ACTA's Must-Reads

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) exists to empower trustees, alumni, and policymakers who share our concern for academic freedom, academic excellence, and accountability in higher education. On this blog, we highlight important current happenings on those issues for our constituents.

Making good decisions requires good information

Trustees have an obligation to act in the best interest of students, parents and taxpayers. And it's important that they have the most complete information available. It appears many of the Trustees at the University of Delaware will vote next Monday on the status of a controversial residence life program having only seen an executive summary. To help the Board make an informed decision, ACTA has sent all of the members a copy of the full proposal along with a memo outlining serious concerns.

Activities in college dorms are often quite different from those trustees remember from their college days. This memo shows how.

Posted by Matthew S. Mawhinney at 02:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Try again, CU

Today's Wall Street Journal reports on the University of Colorado at Boulder's attempts to raise funds for a Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy position. While CU deserves great credit for attempting to address the issue of intellectual diversity -- and its Board of Regents has done so fruitfully in other ways -- ACTA has concerns about this particular approach. ACTA president Anne D. Neal enumerates them in a post on National Review Online's "Phi Beta Cons" blog.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Indoctrination in the dorms

Today at Minding the Campus, John K. Wilson and Adam Kissel are debating the University of Delaware's residential life practices, and trustees should pay close attention. UD is deciding what should take place in its dorms next year, in the wake of revelations of indoctrination in last year's program -- which are outlined extensively in Kissel's piece. As the example of UD shows, today's residence halls bear little resemblance to those most trustees and alumni remember. RAs are being tasked with much more than pizza parties and making sure students are physically safe -- and their new responsibilities often take politicized and troubling forms. And it costs real money -- UD's program, for instance, employs about 250 individuals.

If you are a trustee, are you aware of exactly what your university is doing in its residence halls? Is it appropriate? Is it the best way to spend your institution's limited resources? These are questions worth asking -- before your college makes the kind of bad headlines UD has.

Posted by Charles Mitchell at 05:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)