlantic does the best job of popularizing scientific studies.  For one thing, it's remarkably unideological.  Both the left and the right—and the libertarians and the traditionalists—can find stuff that reaffirms—and stuff that challenges—their cherished perspectives ...

So I want to call your attention to a fine article by Jonathan Marks in Inside Higher Ed, the daily online newspaper of higher education.  Marks writes at a level several pay grades higher than most educational experts, and he contributes memorably to the continuing project of deconstruction of the ...