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ACTA Applauds Return of ROTC to Stanford Campus

After the Stanford faculty senate voted to restore ROTC on campus, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) called on the Stanford Board of Trustees to ensure the rapid implementation of the vote.

"Today is a great day for Stanford students," said Anne D. Neal, ACTA's President. "It's time for the trustees to ensure that all students who wish to serve the public in the military have the opportunity to do so. The chasm between the students of the nation's elite schools and those who defend them has lasted too long. It's time for other colleges, such as Brown and Yale, to follow the lead of Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford by inviting ROTC back."

ACTA has urged Stanford, Harvard, and other schools to restore ROTC to campus for years, through written correspondence with the Board of Trustees. Founded in 1995, ACTA is an independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. It is the only organization that works with alumni, donors, trustees, and education leaders across the United States to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives a philosophically rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on April 29, 2011 at 05:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ACTA joins FIRE's Broad Coalition Filing Brief in Support of Student Rights in Barnes v. Zaccari

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has joined a broad coalition supporting students' free speech rights on public campuses in a brief filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The amici curiae brief filed on April 11 by FIRE, asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in the case of Barnes v. Zaccari to uphold a federal district court's September 2010 ruling. The case involved a student unduly expelled by Valdosta State University (VSU) President Ronald M. Zaccari. The ruling handed down declared that President Zaccari was personally responsible for damages, being unable to employ "qualified immunity."

The brief submitted to the Eleventh Circuit by FIRE comes with the strong backing of many concerned organizations including: the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the Cato Institute, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Feminists for Free Expression, the Individual Rights Foundation, the Libertarian Law Council, the National Association of Scholars, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Youth Rights Association, Reason Foundation, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and Students For Liberty.

"We are pleased to join this coalition in support of the free exchange of ideas on campus," said ACTA President Anne D. Neal. "Trustees and administrators are on notice: to shut down constitutionally protected speech is wrong and will subject them to legal challenge."

Further information on the case is available here.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on April 25, 2011 at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NROTC and Columbia

Columbia University today announced it had agreed with the Navy Department to restore Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) as an option for Columbia students. The announcement comes after years of ACTA advocacy, and a recent University Senate vote in favor of engagement with the military.

Columbia's announcement notes:

Columbia's Navy and Marine Corps-option midshipmen will participate in Naval ROTC through the NROTC unit hosted at the SUNY Maritime College in Throgs Neck, Bronx. They will join Columbia's Army and Air Force ROTC members who will continue to train, as they do currently, with other New York area students at consortium units at Fordham University and Manhattan College. At present, there are nine Columbia and Barnard College students participating in these New York consortium units. The new agreement between the Navy and Columbia will provide that NROTC active duty Navy and Marine Corps officers will be able to meet with Columbia NROTC midshipmen on the Columbia campus in spaces furnished by Columbia.

The welcome of midshipmen in uniform on campus is a crucial one, but it remains to be seen how to what extent this really brings NROTC on campus and to what extent training will be off-campus, or even out-of-borough.

Still, ACTA applauds the announcement and encourages Brown, Stanford, and Yale to follow suit soon.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on April 22, 2011 at 05:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Donor Intent and Better Higher Education

American philanthropists long have been generous in their support of colleges and universities. But do donors find the results they envisioned for their generosity and good intentions? Not always, writes investor and philanthropist Stephen Friess in Investor's Business Daily. Mr. Friess describes how a major gift his family made to a university did not fulfill their specific funding objective of strengthening the teaching and learning of the principles of liberty in higher education.

This sort of occurrence is too common, and ACTA has responded by publishing The Intelligent Donor's Guide to College Giving. The guide provides step-by-step instructions for donors on how to target their giving, with profiles of successful gifts. What makes Stephen Friess's op-ed so very valuable for the higher education philanthropic community is his recipe for better philanthropy through more precise communication and clearer agreements between the funder and the college. Find out about "ensuring that philanthropic dollars are investments in the values of American and its future." Take it from Friess, who writes:

Intelligent donors have a valuable ally in a group called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ACTA recently published a "how-to" called The Intelligent Donors Guide to College Giving, which is just that. I recommend it to every philanthropist.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on April 22, 2011 at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Transfer of Credit

It's extremely common for students to lose many, even most of their credits when moving from a junior to a senior college. Inconsistent requirements and policies apparently designed to maximize tuition, rather than education, result in the highest costs for the students who can least afford it. The City University of New York (CUNY) is trying to create a uniform framework within which all of its schools will operate.

The central administration of New York's public colleges and universities is attempting to eliminate some of the barriers of transferring from community college to four year universities.

ACTA was the impetus behind the Department of Education study on the very subject of transfer credits. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote to Anne Neal, saying:

[T]here are financial and human costs associated with restrictive college credit transfer policies. We share your interest in learning more about the extent of the problem and identifying conditions and interventions that advance student success.

Certainly, the quality of education should not be sacrificed for ease of transfer but these students should not run up against unnecessary barriers as they diligently continue their education. Confident that a satisfactory solution can be found, ACTA applauds the innovative efforts of CUNY.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on April 22, 2011 at 09:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

An Idea of Reform in Higher Education

Higher education costs are rising and no incentives are there to bring them down. What can be done about it? Michael Poliakoff is quoted in the Wall Street Journal suggesting an idea for reform.

"Having federally approved accrediting agencies stop measuring inputs, such as faculty-student ratio, and start conducting performance audits of outputs such as what a university spends on instruction versus administration, what its graduation rate is, how its graduates fare in employment, and so on."

Posted by Jose Herrera on April 20, 2011 at 06:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Priority check, please.

Let's say you're a parent, or someone interested in high standards and academic excellence at America's colleges and universities. When you think of positive role models for college students, who comes to mind? Hopefully not someone who would instruct students to "study hard, but party harder," or offer lessons in "guidette stardom" that involve citations for disorderly and drunken behavior, or who would opine on the benefits of tanning beds to one's self esteem. And not someone who would cost you and your student $32,000.

But Rutgers University begs to differ. Last week, the Rutgers University Programming Association (RUPA) invited The Jersey Shore's "Snooki" Polizzi to come to campus, yes, for $32,000. That's coming out of money collected as mandatory student activity fees. At a time when tuition and fees continue to rise at institutions like Rutgers, and when parents' and taxpayers' pockets are stretched, is this the best use of a public university's resources ?

Rutgers continues to defend the decision, claiming that it is up to RUPA to provide entertainment demanded by students. Perhaps Rutgers ought to be focusing more on students' educational needs as well. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni What Will They Learn? report demonstrates that Rutgers students can graduate without even intermediate level foreign language, or economics, American history, or a literature survey. So while Rutgers values-literally-the Snooki brand of notoriety, one is left wondering what they value when it comes to their investment in student learning.

Students presumably pay a great deal of money at university to learn from the faculty - not tv stars. What next in the college-according -to - Snooki syllabus? Tanning beds in dormitories? So long as students want them, it appears. And so long as they will pay for them.

Posted by drizk on April 13, 2011 at 04:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trustees Have Key Role in Overseeing Educational Quality

Inside Higher Ed reports that the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) has issued a new statement, outlining boards' responsibility for educational quality. From AGB's latest report: "[B]oards cannot delegate away their governance responsibilities for educational quality. The board's responsibility in this area is to recognize and support faculty's leadership in continuously improving academic programs and outcomes, while also holding them--through institutional administrators--accountable for educational quality."

We here at ACTA couldn't agree more! For over fifteen years, we've argued that universities need to focus on providing quality undergraduate education--and that boards need to set and to enforce that priority, as trustees are the legal fiduciaries of American colleges and universities. We're glad to see that the AGB agrees!

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on April 13, 2011 at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Restoring the Core at William and Mary

If any school in the country should be committed to solid Liberal Arts education, it would be William and Mary. The nation's second-oldest university has a long tradition of outstanding undergraduate education -- alumni include James Madison, James Monroe, Henry Clay and many others. Yet in recent decades, like so many institutions, William and Mary has turned from a rigorous core curriculum of clear requirements to a large menu of options that fulfill distributional categories. William and Mary eaqrned only a C grade on ACTA's WhatWillTheyLearn.com ratings of core curricula around the nation.

Obtaining clear information is the beginning of reform, and ACTA is happy that WhatWillTheyLearn? has given the friends of William and Mary a tool to aid in their efforts to strengthen the curriculum. And voices at William and Mary are beginning to speak up, clamoring to "restore the core." Alumna Karla Bruno, writing in the Virginia Gazette, has put her finger on the problem -- weak requirements that leave students without critical skills. As she concludes, "There is remedy here to be had."

There is indeed. William and Mary's administration has agreed to an ongoing discussion about revising general education requirements, and the Society for the College has invited ACTA's Vice President of Policy, Michael Poliakoff to start that discussion this Saturday, giving a lecture at the college on the importance of core curriculum. Later this year, ACTA will participate in a panel discussion with William and Mary faculty, which the provost has been invited to moderate. This is an issue that should have the full attention of William and Mary's Board of Trustees.

William and Mary is the kind of top-tier school that others often emulate; as the tide of curricular reform begins to turn here, look for it to reach more and more schools.

Posted by Eric Markley on April 13, 2011 at 01:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

No Action towards ROTC at Yale

ROTC was once on many Ivy League campuses. Today, it is banned on all but a few. A few weeks ago, Harvard reinstated ROTC, and Columbia is following in its steps. Yet there are elite universities across the country, such as Yale, that are still holding back from accepting its return, depriving students the opportunity to learn to think and grow at an entirely different level. Donald Kagan, professor at Yale, talks about the importance, the benefits, and the honor of having ROTC on campus in an article in the New Haven Register. ACTA has had a voice in bringing it back to Harvard's and Columbia's campus, and will continue to push for its return to Yale and other elite schools.

Posted by Jose Herrera on April 12, 2011 at 05:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Columbia University Senate Passes ROTC Resolution

The Columbia University Senate voted 51-17-1 in favor of restoring ROTC to campus, moving the school one step closer to allowing future officers to train for public service on campus. The Board of Trustees is expected to vote by their June meeting to concur with the Senate vote and formally to recognize ROTC at the New York campus.

ACTA has urged Columbia, Harvard and other schools to restore ROTC to campus for years, through written correspondence with the Board of Trustees.

The Columbia decision comes shortly after former Columbia Provost Jacques Barzun opined in the Wall Street Journal that Columbia ought to follow ACTA's advice.

Students also support the return. Tao Tan, the Columbia student body chair, said in the debate prior to the Senate vote, "[a]n ROTC program that reflects the generosity of this country and its people, and the vigor of its higher education system, strengthens the social fabric of our society, and should be welcomed at Columbia."

Tan's committee oversaw efforts, including an independent student-faculty Task Force, which endorsed the plan.

Columbia is one of several elite private schools that banned ROTC from campus during the Vietnam War--and has resisted ROTC's return to campus because of objections to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Currently, Columbia students wishing to participate in ROTC must commute to Fordham to do so. Now, as military policy is beginning to change, Columbia is setting the standard by welcoming ROTC back to campus.

Posted by Jose Herrera on April 01, 2011 at 05:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Liberal Arts College, If You Can Keep It

On March 31, 2011, after many months of negotiation, Yale University reached an agreement with the National University of Singapore to create a residential liberal arts college in Singapore. Yale President Richard Levin hopes that this college will "re-imagine liberal education for a new century" and serve as a model for Asia. As proposed, the new campus will bring to Singapore the signature features of the American undergraduate experience: an emphasis on general education, student residential life that encourages discussion and exchange of ideas, extracurricular activities that build leadership and teamwork skills, and vigorous small class discussions. Yale is taking a bold step, with great potential - and also significant challenges. Neither the American focus on general education nor the American ethos of academic freedom is part of Singapore's system of higher education. Yale is confident that its Singapore partner understands what the freedom to teach and conduct research without interference means. The acid test may come when academic freedom collides with Singapore's strict laws on sedition, and much remains to be seen. Regarding curriculum, the American system of liberal arts education has been a key part of economic progress and vigorous citizenship since the time of our Founders. There are few contributions to the new Asia that Yale could make that would be more important for freedom and progress. But there is no room for smugness. ACTA hopes that Yale will not miss the opportunity to build a stronger model of general education than that now seen on its own campus. Yale earned an "F" in ACTA's WhatWillTheyLearn? ratings: of seven essential subjects for a strong and coherent general education, Yale requires only one, intermediate level foreign language. Yale has the opportunity - and the imperative - truly to reinvent its general education curriculum and ensure that it provides the intellectual foundation of skills and knowledge for the 21st century, whether in Asia or America.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on April 01, 2011 at 04:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack