Category: University Governance
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The University Problem
By Roger Pielke Jr.April 13, 2026 Originally posted as a report on The Honest Broker Abstract Public confidence in American higher education has rebounded modestly in 2025 — the first measured increase in a decade — but the numbers remain far below where they stood when Gallup began tracking them in 2015, and the underlying
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Brain Trust?
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Yale Committee Offers an Encouragingly Realistic Report About the State of Higher Education
Categories: University Governance -
How to Influence a University Without Anyone Noticing
Categories: University GovernanceBy Tao TanMarch 2, 2026 The Mellon Foundation has changed the shape of the humanities and social sciences, as three recent pieces have powerfully shown. Tyler Austin Harper argued in The Atlantic that Mellon’s funding concentration leaves ambitious humanities scholars with little practical alternative to aligning their work with the foundation’s priorities. John D. Sailer
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Higher Education’s Internal Trust Crisis
Categories: University GovernanceWhy Faculty, Administrators, and Trustees Struggle to Work Together By Thomas W. SmithFebruary 17, 2026 Everyone knows about the loss of public trust in higher education. Seven out of ten Americans surveyed reported that higher education is generally headed in the wrong direction. Only 30% of the public has high levels of trust in the
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How a few foundations shape academic culture
Categories: University GovernanceBy Tao TanJanuary 23, 2026 A surprisingly small stream of private money may play an outsized role in shaping academic culture in American higher education. Out of higher education’s $772 billion revenue base, just 0.16% of that, or roughly $1.2 billion per year, flows to the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) from U.S.-based foundation
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Legislation Can’t Solve All of Academia’s Problems
Categories: University GovernanceBy Tao TanDecember 16, 2025 The Goldwater Institute, Defending Education, and the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal recently proposed an American Higher Education Restoration Act for state universities. This model bill would create a teaching-only tenure track for faculty in Americanism and Western Civilization with no research requirement, shifts control over most new
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Robert p. George and the great campus vibe shift
Categories: University Governance