Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories.
I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.
Apart from finding a first job, college graduates seem to adapt more easily than those with only a high school degree as the economy evolves and labor-market needs change.
Again and again, universities have put a low priority on the very programs and initiatives that are needed most to increase productivity and competitiveness, improve the quality of government, and overcome the problems of illiteracy, miseducation, and unemployment.
There are no tests similar to SATs to tell us how much undergraduates know. State legislators, who appropriate billions of dollars each year to higher education, are naturally interested in finding out what they are getting for their money.
The college that takes students with modest entering abilities and improves their abilities substantially contributes more than the school that takes very bright students and helps them develop only modestly.
There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.
The University has a moral obligation to provide equal opportunities to women, minority persons and all other groups who work or seek to work at Harvard.
Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes.
I think one thing that does cause unhappiness is protracted anxiety and worry.
The vast majority of students probably emerge from college with an adequate grasp of no more than a single method of inquiry. Even this capacity may erode over time if it does not relate to experiences and problems that recur in the student's later life.
I suspect that no community will become humane and caring by restricting what its members can say.
I don't think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions.
