In a famous exchange in the The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote: "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually, then suddenly." "Gradually" and "suddenly" applies to higher education's implosion. During the 1990s "culture wars" universities were warned that…

For decades, parents have sacrificed and students have gone into debt to fund college degrees that lead nowhere. But the college scam may be up soon – not thanks to any moral awakening on the part of college administrators.  Instead, a tight job market is motivating more employers, including Google, IBM and some state governments…

Are you better off today than you were two years ago?   Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan’s pivotal 1980 debate query, that question looms large with November’s midterm elections already underway.   From inflation to crime to international relations to energy to almost every other realm of our lives, the answer is an unequivocal…

School is starting, but don't count on getting answers about what your child is being taught. School administrators commonly lie or give parents the runaround. That explains the fireworks over Jeremy Boland, a Greenwich, Connecticut, elementary school assistant principal, bragging about how the school pushes kids to think in a "progressive"…

"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." That's what it says right there in the Constitution. And yet, without any legislation, President Joe Biden now promises to "cancel" up to $10,000 in student loans per borrower ($20,000 for Pell Grant borrowers), limited to those with annual…

Take our 14-Question Quiz to test your knowledge of our National Standard. (Answer key may be found at the bottom)  1. On which one of the following days in 1777 did Congress pass the resolution establishing the American flag? a. June 14 b. July 4 c. September 17 d. December 7 2. When did Congress officially…

Schools are becoming indoctrination factories, trying to turn children against their country and their own parents' values. It's what the teachers unions intend. Amazingly, that's just fine with President Joe Biden, who told a gathering of teachers and union bigwigs on April 27 that the kids are "yours when they're in the classroom." That…

Parents who never imagined running for office battled to win seats on local school boards last week; they won some, but lost many. Their fiercest opponents were the teachers unions. The media portrayed these school board races as culture wars, but more than anything they were struggles by parents to wrest control of the boards from self-serving unions…

Parents whose kids excel in school need to be on guard. Leftist school administrators across the country – not just in New York City – are banning gifted programs in elementary and middle school and Advanced Placement courses in high school.  Typically, without any notice to parents, an eight grader's accelerated…

It's hard to know what's worse – brainwashing kids or lying about it. Parents worried their kids are being indoctrinated with critical race theory can't get straight answers. Local school boards and principals lie to them, claiming children are merely being taught to be "critical thinkers." On Saturday, the truth came out…

The battle to win control of school boards from the grip of racial indoctrinators is like Normandy Beach. Everything hangs on the outcome. Lose and a generation is lost. The outcome will determine whether your children learn to see themselves and other people as individuals, instead of merely members of a racial group. Parents of all ethnicities who…

Nothing is stranger than the contemporary American university. Not long ago, Americans used to idolize their universities. Indeed, in science, math, engineering, medicine and business, many of these meritocratic departments and schools remain among the top-ranked in the world. Top-notch higher education explains much of the current scientific, technological…

The newly formed President's Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.) The unanimously approved conclusions focused…

Take CFIF’s 10-Question Supreme Court Quiz and test your knowledge of our Nation’s Highest Court. (Answer key may be found at the bottom) 1. How many Justices comprise the U.S. Supreme Court? a. Five b. Six c. Nine d. Eleven 2. How many times has Congress changed the number of justices comprising…

The outcome of November's election will likely determine the role of racial preferences in the college admissions process. Voters have a clear choice. The Trump administration wants an applicant's grades and achievements to matter most. The Obama-Biden administration had urged colleges to tilt the scale in favor of minority applicants. Now Joe Biden…

When mobs tore down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant and defaced a monument to African American veterans of the Civil War, many people wondered whether the protesters had ever learned anything in high school or college. Did any of these iconoclasts know the difference between Grant and Robert E. Lee? Could they recognize the name "Gettysburg"…

"Socialist!" is no longer a McCarthyite slur. Rather, the fresh celebrity "Squad" of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas…

President Donald Trump told a rally last week: "We are all Americans. We all share the same home. We all share the same heart." He cautioned that "the radical Democrats are trying to tear this country apart" with their divisive identity politics. Warning to parents: Left-wing activists are using these same divisive tactics to target…

This week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that it was "literally easier" for her to win the congressional election than pay off her student loan debt — which says something unfortunate about both the cost of college and the electorate's choices. Ocasio-Cortez was commenting on Sen. Bernie Sanders' new plan to eliminate $…

Presidential contender Elizabeth Warren's strategy is to win the Democratic nomination by promising the most free stuff. Monday, she upped the ante. She's offering a whopping $50,000 student loan forgiveness for nearly everyone who borrowed for college or graduate school. That's old-fashioned Tammany Hall-style bribery — handing out dollars…

This week, no story gripped Americans’ collective attention more than "Operation Varsity Blues" revelations that celebrities and wealthy parents lied and bribed their children’s way into elite colleges over the past decade.  According to federal prosecutors, over thirty rich and famous families paid approximately $25 million…

Colleges and universities that limit freedom of speech are about to get clobbered big time. President Donald Trump came out swinging on Saturday against the higher-education establishment for violating our nation's most fundamental value: free expression, guaranteed in the Constitution First Amendment. "I am proud to announce that I will be very…

No consent. No disclosure. No escape. For legions of unwitting students and teachers across the country, this is the dangerous, de facto data policy Google has imposed over their school districts. An estimated 80 million students and teachers are now signed up for free "G Suite for Education" accounts (formerly known as Google Apps for Education…

Students wrongly accused of sexual misconduct by campus disciplinary systems stacked in favor of the accuser are winning vindication in court. Judges are tossing out the life-ruining punishments meted out by these "guilty until proven innocent" campus tribunals.  This month, Judge Amul Thapar of the federal Sixth Circuit appeals court…

"I also have a dream." This rallying cry, handwritten on a simple white placard held up by an Asian-American mom at a protest this week against liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to radically transform New York City's public schools, says it all. A new civil rights struggle in education has exploded — yet the national…

Educrat (ED-yoo-krat) noun, usually pejorative. A government school official or administrator whose primary function is to spend tax dollars telling other parents what to do with their children. Beltway education bureaucrats abhor families who choose to keep their kids out of public schools — unless it's to grandstand over gun control.…

While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook's intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren. It doesn't take undercover investigative journalists…

It's elementary. Education control freaks will use any excuse to crack down on competition. With two million K-12 students now educated at home (including our 9th grade son), the temptation to exploit the most marginal cases of alleged child abuse by home-schoolers has proven irresistible to statist politicians and government apologists. Take the…

Take our 12-Question Christmas Quiz and test your knowledge of Christmas-related Americana. (Answer key may be found at the bottom) 1. In which one of the following years did Congress declare Christmas to be a federal holiday? a. 1776 b. 1781 c. 1870 d. 1890 2. The iconic rosy-cheeked picture of Santa Claus…

The U.S. Justice Department finally is confronting Harvard University and other elite colleges that blatantly discriminate against Asian-American applicants with a quota system. To get into Harvard, students of Asian heritage have to score hundreds of points higher on competitive exams than non-Asian applicants with similar or even inferior academic…