Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Causes of increasing tuition
Causes of increasing tuition
Oct 31, 2025 11:44 PM

Harvey Silverglate on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) blog, The Torch, passes on one explanation for why college tuition costs have been increasing at double digit rates for years on end. He writes in part:

Alan Charles Kors and I posited one answer to the seeming puzzle in our book The Shadow University. We noted the extraordinary increase in administrative staff on the student life side of colleges and universities. We attributed this in large measure to the vast increase in the university’s control over and interference in students’ non-academic lives, under the rubric of the university’s resurgent in loco parentis role. This mencing in the 1980s, coincided with the entrenchment of the notion that students in the newly diversified American university could not learn to get along without administrative micro-management, “sensitivity training,” imposition of forced “civility” with the aid of speech codes, and other such devices seeking to avoid “offense” being inflicted upon, or at least felt by, students, particularly those in “historically disadvantaged” groups. These vast new armies of student life administrators were seen as necessary, too, to protect universities from liability under new anti-harassment legislation and regulations—or so it seemed to timid administrators and the general counsel who advise them. The result has been an academic culture as sterile as it is oppressive.

This corresponds with a move away from education (properly understood) in favor of indoctrination.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Buy A Baby And We’ll Throw In Citizenship For Free!
The Obama administration has created a policy wherein foreigners who purchase a baby via an American surrogate will be able to claim U.S. citizenship for the child. According to the Daily Caller: The fertility clinics will be able to pocket the profits, after granting access to American education, health, welfare and retirement services to the foreign children and the foreign parents. The giveaway is plished by a surprise change in regulations, which redefined the term “mother” to include women who...
Italian Edition of ‘The Good That Business Does’ Launched in Rome
Italian edition of “The Good That Business Does” by Robert G. Kennedy (Fede e Cultura, 2014) On Oct. 23, before a capacity-audience at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, the Acton Institute and Italian publishing house Fede e Cultura launched Robert G. Kennedy’s Il bene che fanno gli affari (original title “The Good That Business Does,” Acton, 2006, Christian Social Thought Series). The pontifical university’s research center, Markets, Culture and Ethics, acted as co-sponsor with its vice academic director...
Abraham-Parousia: Part 3 of Kuyper’s ‘Common Grace’ Now Available
Christian’s Library Presshas now released the third part in its series of English translationsof Abraham Kuyper’s most famous work,Common Grace, a three-volume work of practical public theology. This release,Abraham-Parousia, is the third and final part of Volume 1: The Historical Section, following Part 1 (Noah-Adam) and Part 2 (Temptation-Babel). Common Grace (De gemeene gratie)was originally published in 1901-1905 while Kuyper was prime minister. This new translation offers modern Christians a great resource for understanding the vastness of the gospel message,...
The Christian Life between Accommodation and Isolation
In this week’s Acton Commentary, “The Soul of the System,” I examine a number of images and distinctions related to Hunter Baker’s latest book,The System Has a Soul. In describing Herman Bavinck’s images of the kingdom of God as a pearl and a leaven, and plementary distinction from Abraham Kuyper of the church as an institute and an organism, a question naturally follows about the relationship between each element of the pairings. As with any distinction of this kind, there...
When Should We Be Worried About Economic Inequality?
The topic of economic inequality continues to be at the forefront of our current political discussions, thanks in no small part by a president who calls it “the defining challenge of our time.” But although such concerns are more typically lobbed about rather carelessly and thoughtlessly — cause folks to fret over the “power” of small business owners and entrepreneurs in a mythological zero-sum market ecosystem — there are indeed scenarios in which the rise of such inequality ought to...
Russell Kirk on Envy
Following up on the recent discussions of envy, here’s a bit from Russell Kirk’s book on economics: It would be easy enough to list other moral beliefs and customs that are part of the foundation of a prosperous economy, but we draw near to the end of this book. So instead we turn back, for a moment, to one vice we discussed earlier—and to the virtue which is the opposite of that vice. The vice is called envy; the virtue...
Houston Mayor to Pastors: On Second Thought, Let’s Forget About Those Subpoenas
Earlier this month the city of Houston sent out a subpoena to five area pastors demanding to see: All speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession. Houston mayor Annise Parker even appeared to support the measure, saying on her Twitter account, “If the 5 pastors used pulpits for politics, their sermons are fair game. Were instructions given...
Poverty, Inc. Documentary Premieres in Austin and Savannah
I worked alongside several Acton Institute colleagues and Coldwater Media for years on the Poverty, Inc. full-length documentary film, which tackles the question: Fighting poverty is big business, but who profits the most? It was gratifying to watch it Monday at what I’m told was the only sold out showing of the 2014 Austin Film Festival. It was at the first dine-in movie theatre I’ve visited, the Alamo Draft House, which meant we were watching a film about extreme global...
She And Her Mother Escaped From North Korea: Then Things Got Really Bad
Yeomni Park is a 21-year-old defector from the nation of North Korea. She and her mother (who was considered a criminal for moving without permission) escaped the brutal North Korean regime. They ended up in China…and things got worse. As we continue to hear more on the “war on women” in America’s political battles, it is good to remember that the terrible suffering of women (and men) in places like North Korea and China. ...
‘Work Is A Good Thing For Man’
I was transfixed by this video the other day. The simplicity of the video itself, the careful, skillful work, the lovely hands of a master at work – all brought to mind the goodness of work and creation that God granted to us. St. John Paul II, in his encyclical Laborem Exercens (On Human Work) says this: It is not only good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy; it is also good as being something...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved