The decades-long effort to push elite colleges to be more diverse has failed. Here’s a better strategy: demand more support for the underfunded colleges that already graduate most Black and Hispanic students, and plenty of white students as well.
Higher Education
Posted inMagazine
Free College for the Working Class
Higher education needs a systemic solution to its problems of access, affordability, and quality. We have a plan.
Posted inHigher Education
California State Universities: “A Launchpad for the Middle Class”
Ellen Neufeldt, the president of Cal State-San Marcos, has worked hard to promote social mobility for her students. She reflects on partnerships with K-12 schools and community colleges, what it takes to keep students on track, and the public good.
Posted inHigher Education
“Universities Are the Enemy”: The Dark Belief Behind Project 2025’s Higher Education Agenda
The infamous 887-page policy manual linked to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance aims to take Ron DeSantis’s war against liberal arts education nationwide
Posted inHigher Education
Americans Have Not Actually Turned Against Higher Education Like the Media Says
As many colleges grapple with declining enrollment and intense political criticism, sagging public support for higher learning has become a journalistic given, the kind of as-we-all-know fact that can be simply asserted as context before advancing an argument or presenting the news of the day. But many of these articles are getting the story wrong. […]
Posted inPolitics
Which Republicans Might Serve in a Harris Cabinet?
And the Washington Monthly’s newly released 2024 College Guide—all in the August 29, 2024, newsletter.
Posted inMagazine
Public Education’s Reinforcements
New tutoring programs funded by the Biden administration and governors of both parties are shrinking the achievement gap in America’s schools. They could be the foundation of a bipartisan movement to help struggling students.
Posted inHigher Education
The Cost of Exaggerating the Gaza Protests
Some campuses were riven by demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war, but most, as the Monthly has noted, were not—including mine in Indiana. The cost we all pay when the mainstream media fails.
Posted inHigher Education
Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?
Yup. The Washington Monthly runs the numbers and explains the results.
Posted inPolitics
The Divestment Encampments Don’t Make Any Sense
The demand that universities unload any investments having to do with Israel is half-baked and bound to fail.
