Two British Reforms America Should Copy

Two recent British policy briefs on academic freedom and university reforms provide some broad suggestions applicable to colleges, British or otherwise.

Policy Exchange, a center-right think tank, published “Academic Freedom in the UK: Protecting viewpoint diversity,” which highlights the disappearance of the conservative professor on campus. CIEO, a left-of-center think tank, published “Saving Britain’s Universities: Academic freedom, democracy and renewal,” which finds the flaw in universities to be incessant growth and over-marketization that distracts from their core missions.

Per Policy Exchange, the number of conservative professoriates, for example, has diminished to single digits, from roughly one third in the 1960s, across the board. That mirrors a similar change in the United States, where surveys show there are at least 10 times the number of Democratic professors to Republicans.

That echo chamber has resulted in diminished performances, notably in political predictions because universities are increasingly detached from the masses. The paper finds that contrary to popular opinion, this ideological disparity was a result of both active and tacit discrimination—from background checks, grant and scholarship applications, and committee memberships, to social ostracism and peer pressure on junior academics.

To fix it, Policy Exchange suggests legislation and dedicated university staff to protect academic freedom. Leveling the playing field to ensure viewpoint diversity would allow universities to be places where different ideas are encouraged, not prohibited.

The CIEO paper argues that over-marketization and over-expansion are pulling down British higher education. That has meant the degradation of academic standards and grade inflation, massive overproduction of soft-subject degrees, and graduates with no marketable skills.

The overt marketization has produced “Market Stalinism,” a mix of corporate buzzwords and massive bureaucracy, stifling intellectual freedom and degrading education standards. Quality, rigor, and merit are standards to undermine the satisfaction of students and parents—consumers to be catered to.

CEIO argues for the immediate shrinking of the higher ed sector through closures and mergers. Their paper also sees the need for market corrections to clean out the bureaucracy, legislative protections for free speech, and downgrading some universities to the British equivalent of community colleges.

The interesting thematic similarity between the two papers, on the right and left, is the demand for legislated security for academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. Though British higher ed is more centralized and has weaker speech protections than the First Amendment, both countries have struggled to uphold free speech.

In an increasingly stifling political culture, where viewpoint discrimination is not always overt, some legislative intervention (such as South Dakota’s academic freedom legislation) might bring back a semblance of equality, ideological diversity, and competitiveness without dictating course content. In that regard, these two papers provide further food for thought for academic reform movements in the United States.

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UNC Will Not Require the SAT Next Year

On July 23, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted to temporarily waive the SAT or ACT requirement for college applicants.

The vote came after UNC administrators proposed that an “emergency temporary waiver” be approved so that students who are unable to take the test due to cancellations are not negatively impacted in the admissions process. They recommended the board “waive the standardized test requirement for students applying for admission in Spring 2021, Summer 2021, and Fall 2021.”

Before the full board voted on the proposal, it first had to pass a vote in the Educational Planning, Policies, and Programs Committee meeting. During the meeting, UNC staff noted that the two standardized testing bodies, the College Board and the ACT, have continued to cancel test-taking dates due to COVID-19. At the moment, there are no available “at-home” testing options for students. UNC staff also noted that the College Board has requested that colleges “equally consider students for admission who are unable to take the test due to COVID-19.”

The lack of testing has had a direct impact on North Carolina students. Kimberly Van Noort, UNC system senior vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer, explained to the committee that, although North Carolina state law requires all public high school juniors to take the ACT each year in February or March, 9,000 students were unable to take the test this year because of the coronavirus.

During the meeting, two enrollment managers explained why they recommend temporarily waiving the testing requirement.

Louis Hunt, senior vice provost for enrollment management and services at North Carolina State University, informed the committee that a lot of public school students were unable to take the SAT or ACT in the spring. He also noted that a lot of private school and homeschooled students don’t have a test score at all. In addition, students who were planning on retaking the test to improve their score have been unable to do so.

“We’re concerned about being at a competitive disadvantage,” Hunt said, pointing to how other schools such as the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Duke University have opted to go test-optional. “If we’re requiring it [a standardized test score], we may put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage,” he said. “That’s the main thing we’re concerned about.”

Stephen Farmer, vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions at UNC-Chapel Hill, agreed that being at a competitive disadvantage is “a significant issue.” However, he focused more on how students themselves are being impacted by the lack of testing availability. “This is the number one question we’re getting by phone and by email from students—questions about the testing requirement,” he said. “Students are mostly willing to do what we ask them to do, provided that they can do it.”

Farmer said many students “literally cannot fulfill the requirement that we’re asking them to fulfill” and that “it’s causing a lot of unconstructive worry for students and families.”

He said he’s in favor of constructive stress where students have to “stretch themselves and work and prepare.” But he argued that requiring test scores in the current climate imposes unconstructive stress on students. “The worry and stress that students are experiencing right now in North Carolina about testing is entirely unconstructive stress and I would like for us to be able to alleviate them of it,” Farmer concluded.

Several board members offered their thoughts on the issue. Isaiah Green, president of the UNC Association of Student Governments, said he fully supports the waiver policy. He said that “students have been asking for this kind of policy for a long time at this point.” He also argued that UNC risks “losing very talented students because they can just go to other schools that don’t require the SAT or ACT.”

Green said he hoped the temporary SAT waiver would eventually lead to a permanent policy change:

I’m completely in favor of—at least this temporary trial of the emergency waiver—and hopefully we can revisit it in the future [for] something more permanent.

But board member Steve Long argued that the proposed policy was too “drastic” and suggested that the system adopt a different strategy:

I think instead of waiving the requirement altogether, we just simply allow people, if they’re not able to get the test score, to sign a certificate that they have not been able to get a test score because of COVID-19. That would be much less drastic.

Long said that 24 states require high school juniors to take the ACT or SAT, including the District of Columbia and South Carolina. “There are a lot of students out there taking the test,” he said. He also noted that ACT has added three new test dates for fall 2020, and the College Board has also added a September test date.

Significantly, Long reminded the committee that it will be important for the UNC system to collect student testing data because of a three-year pilot program on changing admissions standards that the board adopted in March. The Martin Center wrote about the pilot program here.

“We have waived for three years this minimum admission requirement that we used to have,” Long said. “We’re going to need the data in order to determine whether or not we should continue to have a standardized score as part of our admissions requirements and one of things we’re going to ask is ‘what is the test score and what is the graduation rate?’ because that is going to be an important point for us.”

Board member Anna Nelson, who supported the March proposal to change the system’s minimum admission requirements, said in the July meeting that she supports temporarily waiving testing requirements. Nelson explained that she trusts the advice of Hunt and Farmer:

“They have a history and experience with this, they know how to use various tools in their toolkit,” she said, “and I trust that they will navigate this.”

Nelson also pointed out that a similar waiver policy is being adopted by other “very distinguished universities and colleges across the country,” adding that she thinks “there might be harm in having something that’s not in alignment with those [colleges’] policies.” “I would at the appropriate time make a motion to approve the one-year emergency waiver,” she concluded.

By waiving the testing admissions requirement, UNC is indeed following a nationwide trend.

Across the country, about 300 colleges are temporarily not requiring applicants to submit a standardized test score. UNC has also demonstrated the extent to which it “follows the crowd” when making key policy decisions. But, while following the crowd might be a “safer” option in terms of public opinion, the popularity of a policy doesn’t mean it is a good policy.

Boards and trustees are appointed not to simply fall in line with what everyone else is doing. They are appointed to make the best decisions possible by closely examining all the available evidence and ensuring that any decision aligns with the underlying academic goals of their institutions.

Colleges and universities across the country are getting rid of testing requirements altogether. Will UNC follow that trend?

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Restoring Civic Education Can Help Revive America

Recently, Illinois state Rep. LaShawn K. Ford called for abolishing history classes throughout the state of Illinois because they “unfairly communicate history.” He argued that history teachers’ energies should instead be focused on the democratic process and dialogue. “It costs us as a society in the long run forever when we don’t understand our brothers and sisters that we live, work, and play with,” Ford said.

Full disclosure: I’ve taught history and political science for over 32 years, teaching both at all levels, though mostly at the AP level. What I’ve seen regarding history education is downright appalling at times, with required texts by debunked revisionists like Howard Zinn being force-fed to college students rather than offered as general historical inquiry or competing sources to offset bias. Primary source research by undergrad students is largely ignored except for a few scattered research assignments that reflect the professor’s political bias. When one considers that liberal professors outnumber conservatives 13:1 on college campuses—and junior professors by as much as 40:1—one can easily guess the politics professors want to see in student papers.

This is not teaching history but rather indoctrination, much like what the Prussian School of historians undertook in the mid-nineteenth century. Their purpose was to revise history with a decidedly Prussian bent so that Prussia would become the state the Germans would unite under rather than Austria. The most colorful of the Prussian historians was Heinrich von Treitschke, whose flourish with the pen and inspiring Teutonic tales helped make the Prussian dream a reality.

The point is that biased history and ideological revisionism is dangerous for our republic. What some consider one of the more benign subjects in both high school and college is turning out to be the most explosive, like a sea mine in an inlet bay. When you finally see it, it’s too late.

One example of this sea mine technique is the 1619 Project, a distorted and highly inaccurate account of American history that has been thoroughly debunked by such eminent historians as Gordon Wood. Studying American slavery is certainly not the problem. Instead, the problem is that “1619” is a one-sided account of history that reflects modern ideological biases rather than a dispassionate recounting of America’s past. It is distorted history being ramrodded down the throats of students who don’t know any better and will regurgitate what they are told, immersing themselves in content that is not only anti-American but simply wrong. So, on that score, I agree with Representative Ford: abolish it.

This does not mean that the old adage that history is told by the winner is wrong. But a proper teacher—one without bias and who will ensure that both sides of a controversial topic will be taught—is paramount in today’s schools. Students must be exposed to all sides of a given issue and come to a conclusion on their own. Sadly, this is not the case in many history classrooms as personal bias and political agendas that assuage the educator’s ego are more important than independent thought informed by all of the relevant facts.

One answer to this dilemma is to discard textbooks, which can be quite biased (they are often tailored to reflect the preferences of the regions with the highest number of sales). Instead, teachers should combine their expertise with putting an emphasis on primary sources and use excerpts from neutral texts.

But how can we ensure that teachers will check their bias at the door? The department head is responsible for enforcing neutrality in the classroom. Those who teach using biased methods must be held to account.

Representative Ford did get one thing right in his rather misguided statement. There should be a renewed focus on civics education. All too often, the civics component is rolled into an American history class. This is not sufficient. A single unit on civics is not enough as there is simply too much material to cover. Instead, passing a class that covers civics and political science should be mandatory for graduation. Only then will we as a nation begin to appreciate the importance of this grand American experiment, the most successful of its kind in human history.

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Australia:  University entrance cutoffs expected to rise due to coronavirus crisis

A big leap in domestic demand is outweighing the drop in overseas students

University courses will be harder to get into, with ATAR cut-offs predicted to spike thanks to a skyrocketing demand for tertiary study and a cap on funded places.

Griffith University tertiary expert Stephen Billett said “without a doubt” the domestic student market would be more competitive given the loss of international students and the economic downturn of COVID-19.

And former Grattan Institute higher education program director and ANU professor Andrew Norton said amid COVID-19 there would be both increased tertiary applications and fewer people deferring entry, meaning minimum entry cut-offs for courses could soar.

It comes as the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre has already recorded a staggering jump in applications for university this year.

It experienced the most applications ever received on an opening day when admissions opened on August 4: 2918.

QTAC executive officer John Griffiths said the high applicant number was a good indicator there would be strong demand from the domestic market next year.

Dr Griffiths said there had been a 37.8 per cent increase in tertiary applicants compared with the same time in 2019, with a big increase from current Year 12 students.

About 6600 students had already applied for university admission next year and to receive their ATAR in December after registrations for both opened on August 4, he said.

Prof Norton said in recent years about 9-10 per cent of people who accepted university offers deferred by a year but it was expected fewer people would defer because of the impact of COVID-19 on travel and employment.

“So that will push a large number of higher ATAR students into wanting a place in 2021,” he said.

“And because ATARs are, in most cases, the interaction of supply and demand, that could well push up the minimum thresholds for some courses.”

Prof Billett said there would be greater competition for courses with “identifiable occupations”, on top of a trend of young people seeking “clean, well-paid and secure employment”.

Medicine and law might become more difficult to access, he said.

And courses in physiotherapy, dietetics, speech pathology, occupational therapy, and engineering could be the courses with a big increase in demand, Prof Billett said.

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