The New York Times supports the use of standardized tests (like the ACT and SAT) in undergraduate admissions

See A Great University Undermines Its Mission. Excerpts:

"The committee concluded that scores on the SAT and ACT, the main standardized tests for college admissions, did a better job measuring student readiness for college than high school grades. High test scores were particularly good at finding talented students from low-income families and underrepresented minority groups. For these reasons, the committee recommended the system continue to require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores.

The university’s leaders disregarded the report."

"the University of California began refusing to accept SAT or ACT scores, even from students who wanted to submit them"

"University leaders wrongly claimed that it would make admissions fairer and more equitable."

"The results have been terrible. At the University of California, San Diego, a faculty group last year reported “a steep decline in the academic preparation” among entering students. Last fall, for example, nearly 12 percent of first-year U.C.S.D. undergraduates were not qualified to take precalculus, a low-level class — up from only 0.5 percent in 2020." 

"Reading and writing skills have also deteriorated, and professors say they must spend time teaching elementary skills."

"the declines in preparedness among University of California students are larger than the regression elsewhere"

"[they] have essentially randomized aspects of the admissions process, admitting unprepared students while rejecting many who could thrive there."

"Even Janet Napolitano, who was the university president in 2020 and recommended a test-blind policy then, now favors its reversal."

"The critics claim that the two tests are biased and therefore a cause of inequities. The evidence indicates otherwise. Raj Chetty, a Harvard University economist, points out that other tests show similarly large economic and racial gaps. One example is the NAEP, a test of elementary and middle-school students for which almost nobody studies. This pattern suggests that SAT tutoring, which critics often blame for score gaps, plays only a limited role, perhaps because free tutoring is available from Khan Academy and elsewhere."

"The SAT and ACT . . . do appear to measure preparedness for highly selective colleges better than almost any other indicator, research shows." 

"Some other parts of applications — like student essays, extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations — are, in fact, biased toward affluent students."

"In 1970 only 7 percent of college freshmen nationwide had a high-school grade average of A or higher; today the share is roughly 40 percent."

"Any fair, reliable test would have results resembling those of the SAT and ACT."

"the test scores are especially useful at identifying strong students from low-income communities. When such a student receives even a pretty good score, it can be a sign of high potential." 

Requiring the SAT Test Boosts Student Success

After we started requiring entrance exams at Chapman University, graduation rates more than doubled

Letter to The WSJ. 

"I well understand the frustration of the University of California’s math and science professors who are urging that college-entrance exams be reinstated as an admission requirement (“California Professors Want Entrance Exams Back,” U.S. News, June 2).

When I became president of Chapman University in 1991, we didn’t require college-entrance exams. Many considered that a badge of honor. If, however, academic success is measured by a school’s ability to nurture its students through graduation, we were failing. Only 38% of the students who started as freshmen at Chapman graduated four to six years later. That compared to a 62% graduation rate for the top 10-ranked colleges in our U.S. News & World Report category.

The reason for our low graduation rate wasn’t hard to find. We found across a large sample of competing schools that the correlation between entrance-exam scores and graduation rates was more than double that for any other admission requirement, including high-school GPAs and class standing.

Those findings led us to require SAT/ACT entrance exams. We steadily increased the minimum admission score over the 25 years I served as president. That strategy worked: Our graduation rate more than doubled to 79% over that same period. Even more important, our faculty told me that raising the academic bar resulted in a more vibrant classroom experience and a richer campus life.

Jim Doti

Former president, Chapman University"

The Academy Rethinks the SAT

University of California faculty say that when tests were dropped, student learning fell

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"in . . . 2020 . . . the University of California . . . [decided to] drop standardized tests as an admissions requirement . . . The experiment has been a failure, as more than 750 professors in STEM disciplines . . . now admit"

"preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics"

"Test scores “add substantially to UC’s ability to predict student success” beyond high school grades, especially for minority groups, the faculty report said."

"the university “does not appear to use standardized test scores in a way that amplifies racial disparities.” Without test scores, admissions would hinge on inflated grades, extracurricular activities and essays."

"“for three consecutive years, 20-30% of UC Berkeley first-semester calculus students who participated in mathematical diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits.”"

"current admissions standards cannot “reliably distinguish readiness for university-level STEM majors"

[they were] "admitting students to STEM programs “without a reliable measure of whether they are prepared to succeed."

"UC San Diego . . . found one in eight of the school’s freshmen had math skills below high-school level" 

That was "a 30-fold increase since 2020" 

Academia's Leftward March

By Steve Stewart-Williams. Excerpts:

"According to a recent paper by Nathan Honeycutt, 74% of US faculty identify as liberal, 15% as moderate, and only 11% as conservative. Remarkably, more faculty identify as “far left” or “very liberal” than with any position right of center."

"The first graph shows the increasing dominance of the left in academia from the late 1960s to the early 2020s. As you can see, liberals and leftists have always outnumbered the rest, but the skew has grown increasingly strong over time. And not only have conservatives become vanishingly rare, so have centrists."

 

Yale Takes Itself to Reform School

A faculty study agrees with many of academia’s critics, believe it or not

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"the critique: rising tuition that prices out the middle class; an explosion in bureaucracy that steals resources from instruction; runaway grade inflation; an opaque admissions process that prizes race, gender and identity over achievement; disdain for America’s founding and its abiding principles; and a largely left-wing monoculture that discourages honest (or any) debate, among other sins."

"Yale’s report by an internal Committee on Trust in Higher Education treats those criticisms with respect and in many cases agrees with them."

"Trump. They essentially agree with the criticism about rising costs, admissions that lack transparency, and the failure to support free speech on campus and genuine academic freedom." 

What’s Driving the Spike in College Students with Disabilities

Universities from Harvard to Hampshire have admitted significantly more students with disabilities over the last decade, as diagnoses for A.D.H.D. and anxiety increase

By Mark Arsenault and Steven Rich of The New York Times. Excerpts:

"The number of college students reporting disabilities rose more than 50 percent over the last decade"

this "meant an increase in the number of students requiring accommodations, such as more time to take tests"

"it has raised worries that some could be gaming the system"

"The proliferation in accommodation plans, known as 504 plans after a section of federal law that prohibits discrimination based on disability, has made even the most academically rigorous universities more welcoming to students with disabilities."

"What is causing the increase is not entirely clear, but experts named a number of factors, including a rise in A.D.H.D. and autism diagnoses, as well as an uptick in diagnoses of severe anxiety, particularly since the Covid pandemic."

"Many of the college students arrive on campus after having a 504 designation in their high school years; data shows those accommodations are offered more liberally in affluent areas."

"Macalester College, a private liberal arts school in St. Paul, Minn., reported that 29 percent of students in 2024 had a disability, up from 5 percent a decade ago."

"Harvard recently established a centralized testing facility for students requiring accommodations during exams, so that professors do not have to scramble to find rooms for students who need them, said Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology.

Dr. Pinker added that as more people cite disabilities, the label “is being stretched into meaninglessness.”"

"“Everyone benefits from more time and fewer distractions, though to varying degrees along a continuum,” Dr. Pinker said" 

DEI Is a Threat to Americans’ Health

By Stanley Goldfarb. Excerpts:

"They changed [medical schools] their curricula to teach economic and social lessons that ladder up to the false claim that America is systemically racist. The LCME [Liaison Committee on Medical Education] has tacitly approved this shift by issuing vague standards that give medical schools far too much leeway. The resulting lack of rigor allows unprepared students to slide through undemanding courses while undercutting the preparation needed to become excellent doctors."

"The traditional two years of pre-clinical education required to become a doctor has been significantly reduced at more than a third of medical schools. This gives short shrift to the foundational curriculum in genetics, biochemistry, biostatistics and epidemiology."

"At 80% of M.D.-granting schools, the foundational courses in basic science and clinical skills are now graded pass/fail"

"The first part of the national licensure exam that determined residency placement has also been changed to pass/fail"

"a growing number of medical students lack a strong grasp of basic medical knowledge."

"At UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine . . . more than 50% of students failed basic tests on family medicine, pediatrics and emergency medicine. Nationwide, the percentage of medical students who pass the first part of the licensure exam has fallen every year since 2020, dropping from 97% to 89%"

"Even liberal medical journals have begun to question the state of medical education. A 2025 New England Journal of Medicine article on the use of pass/fail in medical school asked, “Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough?”" 

Why Unemployment is Rising Among Young College Grads

Their skills, experience and ability to function are increasingly out of step with employers’ needs

By Allysia Finley. Excerpts:

"last . . . unemployment among college grads age 22 to 27 rose to 5.6% in December, roughly what it was in February 2009 during the financial panic." 

"Artificial intelligence isn’t taking their jobs. Young grads’ struggles started before AI went mainstream. Between 1990 and 2014, unemployment for young college grads was generally 1 to 3 percentage points lower than for all workers. The gap started to tighten around 2014 and reversed in late 2018. Unemployment for young college grads is now about 1.4 points higher than for all workers."

"Government subsidies and public schools have funneled too many young people to credential mills, which churn out grads who lack the skills that employers demand."

"More than half of high-school grads matriculate to college, even though only 35% of 12th graders score proficient in reading and 22% in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress."

"U.S. colleges awarded 2.2 million bachelor’s degrees last year, about twice as many as in 1990. That’s also double the number of associate’s degrees. Another 860,000 Americans last year received a master’s degree, nearly triple the 1990 figure. Nearly 40% of Americans with a bachelor’s now have an advanced degree."

"Colleges have added graduate programs in fields like urban planning, sustainability and fine arts to rake in more federal dollars."

"market that is saturated with heavily credentialed workers."

"Many skated through college by relying on AI to do their work."

"Some also struggle with executive functioning because of disability accommodations in high school and college that allowed them extra time to complete tests and assignments. More than 20% of undergrads at Harvard and Brown and 38% at Stanford have registered disabilities."

"31% of small-business owners had job openings they couldn’t fill, compared with a historical average of 24%." 

Administering Colleges: 1960s and Today

Administrative bloat is not the sole domain of government.

By Richard K. Vedder. 

"In clearing out an office with six decades of materials—grade books, journal articles, papers given at scholarly meetings, books, etc.—I discovered evidence showing how much colleges have changed over time, and one reason they have become so expensive. Administrative staff have exploded in size relative to the growth in the number of students, or faculty. From some limited evidence from other schools (I taught as a visiting professor at three other institutions and lectured at many more), I suspect my Ohio University (OU) experience is very similar to what has happened elsewhere.

Enrollment expanded somewhat since the mid-1960s at OU, as did research activity, perhaps justifying a 50 percent increase or even doubling in administrative staff. In 1965, Ohio University had one person whose job was to raise money from private donations, and he also served as the school’s lobbyist at the state capital. Today, I count over 70 persons in OU’s “Advancement” operation, with still others in other areas involved in lobbying or as private contractors. Perusal of OU’s historic archrival, Miami of Ohio’s website, suggests a similarly sized operation.

In 1965, no OU administrator had a “chief of staff” because administrators rarely had more than one or two assistants. Now they are everywhere. OU did not even have a provost in 1965 (one “academic vice president”), but today’s provost has not only a chief of staff, but eight “associate” or “vice” provosts, plus an “executive assistant,” a “director of operations,” and other positions unheard of two generations ago.

In 1965, OU’s College of Business had four persons in the central office—a dean, associate dean (for academic matters and budgets), an assistant dean (student affairs), and one secretary/administrative assistant. Today, it has perhaps double or maybe triple the number of students, but has 56 (!!) staff with the word “director” as part of their job description, some teaching as well.

My OU experience is duplicated across the land. When I checked a few years ago, there were about 2,000 working in the central office of the University of California, as opposed to at one of the 10 or so campuses where students actually learn. No doubt each of those teaching campuses had its own smaller administrative army as well.

Probably the two most harmful areas where excessive administration has proved not only costly but damaging to a vibrant, diverse learning community are student affairs and what morphed, from literally nothing, to “affirmative action” then to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These administrators have proven not only costly but often destructive. I once disrupted a disciplinary proceeding against a student who, on his personal website, defended traditional male-female marriages and condemned formal gay unions. A hyper woke administrator wanted to discipline the student who had the audacity to hold such views contrary to the Woke campus consensus (I raised such a big stink, including threatening to seek the intervention of FIRE, that the university backed down). And I attended another disciplinary hearing against a conservative professor led by a gung-ho DEI administrator that made the Spanish Inquisition look tame by comparison, devoid of even a semblance of fairness and due process.

Borrowing from Proust, enough remembrances of times past. What can be done now to reduce costs and misdirection arising from administrative overreach?

In a competitive corporate environment, markets correct for costly mistakes and bloated costs. Profits fall, corporate raiders come, and to survive, companies must make uncomfortable but productive changes. But government subsidies and private philanthropy usually shield universities from having to change their costly ways. However, growing public discontent with academia may be leading to reductions in both private and taxpayer support, and those lower subsidies and falling tuition revenues likely will lead to more university closings and, with that, belated collegiate realization that serious cost reductions are necessary, including slashing massive athletic subsidies, increasing teaching loads, offering new types of degrees (three year bachelor’s?), and, most importantly, slashing administrative personnel that neither teach nor do research.

The forthcoming collegiate closings drama reminds me of 19th century’s Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest” interpretation of Charles Darwin’s theories of biology, and also 20th century’s Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction,” demonstrating how the real threat of failure forces needed innovation among businesses trying to survive pressures in competitive marketplaces.

As I have elaborated at book length elsewhere (Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education), as the threat of actual closure intensifies, colleges will be forced to do the heretofore unthinkable, reducing non-essential staff (primarily administrators, but also nonproductive professors, perhaps weakening tenure protection). They might also have to use their buildings intensively 12 months annually, like the private sector does, with professors teaching more and writing fewer articles that no one reads for the Journal of Last Resort. Maybe colleges will sell their non-academic businesses like dormitories, food, and semi-professional sport operations, putting proceeds into endowments dedicated to lowering the excessive sticker price of attending college. Make universities genuine learning communities again.

University enrollments are lower today than in 2010, and school closings are likely to rise meaningfully. The timing and extent of this phenomenon are uncertain, but the probability of it happening is rising. Two external factors are important as well: the decline in American fertility in this century is leading to smaller numbers of prime-age domestic students, and new AI technology already seems to be reducing the demand for some types of college graduates, as machines, specifically computers, are now replacing college-trained human brainpower. The demand for plumbers and home health care workers is growing relative to that for economists and mathematicians. AI cannot fix a leaky toilet.

All this adds to the pressure for colleges to do more with less. Among other things, it means declaring war on collegiate administrative bloat."

American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject

Eighty percent of articles in the field’s leading journal were negative, while not one was positive

By Richard D. Kahlenberg and Lief Lin. Mr. Kahlenberg is director of the American Identity Project and Mr. Lin is a policy research fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. Excerpts:

"almost 100 articles we examined from over a three-year period in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Published by Johns Hopkins University, it’s widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies."

"We found that 80% of articles published between 2022 and 2024 were critical of America, 20% were neutral, and none were positive. Of the 96 articles we examined, our research identified 77 as critical, focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. Some articles went to absurd lengths to identify sins. One essay posited that thermodynamics—the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature—is “an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.”" 

"we couldn’t find a single positive article over a three-year period. There were none on American ingenuity. Readers wouldn’t come to understand why as of 2020 the U.S., representing about 4% of the world’s population, won 42% of the individual Nobel Prizes since the awards’ creation in 1901. Or why the U.S. was the first country to land a man on the moon. There wasn’t a single article about America’s vanquishing Nazi Germany in World War II or the Soviet Union in the Cold War. There was no discussion of why the U.S. is rated as the most desirable destination for immigrants across the world."

"the complete lack of gratitude on the part of scholars who write for the leading journal of American studies and benefit every day from the country’s commitment to liberty."

"we contacted University of Texas at Austin historian Steven Mintz, who has analyzed the field of American studies. He told us: “A field that once asked, ‘What is America?’—exploring its myths, music, monuments, and contradictions—now too often narrows its focus to a different question: ‘Whom has America silenced, failed, or harmed?’”" 

Affirmative Action Is Finally Waning

Law-school data shows that racial preferences have diminished since the justices’ 2023 decision.

By Richard Sander and Henry Kim. Mr. Sander is a law professor at UCLA and co-author of “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It.” Mr. Kim is a research scientist at UCLA. Excerpts:

"University leaders, including law-school deans, had warned before the 2023 decision that ending racial preferences would dramatically diminish minority enrollment at professional schools and elite colleges. So far, the opposite is true at law schools. The total number of black and Hispanic students matriculating at law schools has risen more than 5% over the past two years.

There are two key reasons for this seemingly counterintuitive result. First, the number of black and Hispanic applicants to law school jumped by more than 30% over the two cycles following Fair Admissions. So far in the 2025-26 admissions cycle, black and Hispanic applications to law school are again growing faster than those from whites and Asians.

Something similar happened at the University of California after voters approved Proposition 209, a 1996 ballot measure prohibiting racial preferences in state programs. The rate at which black and Hispanic applicants accepted offers of admission rose across UC’s eight undergraduate campuses. The more a school reduced the weight it gave to race in the wake of Proposition 209, the more its uptake rate from accepted minority applicants increased.

The implication is that blacks and Hispanics prefer attending schools where they’ve been admitted under the same standards that apply to everyone else. They likely recognize that degrees untainted by preferences will have greater market value."

How Do You Spell ‘Harvard’? With an Endless Supply of A’s

A new report looks at grade inflation, a problem that is proliferating far beyond the Ivy League

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"60% of grades given to undergraduates in the 2024-25 academic year were A’s—up from about 25% two decades ago. The median grade-point average at graduation, which was 3.29 in 1985, is now 3.83. Since 2016 the median GPA at Harvard has been an A, even though the number of hours that students say they spend studying has remained relatively unchanged for close to 20 years."

"rampant grade inflation provides a more credible explanation."

"an evaluation system that fails to perform “key functions” and a need to “restore the integrity of our grading.”"

"More students are opting for less-rigorous courses to leave time for extracurricular activities."

"a lenient grading system that effectively makes no distinction between students who have mastered the material and those who haven’t."

[one person] "argued that stricter academic standards would be a threat to students’ mental health."

"A 2023 report from Yale found that nearly 80% of grades given to its undergraduates were A’s or A-minuses."

"between 1990 and 2020, the median college GPA rose by 21.5%."

"Because colleges have lowered admissions standards to take advantage of tuition subsidies and admit as many students as possible, they have a strong incentive to lower standards for grading and for graduation." 

Approximately 1-in-3 Canadian university students fear formal consequences for expressing honest viewpoints in class

By Matthew D. Mitchell and Michael Zwaagstra of The Fraser Institute.

Canadian Students Are Getting a One-Sided University Education

• A new survey finds that right-leaning university students feel considerably more restricted than left-leaning students in expressing their views during class discussions. They are fearful of consequences such as their formal grades being lowered for having the “wrong” opinion.
• Left-leaning political viewpoints are dominant on university campuses. Fifty-five percent of students describe their political views as left-leaning, while only 15% consider themselves right-leaning.
• A majority of students, both right-leaning and left-leaning, believe that there is a “safe” political view on controversial topics discussed in university classes.
• Forty-two percent of right-leaning students said that they experienced a classroom environment at university that limited discussion and questions on controversial topics to only one side of the argument. In contrast, only 29% of left-leaning students had this experience.
• Among students who say their professors advocate a view, eighty-three percent of right-leaning students feel their professors promoted a left viewpoint, while 45% of left-leaning students feel the same way. Few students, left, centre, or right, believe their professors promote a right viewpoint.
• Among right-leaning students who feared experiencing formal consequences for expressing the “wrong” viewpoint during class discussions, 74% feared that the professor might lower their grades.

 

Trump and the Secrets of College Admissions

His transparency order will make real the Constitution’s ban on affirmative action

By Edward Blum. He is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Excerpts:

"some have adopted opaque scoring systems that appear to use racial proxies—seemingly neutral factors that effectively correlate with race and can be used to achieve the same racial outcomes as explicit preferences."

"Examples include giving extra weight to ZIP Codes or census blocks with heavily minority populations or awarding large boosts for attending certain majority-minority high schools. Other proxies include “neighborhood wealth index” scores and targeted recruitment from racially homogeneous areas."

"Harvard . . . consistently downgraded Asian-American applicants on subjective “personality” ratings while giving large boosts to black and Hispanic applicants with lower academic scores."

Evidence Backs Trump on Higher Ed’s Bias

A massive database shows college courses dealing with race and the Middle East lean sharply left

By Jon A. Shields and Yuval Avnur. Mr. Shields is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. Mr. Avnur is a professor of philosophy at Scripps College. Excerpts:

"the Open Syllabus Project, a nonprofit organization that maintains a database of more than 27 million syllabi scraped from the web."

"Take the teaching of racial bias and the criminal justice system. Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (2010) shows up in thousands of syllabi, as it should given its scholarly and public influence. In the U.S. it is assigned more often than “Hamlet” and nearly as often as John Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government.”

Ms. Alexander argues that America’s war on drugs is akin to Jim Crow—a system designed to control and subjugate black Americans. Her work invites scholarly controversy, drawing criticism from historians and social scientists. Among them is James Forman Jr., a Yale law professor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” (2017). While Mr. Forman is no fan of mass incarceration, he doesn’t think it’s the product of a racist conspiracy. He notes that tough-on-crime policies have enjoyed the support of black leaders trying to halt soaring crime rates in their cities.

In courses that teach Ms. Alexander’s book, Mr. Forman’s book is paired with it less than 4% of the time. Works by other prominent critics of “The New Jim Crow”—including political scientist Michael Fortner of Claremont McKenna, law professor John Pfaff of Fordham and sociologist Patrick Sharkey of Princeton—are assigned with Ms. Alexander even less often.

Who is generally taught with Ms. Alexander? Works that make hers look moderate. The top three titles are by Angela Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michel Foucault."

"Courses on the Middle East are similarly skewed. Edward Said (1935-2003) was Israel’s most influential scholarly detractor, chiefly because of the outsize influence of his 1978 book, “Orientalism.” It is the 16th-most-assigned text in the database"

"How often are such critics paired with Orientalism? Again, it’s uncommon." 

 

Trump Demands the Truth About Affirmative Action

He requires colleges to submit data proving they don’t engage in racial discrimination

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"According to the memo, “the lack of available admissions data from universities—paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies—continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice.” A majority of Americans from all racial and ethnic backgrounds supported the Supreme Court ruling, and the administration understands that secrecy in the admissions process undermines trust. “American students, parents, and taxpayers should have confidence that our Nation’s institutions of higher education are recruiting and training our next generations with fairness and integrity.”"

"In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the court upheld this so-called diversity rationale and continued to give great deference to claims by elite schools that they were narrowly tailoring their use of race."

"colleges went out of their way to hide the selection process from public view. In the 1990s, a student whistleblower working in the registrar’s office at Georgetown University discovered that black students were admitted to the law school with significantly lower academic credentials than white students. According to multiple accounts, when the results were reported in a student newspaper, Georgetown officials ordered the confiscation of every copy."

[at Harvard] "the data showed what many opponents of racial preferences long suspected: Black applicants received a significant admissions boost based solely on their racial background, while Asian applicants were penalized for being Asian."

"“After the lawsuit was filed and Harvard came under intense scrutiny for anti-Asian bias, Asian admissions steadily rose." 

Why Are People Fleeing Highly Educated States?

It is no accident that states like California and New York have high income taxes.

By Richard K. Vedder. 

"A couple of weeks ago, Steve Moore and I revealed in this space that Census Bureau data shows that native-born Americans are fleeing high-tax states. But further examination of the migration data by me reveals more: Native-born Americans are also fleeing states with unusually high proportions of college-educated adults, moving often to states with what by American standards would be considered relatively less educated inhabitants. For example, Census Bureau data suggests Massachusetts has the largest proportion of adults with college degrees at the bachelor’s level or more, nearly 48 percent. Yet in a 12-month period in 2023–24, Census Bureau data showed that more than 27,000 native-born Americans left that state than entered. By contrast, West Virginia has the lowest proportion of college graduates, 24 percent, yet it had net in-migration of over 4,000 Americans.

Looking more broadly, 20 states had more than the national average of 36.2 percent college graduates, while 30 had less. The high college graduate states collectively had an out-migration of nearly 344,000—nearly a thousand persons a day. New York, with over 40 percent college graduates, had net out-migration of over 120,000, while South Carolina, with fewer than 33 percent adults with such degrees, had in-migration of over 68,000.

The same zeitgeist that often made many (but not all) college campuses hotbeds of progressive ideas probably often had longer term effects on the students populating them, leading them as voting adults to often favor expansionist state programs to support low-income residents and senior citizens, and other leftish policy nostrums such as restricting fracking or blocking new pipelines or home construction through stringent zoning laws. It also meant support for highly progressive income taxation. It is no accident that states with relatively high proportions of college graduates like California and New York also have high income taxes; in both states some residents face marginal state income tax rates of about 13 percent, compared with zero in Texas and Tennessee, states with a below average percentage of college graduates. Is it no wonder California had a phenomenal one-year net out-migration of nearly 240,000?

Since migration statistics provide arguably our best measure of overall satisfaction with any geographic area, the fleeing of states with lots of relatively high educated people might suggest that universities are a “negative externality,” having bad spillover effects. We tax or restrict whiskey consumption and strip clubs, why not colleges? In public policy terms, should we be taxing, not subsiding, universities? Buyers of automobiles pay state sales taxes on their new cars—shouldn’t college students also pay taxes on tuition fees?

To be sure, there are many other factors impacting migration—climate, the quality of public services, housing prices, crime rates, etc. More sophisticated empirical analysis controlling for a multiplicity of factors conceivably would weaken the results cited above. Nonetheless, the migration data seemingly provides support for some of the Trump administration’s moves against universities—big fines on schools like Columbia, restricting visas for potential foreign students, much more stringent rules on repaying federal student loans, reducing research support, attacks on anti-meritorious DEI practices, etc. Along with the longer-term consequences of plummeting birth rates and artificial intelligence, it makes the prospects for universities over the next several years look rather bleak.

As a college professor with over a half century of experience in the classroom, these results sadden me. But academic rent-seeking has sometimes encouraged universities to pursue not what is optimal for society, but what enhances faculty and administrator income and working conditions and allows them to live modestly prosperous lives with high job security. The Trump administration’s initiatives, accompanied by similar attacks on dubious academic practices at the state level, hopefully will help restore higher education’s traditional role as a positive contributor to our lives."

Medical Schools Quietly Maintain Affirmative Action

Some still use race to make admissions decisions even though the Supreme Court said it’s illegal

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"at 22 of the [23] schools Asian and white applicants who were accepted had higher Medical College Admission Test scores than their black peers."

"at 13 of the schools, the average MCAT score of Asian and white applicants who were rejected was higher than the average MCAT score of black applicants who were accepted."

"Four historically black medical schools in the U.S. produce about half the country’s black doctors, and none of them use affirmative action to admit students. Research shows that black students who attended medical schools where everyone was admitted under the same academic requirements performed better than blacks admitted to more-prestigious schools that used affirmative action."

"race-neutrality produces more diversity than racial favoritism. Black college graduation rates were growing faster before the 1970s, the first full decade of affirmative action. “But after 1970, the relative rate at which blacks were completing college dropped, then flatlined, and never recovered its previous upward trajectory,” according to “The Upswing,” a 2020 book by Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett. “In fact, today black Americans are completing college at a lower rate compared to whites than they were in 1970.”"

"large racial preferences that steer students into schools where they are more likely to struggle are simultaneously steering them away from schools where they are more likely to thrive."

"the vast majority of schools would be as racially integrated, or more racially integrated, under a system of no preferences than under a system of large preferences.”" 

The antitrust case against U.S. higher education (pricing evidence suggests it is weak)

From Tyler Cowen.

"Thirty prestigious independent American institutions of higher education were at some time members of the 568 higher education group (often labeled a cartel). Seventeen of them were sued by the U.S. Government and representative students who alleged that their meetings and deliberations resulted in collusion that caused students to pay higher prices. Twelve of the seventeen institutions subsequently settled their cases and by 2024 collectively had paid $284 million to do so. However, an inspection of these institutions’ pricing reveals that the median 568 Group institution lowered its average real net annual cost to its undergraduate students by 19.07% between 2009 and 2022. Further, this reduction was 1.70 times larger than the average real price reduction granted during the same period by the median institution among a sample of 475 other accredited, non-profit, independent four-year institutions and 11.63 times larger than the median price reduction granted by 78 public flagship state universities. The 568 group’s real price reductions stretched across every one of the five household income categories commonly used by the Government. Thus, there is little empirical support for the allegations that the Government has levied against the representative 568 group institution, and thus multiple members of this group appear to have paid unmerited fines to the Government to settle claims against them.

That is from a new paper by James V. Koch.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis."

Harvard Also Has Christian Antisemitism

The school owns a ‘nondenominational’ church, which bashes Israel from its pulpit.

By Ira Stoll. Mr. Stoll writes at TheEditors.com. He was a Harvard employee, 2019-23. Excerpts:

"‘As queer and trans people, political radicals, abolitionists and anti-Zionists, imagination is our calling,” a Harvard Divinity School student pronounced on campus. She denounced Israel’s “state violence, settler colonialism, fermented trauma and religious nationalism.”"

"It was a sermon at morning prayers inside Harvard’s Memorial Church."

"The Harvard Corp. selects and employs its minister. The church website, with audio and transcripts of sermons, has a Harvard.edu address."

"When it comes to Israel and the Jews, as the Divinity School student’s speech indicates, Harvard’s main campus church has been heavy on critique and light on compassion."

"On Nov. 26, 2023, Mr. Potts told his congregation: “We know what hell looks like. It looks like Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. It looks like Gaza today.”" (the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, a Divinity School professor and Memorial Church minister)

"On April 28, 2024, in a Sunday sermon, Mr. Potts praised the anti-Israel occupiers of Harvard Yard"