Author Archive

A breath of fresh air for higher education

Posted: September 27, 2022 by chrisharper in education
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

During nearly 30 years in higher education, I saw first-hand the growing problems at colleges and universities.

When I started in the academy in 1994, my colleagues already had a decidedly leftist bent. But other trends took hold. Money flowed out of the classroom into administrative coiffeurs, mainly because the federal government insisted on the changes to fight “racism” and other leftist aims. As a result, the cost of tuition soared.

But U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has developed a solid solution for many of higher education’s ills.

Here are a few salient facts that Cotton points out in his argument for the Student Loan Reform Act of 2022:

–Almost one-third of college students drop out before graduation. Nearly two in five college graduates regret their major, over 40% of recent graduates are underemployed, and more than half work in fields they didn’t study. Yet, in the past 20 years, tuition prices have risen over 180%, and total student loan debt is now nearing $2 trillion.

–College endowments have grown to over $800 billion in value—with Harvard and Yale sitting on over $70 billion of untaxed wealth. Colleges use their massive fortunes not to serve their students but to pay for bloated bureaucracies. Between 1976 and 2018, total student enrollment increased by just 78%, while the number of college administrators ballooned by 616%.

The federal government’s guarantee of virtually unlimited student loans is the primary cause of this disconnect. In return for issuing trillions of dollars worth of loans and protecting these loans from bankruptcy, the government demands almost nothing from the colleges.

Here’s how Cotton’s proposal would fix some of these issues:

–It would penalize colleges that leave students in debt from undesirable and unmarketable programs, causing graduates to default years later. The proposal would require that colleges become guarantors of up to 50% of future federal student loans and would fine colleges 25% of the value of future defaulted loans.

–It pressures colleges to reduce the cost of tuition and to stop hoarding large amounts of endowment money. Any university charging over $20,000 a year for undergraduate tuition must gradually eliminate 50% of its administrative staff to qualify for future student loans. 

–The legislation also places a 20% luxury tax on undergraduate tuition above $40,000 and a 1% tax on the wealthiest private college endowments. The revenue raised from these taxes would go toward workforce education to help the majority of Americans who don’t have a college degree.

The legislation also requires universities to implement policies protecting campus diversity of thought. It would protect free speech and ban all forms of racial discrimination as a condition of participation in the federal student loan program.

As Cotton puts it: “This will lessen the grip left-wing ideologues have on college campuses and ensures their academic environments no longer impedes the intellectual growth of all students.”

If Cotton’s proposal becomes law, I might be convinced to come out of retirement!

Philly: A Soros’ surrogate faces blowback

Posted: September 20, 2022 by chrisharper in crime
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

As crime in Philadelphia rages out of control, one of George Soros’ key legal eagles is facing increasing fallout, including from some Democrats.’

Bought and paid for by Soros, Larry Krasner is the district attorney for Philadelphia. As such, he has the worst record of bringing criminals to justice.

The state legislature recently convened a committee to investigate Krasner and his office and even issued a subpoena to have him testify.

But Krasner has refused to comply with the subpoena, calling it “illegal,” “anti-democratic,” and “wholly illegitimate.”

All five committee members formed to investigate Krasner’s actions— three Republicans and two Democrats — voted to hold Krasner in contempt for ignoring the subpoena. When the motion reached the floor of the House, the result was also a bipartisan condemnation of the district attorney. The chamber voted 162 to 38 to hold him in contempt, which included the votes of 10 Democratic members from Philadelphia.

Krasner faces the possibility of impeachment and conviction for failing to enforce illegal gun charges and letting other criminals off easy.

But there’s more. U.S. District Court Judge Mitchell Goldberg ordered Krasner to apologize personally to the family of a murder victim.

How did Krasner respond? Spokesperson Jane Roh told the press that they “strongly disagree with Judge Goldberg’s ruling and are evaluating our options.”

But there’s even more. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which Democrats control, recently criticized Krasner. In a 4-2 decision, the court attacked Krasner for his attempt to recast laws concerning the use of deadly force by police officers.

Justice Kevin Dougherty, a well-connected Democrat, wrote that Krasner appears to be ‘driven by a win-at-all-cost office culture’ that treats police officers differently than other criminal defendants. This is the antithesis of what the law expects of a prosecutor.”

Other progressive prosecutors face the same blowback around the country, as a bipartisan consensus has emerged that stopping crime is an essential part of the job. In a recall election, Chesa Boudin was ousted by San Franciscans, and George Gascon narrowly avoided a vote in Los Angeles.

Such recall elections do not exist in Pennsylvania. Here, impeachment is the only option.

I hope the state legislature, which fortunately has a Republican majority, will convince even more Democrats that Krasner has got to go.

The fraud of John Fetterman

Posted: September 13, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

By Christopher Harper

John Fetterman, the Democrat nominee for U.S. senator in Pennsylvania, is one of the biggest fakes to seek political office.

At 53, he’s basically never held a paying job outside of government, owing mainly to his family’s wealth. 

Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, to an insurance executive and his wife, Fetterman got a public policy degree from Harvard and traveled more than 250 miles west to the small town of Braddock, where he worked as a member of AmeriCorps, the domestic version of the Peace Corps.

Fetterman, the carpetbagger from eastern Pennsylvania, had found his niche in the western part of the state.

In 2005, he ran for mayor when the town had 3,000 souls, about two-thirds of whom were black, promising to clean up crime and make the economy better. Amazingly, he won the race by one vote: 149-148. Unsurprisingly, some election day shenanigans allowed three people to cast ballots who had been turned away at the polls. See https://www.post-gazette.com/local/east/2005/06/09/One-provisional-ballot-decides-Braddock-mayor-s-race-It-s-Fetterman/stories/200506090277

For whatever reason, Fetterman became a media and elite darling despite his tattoos, hoodie and shorts, and excess pounds. 

The Guardian described John Fetterman as the “coolest mayor” in the country. The New York Times told its readers that Fetterman had “turned the busted town of Braddock, PA, into a national symbol of hope, hard work and authentic blue jeans.

Fetterman was feted at The Aspen Institute and with a TED talk.

As Tucker Carlson put it: “It’s so perfect: homesteading, organic vegetables, art installations, and also, again, inevitably a heaping dose of climate theology, all imported from Harvard. Fetterman imposed on a town with no jobs, carbon caps on Braddock, Pennsylvania, and he claimed these carbon caps would somehow — he never explained how — bring more manufacturing jobs back. He called this initiative “Carbon Caps = Hard Hats.” So expensive, unreliable energy will mean more manufacturing jobs, and yet somehow no one laughed at him, so John Fetterman kept going.” 

During his 14 years as mayor, he rarely attended town council meetings and argued incessantly with the black leadership of Braddock.

In 2013, Fetterman said he heard a loud sound, which he thought was gunfire. He grabbed a shotgun and followed a jogger, who was black, and confronted him. The jogger said Fetterman pointed the shotgun at his chest and face. No charges were filed, and no apology was made.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is9AD2PIKMk

Imagine what would have happened if a Republican running for ANY political office did such a thing?

In 14 years as mayor, Fetterman saw nearly half of the people leave. Crime and the economy aren’t any better. 

But the Democrats elected him as lieutenant governor in 2019 and nominated him for U.S. Senate. 

Fetterman’s stands on the issues are to the left of Bernie Sanders, whom he endorsed for president. Fetterman makes AOC seem sane!

I can only hope that the voters of Pennsylvania finally see through his facade and media hype to return him as an ordinary citizen to live out his years in Braddock or Aspen.

Education during Covid: A failing grade

Posted: September 6, 2022 by chrisharper in education
Tags:

By Christopher Harper

The catastrophe of closing schools during Covid became even more apparent as data provided information about the impact of those decisions.

The average scores for 9-year-olds declined the most on record in math (seven points) and in reading since 1990 (five points, according to the National Center for Educational Progress. See https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/

The 2020 tests were administered shortly before pandemic lockdowns and school closures, so this year’s results show how students have weathered those two years.

NAEP, a congressionally mandated program overseen by the U.S. Department of Education, administered the assessments from January to March 2020 and 2022, respectively. The group tested about 7,400 9-year-old students from 410 schools in 2022, and 92% of the schools assessed this year were also tested in 2020. 

Results were even worse for lower-income and minority students. Math scores fell by 13 points for black students and eight points for Hispanics compared to five points for whites. Reading scores for low-income students fell twice as much as for others.

Simply put, school closures cost American kids a lot, and it is unlikely that the next few years will close the gap significantly.

Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, expressed concerns about the findings in a statement announcing the results.

“There’s been much speculation about how shuttered schools and interrupted learning may have affected students’ opportunities to learn,” Carr wrote. 

“Our own data reveal the pandemic’s toll on education in other ways, including increases in students seeking mental health services, absenteeism, school violence and disruption, cyberbullying, and nationwide teacher and staff shortages.”

While the Biden administration praised its efforts to reopen schools and toss money at the problem, it’s worth noting that states that voted for Donald Trump did much better in reopening schools. 

Schools in Trump states reopened 75% of the time, while those that voted for Biden reopened 37% during the 2020-2021 academic year, according to the education nonprofit The 74. 

Also, Democrats widely condemned Trump and Republican governors like Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for aggressively pushing school reopenings in the fall of 2020. 

“Floridians deserve science-based action from Gov. Ron DeSantis,” Biden said prior to the 2020 election. “While other large states continue to take strong, urgent, and sweeping action to stop the spread of COVID-19, Florida has not.”

The recent results do not include a breakdown by state, but it will be interesting to see how much better Florida did than the national results.

American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, who pushed shutdowns, tried to forget this ever happened with her statement on Twitter: “Thankfully after two years of disruption from a pandemic that killed more than 1 mil Americans, schools are already working on helping kids recover and thrive. This is a year to accelerate learning by rebuilding relationships, focusing on the basics.” 

She and her union had to back down from extending closures even more after parents went ballistic in many locales. See https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-amid-growing-parent-backlash-teachers-unions-keep-trying-to-rewrite-school-reopening-history/

Just for the record, I taught online classes for nearly two decades. The problem wasn’t online vs. the classroom. The problem was that most of my colleagues had no training and no understanding of how to teach online. If teachers are properly prepared to teach online, surveys show that students do slightly better online than in the classroom.

Nevertheless, as this school year begins, it’s readily apparent that things won’t return to normal any time soon. Students must make up two years of declining knowledge over the next eight years through 12th grade. That’s going to be tough!

Older Entries
Newer Entries