Half a century ago, when sociologist James Coleman was tasked by the U.S. Department of Education with studying educational inequality, a good school was regarded as one that featured teachers with advanced degrees, a well-stocked library, state-of-the-art science labs and the like. The assumption was that these "inputs" were key to students' success. But the bottom line of the 737-page "Equal Educational Opportunity Survey," known as the Coleman Report, was dynamite. Families mattered most, schools mattered less — and extra resources didn't seem to matter much at all.

One of the earliest casualties of the COVID-related school closures was school accountability for academic results, and many education leaders want it to stay that way. 

J.S. Mill's idea of a university, and our own.

This section documents the myriad abuses that the Chinese Communist Party commits against its own people in violation of its commitments under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

James Q. Wilson was a modest man of outsize achievements—a professor and a lifelong student of human nature. By Harvey C. Mansfield.

Two seminal events transformed the educational institutions of the West—the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1455 and the Protestant Reformation in 1517.

As gun-wielding black students seized control of a campus building in April 1969, Cornell University descended into anarchy. An account thirty years later by Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell, who was teaching at Cornell at the time.

Law schools are in trouble. Applications are down almost 50% to an estimated 54,000 this year from 100,000 in 2004. Little wonder.

Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom signed into law California’s Fair Pay to Play Act, which will allow California college athletes to sign commercial deals for the use of their identities and likenesses.  The law, which will also allow student athletes to hire agents to negotiate on their behalf, will take effect in 2023. This could be the law that upsets the NCAA’s long-standing cozy apple cart that has successfully funneled almost all collegiate athletic revenue to universities, and the economics of this law are fascinating.