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colleges

What are incoming first-year college students reading this summer?

John Fea   |  July 24, 2021

As part of its first-year experience program, incoming first-year students at Messiah University are reading Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. They will not be alone. Here is Audrey Williams June and Jacquelyn Elias at The Chronicle of...

“They’re 18 years old…and already they’ve decided to devote the rest of their lives to accountancy”

John Fea   |  April 28, 2021

Yesterday I taught Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in my Created and Called for Community class. This text speaks volumes about the value of a liberal arts education. Today college and universities sell programs. When my daughters visited college campuses...

Did you or your child benefit from a liberal arts or humanities education? Write a letter!

John Fea   |  September 25, 2020

The liberal arts and humanities are in jeopardy right now at colleges and universities. Schools are cutting programs and firing professors in these fields. Spring Arbor University in Michigan just canned one of its best professors. Liberty University and Southwest...

Is the American mind closing?

John Fea   |  July 10, 2020

James Ceaser, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, makes some important points about intellectual inquiry in this piece at The National Review.  I found this section useful: Begin with higher education, the institution traditionally charged with presenting...

What American Historian and Wake Forest University President Nathan Hatch Said to Mike Pence

John Fea   |  May 19, 2020

Here is Nathan Hatch‘s op-ed at the Winston-Salem Journal: Last week, I was invited to a conversation with Vice President Mike Pence and 13 other college and university presidents across the country to discuss what it will take to reopen campuses...

Why American Universities are Failing

John Fea   |  May 14, 2020

Political scientist David Schultz of Hamline University offers a scathing critique of the American university in his recent piece at CounterPunch. This hits close to home. A taste: American universities are failing. They are private or public schools. They could...

How Will Coronavirus Redefine College?

John Fea   |  April 5, 2020

The following piece is by University of Georgia history professor Stephen Mihm. Warning: What you are about to read is not pretty.  A taste: Imagine, for a moment, if August rolls around and the pandemic has abated but colleges and...

Why Does Jerry Falwell Jr. REALLY Support VEXIT?

John Fea   |  January 29, 2020

Get up to speed here. Here is Matt Ford at The New Republic: In a statement posted on Twitter, Falwell gave the most comprehensive reason for the proposal. He largely blames Virginia Democrats and their policy choices. “Democrat leaders in Richmond,...

Episode 54: Why College?

  |  September 22, 2019

Increasingly, college campuses have transformed from places of rigorous scholarly pursuits into glorified centers for job training. But is this what college is really for? Host John Fea and producer Drew Dyrli Hermeling sit down and discuss the need for...

Virginia Tech’s Problem

John Fea   |  June 1, 2019

While colleges and universities in the Northeast struggle to find students for the first-year class, Virginia Tech has the opposite problem.  The Blacksburg, Virginia school has 1000 more freshman than it expected and is even offering some of them cash...

The Wendell Berry Farming Program

John Fea   |  March 26, 2019

It is a two-year degree program with Sterling College in Craftsbury, Vermont and it is run by the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky  Learn more from Latria Graham‘s piece at Garden & Gun.  Here is a taste: Now, the...

What if College Classes Had Corporate Sponsors?

John Fea   |  April 25, 2018

As universities become more and more corporate, writer Suzanne Fernandez Gray wonders what it might look like if academic courses eventually get corporate sponsors.  Read her very funny piece at McSweeney’s. Here are a few of my favorites: A-H 350 TWENTIETH CENTURY ART Sponsored...

Ideological Battlegrounds or Communities of Free Inquiry?

John Fea   |  October 19, 2017

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Liz Reisberg takes a global perspective on recent free speech and academic freedom controversies at American colleges and universities. Here is a taste: Open, uncensored discourse is fundamental to academic freedom. Yet the daily higher ed press...

“The Closing of the American Mind” at 30

John Fea   |  October 13, 2017

Allan Bloom‘s bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind, turns thirty this year.  Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, cultural critic and New Left activist Todd Gitlin reflects: “You can slam its young people into universities with their classrooms and laboratories, and when...

Mark Cuban: Don't Go to College to Study Business. Study the Humanities

John Fea   |  February 18, 2017

From Business Insider: Billionaire investor Mark Cuban offered a perhaps bleak prediction on the future of jobs in an interview Friday with Bloomberg’s Cory Johnson at the NBA All-Star Technology Summit in New Orleans. Discussing the swiftly evolving nature of jobs...

Deresiewicz: “College is seldom about thinking or learning anymore”

John Fea   |  September 8, 2015

William Deresiewicz is correct.  His piece in the September 2015 of Harper’s Magazine captures much of what I have been thinking lately about higher education and my place and future within it. Deresiewicz begins by noting his experience teaching for a semester...

In Most Colleges and Universities You Can Receive a Bachelor’s Degree Without Having to Take a History Course

John Fea   |  October 15, 2014

Messiah College requires a course in history (but not specifically American history) and at least six hours of foreign language study (2 courses). It does not require that all students take a course in economics. It looks like very few...

The Saxifrage School: Mixing Humanities and Trades

John Fea   |  April 5, 2013

I like this idea.  (HT: Janine Giordano-Drake) Classes in Tim Cook’s two-year old college, The Saxifrage School, are held in coffee shops, public libraries, apartments, and YMCAs.  Tuition is $395 a class.  The Wall Street Journal recently profiled this Pittsburgh...

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Episode 51: “The Politics of Tinky Winky”

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

He was Florida’s professor of the year in 2006. Today his courses would be illegal.

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

Zakaria: The nation’s policy on classified documents and “secrecy” is “out-of-control”

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

Teaching John Henry Newman’s “What is a University”

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

What is popular this week at Current?

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

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