Eric Kelderman
Chronicle of Higher Education
Sian L. Beilock seems to be everywhere. You’ll find Dartmouth College’s president in the pages of The Atlantic, sharing her plan for “Saving the Idea of the University.” And in The Wall Street Journal, asking whether a four-year degree is worth it.
And it’s not just that she’s seizing the bully pulpit; it’s what she’s using it to say. Beilock represents a new breed of college president willing to take shots at her own sector. Higher education, in her formulation, has lost its way by becoming too expensive and too political. And it shoulders much of the blame for retribution from the partisan right and flagging confidence in colleges and the value of the credentials they provide.
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Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
House Republicans have now formally backed President Donald Trump in fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, voting Wednesday to advance 10 bills that would codify the White House’s efforts to disperse numerous education programs and offices to other federal agencies.