Links for 7/26/10

Martin Wolf

Some ideas, like vampires, will not die. The graduate tax is such an idea. It cannot be the right solution to a big challenge: how to sustain excellence in UK universities in today’s straitened times…

Perhaps, the greatest drawback of moving from the current income-contingent repayment of fees towards a graduate tax is that it would again put the allocation of funds under the control of the state. Yet autonomy is the characteristic of all successful institutions. The introduction of fees – Tony Blair’s greatest achievement in public service provision – was a first, albeit tentative, step in that direction…

Andy Smarick

the legislative language and departmental pronouncements enabled—actually, all but guaranteed—this $75 billion investment in the status quo…

A good leading indicator of whether a state’s heart will actually be in its reforms is whether it sees the RTTT as an engine for change or as bags of cash…

Greg Lukianoff

With so many examples of censorship and administrative bullying, a generation of students is getting four years of dangerously wrongheaded lessons about both their own rights and the importance of respecting the rights of others. Diligently applying the lessons they are taught, students are increasingly turning on each other, and trying to silence fellow students who offend them…

71 percent of the 375 top colleges still have policies that severely restrict speech…

Paul Campos

an anecdote related by former Yale Law School dean and current Obama administration member Harold Koh. When Koh was hired at Yale, he had a long conversation with a senior faculty member about Koh’s scholarly plans, and how he should pursue them in the context of his pre-tenure career. Eventually, Koh asked his colleague about teaching. “Teaching,” he was told, “is like hitting a home run at the faculty-student softball picnic. Your career here will depend on how your scholarship is judged. And if you hit a home run at the picnic, well that’s nice too.”