hillsdale

the

forum

Fall 2006Volume IV, Issue I

theDilemma ofHigher Education

The Ballots Have Been Cast!

--Who Got Elected--?--Where Do They Stand--?--What’s on the Line--

full story pages 8-9

In this issue...

forum

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No Soap and ToothbrushNeeded Here...One Student’sExamination of Hillsdale’s“Clean” Campus-page 7-

The election is over and theDemocrats have taken the Congress.The war in Iraq forced the unemployed,disgruntled citizens of America tospeak out via the election against their dominantly Republican government,or so says the opposition. But thewar in Iraq is not the only issue onthe ballot these days. While jobs andthe war are important, these topics jeopardized the election commercialsat the expense of other very importantissues, such as education.Politicians commonly use education,and more recently higher educationissues to get the American public upin arms concerning the future welfareof our country. If the children of today lack proper education, theadults of tomorrow will fail tocarry on the American dream. We poor college students deserve thesubsidization of the governmentto ensure the continuation of our beloved democratic-republic. BothDemocrats and Republicans havedumped millions and millions of dollars into the system in order toimpress the local voters.Our very own President Larry Arnn pointed out the problem in his recentessay, “The Crisis and Politics of Higher Education” published inthe

Claremont Review of Books

and

Imprimis

. (Currently, theessay can also be accessed via theHillsdale College home page.) He, being a true believer in HillsdaleCollege and the idea of remainingtrue to one’s founding, noticed that“since September 11, 2001, defensespending has risen 47 percent, whilehigher education spending has risen133 percent.”Complain as they may about spendingon the war in Iraq, the Democrats inconjunction with the Republicanshave blown the lid off of educationspending in the last six years, and itdoesn’t help the national deficit.All this money going out makesone wonder what the institutions of higher education are doing with thefunding. The Intercollegiate StudiesInstitute took up this very question intheir recently published study “TheComing Crisis in Citizenship” inwhich they examined what was beinglearned by students at 50 institutionsof higher education nation wide.

StephAni Francl

-continued on page 3

news

Fall 2006

As Hillsdale College students, we all know the meaning of busy. From writing a paper toreading a book, there are a million things that come ahead of watching the news, which iswhy we’ve decided to bring the important stuff to you!

In Germany, for the low cost of $25, onecan hire Bernd Dressler of the SeparationAgency in Berlin to break-up with one’ssignificant other. The more elaborate breaking-up packages can go as high at$65, but one must have at least three rea-sonable reasons for breaking up beforeMr. Dressler breaks up with your sig-nificant other for you. Talk about cold.Ernest Charles Pusey, 111, isFlorida’s only living WorldWar I veteran and received hislong-delayed medal for hisservice on the battleship USSWyoming nearly 90 years ago.The FBI is now investigatingthe Los Angeles police after viewing a videotape releasedon YouTube.com that shows of-ficers repeatedly beating a sus- pect in the face while he criedout that he could not breathe.It is now under speculation that the mass surrender of 500Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in November 2001, during theopening phases of the Afghanistan war was a ruse. It led to a prison riot in an aging fortress in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan,which was suppressed by a band of American and British com-mandos. Only 85 prisoners survived to be captured; amongthem was John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban.”The number of overseasgraduate students goingto school in the US hasincreased after the threeyear decline followingSeptember 11th in 2001.Robert Gates became thenew nominee for the officeof United States Secretary of Defense after Donald Rums-feld’s resignation earlier this week. He is currently president of Texas A&M andwas the 15th director of theCentral Intelligence Agency.Can you name all the SupremeCourt Judges of the RobertsCourt?: Samuel Alito, StephenBreyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,Anthony Kennedy, Chief Jus-tice John Roberts, AntoninScalia, David Souter, John PaulStevens, and Clarence Thom-as. (No, this is not news, justsomething you need to know)The Supreme Court contin-ues to hear arguments to up-hold the disputed “Partial-BirthAbortion Ban,” weighing inon the constitutionality of alaw banning a surgical meth-od to terminate a pregnancy.Democracy, Hugo Chavez-Style: For workersat Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, sup- porting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavezisn’t a choice; it’s a direct order. On one poster,highlighted in capital letters, it says “He whois not with Chavez should not be in PDVSA.”It encourages workers to be vigilant of their colleagues and to turn in anyone who doesnot appear to be “identified with the process.”In California, OrangeCoast College votes notto recognize the Pledgeof Allegiance, and bans it from meetings.Al Qaeda says they will not rest until our pret-ty White House is a ugly black pile of rubble.After a Huston landscaping business refuses to do busi-ness with a homosexual cou- ple, they are kicked form theAssoc. of Professional Land-scape Designers, and senthate mail and death threats.After making racist remarks that air in the new Borat film, two NorthCarolina fraternity brothers are suing the makers of the film, claimingthey were tricked into making the remarks.Whitman College cancelledclasses Thursday so that stu-dents could attend a sympo-sium on race and diversityafter several pictures of stu-dents wearing blackface madeit onto the internet causinga campus wide controversy.The average Americanwith AIDS will live 24years, and spend over $600,000 on treatment.

news

forum

Hillsdale

the forum

Stephani Francl

Emilia Huneke-Bergquist

Editors-in-Chief

Julie Robison

Copy Editor

Gina GallutiaBrian JohnstonStohn Nishino Jeremy MarshallG. Stolyarov II

Staff Writers

The Hillsdale Forum

is astudent publication distributedfour times throughout theschool year.

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The Hillsdale Forum

:hillsdaleforum@gmail.com

Twenty-five of the schools wereselected based on information fromthe National Center for EducationStatistics’ Integrated PostsecondaryEducation Data System. The other 25 percent were elite schools handselected based on the

US Newsand World Report’s

rankings of thenation’s colleges (which we’ll come back to later).These schools were selected toshow both a broad overview of whatAmerica’s college student is learning,as well as the difference between an“elite” education and a non-eliteeducation. The results are astounding.The college with the most “valueadded” (Value added is the increase inknowledge of graduating seniors over incoming freshmen.) was RhodesCollege, and the second, ColoradoCollege. Ranking at 50, 49, and 48respectively were Johns HopkinsUniversity, UC Berkley, and CornellUniversity. All of these come in well behind Utah State University (14) andthe University of New Mexico (7).The areas of question addressed inthe study included common historicaland political topics such as theJamestown Colony, the Form of theUS Government, Women’s Suffrage,and World War II. Students showedan increased value added in manyof the categories, though the largest“decrease” in value added came onthe subject of

Marbury v. Madison.

However, the topics that showedimprovement, albeit only a littlewere disturbing: the Origin of theDoctrine of Separation of Church andState, Plato’s

Republic

, the FoundersUnderstanding of Moral and PoliticalKnowledge, the Enumerated Powers,and Traditional Just War Theory.The fact that these “value added’s”are improving is encouraging, buthere is the discouraging part: Ineach of these categories, incomingfreshmen got less than 39 percentof the questions correct. And theseniors who improved on the subjectsimproved by, at most, a margin of 3.2 percent.From the recent election results, itwill be no wonder to you which wasthe least understood category fromthe list: Traditional Just War Theory.Today’s voting citizen’s grasp on just war theory shows in the wishy-washy voting tendencies displayed inthe last three elections which reliedheavily on the war issue.Thank Heavens for Hillsdale College,which, like it or not, now forces eachof its graduating students to takea course on the US Constitution; atleast we know our stuff.However, this is not recognized by the general population or by thegeneral media. In the

US Newsand World Report’s

rankings of thenation’s best liberal arts colleges,Hillsdale doesn’t even make the top100. We fall somewhere in the top120. This, in itself, is frustrating, but the methodology of the rankingswill make one pull their hair outin aggravation. The most heavilyweighted criteria used by

US News

is what is titled “peer ranking.” Peer ranking means that the president, provost, and admissions dean of eachcollege sends in their ideas of how allof the other colleges in their categoryrank on a scale of one to five with five being the best. Hillsdale’s number:2.2. Though frustrating, Hillsdale’srank among the other liberal artscolleges is not as important as theactual task undertaken by the college.The fact is that Hillsdale Collegewas founded in 1844 to “furnish toall persons who wish…a literary,scientific or theological educationas comprehensive and thorough as isusually pursued in other colleges or theological schools in this country,and to combine with this, suchmoral, social and artistic instructionand culture as will best develop theminds and improve the hearts of thestudents.” The most recent anthem of Hillsdale – “Educating for Liberty” – takes up this challenge in a modernday battle cry. Hillsdale College,though imperfect, fulfills its missionand its Articles of Association; if onlythe same were true of the schoolsshown to be struggling to “add value”to their students.

-education from page 1

College seniors failedthe “Civic LiteracyExam” administered by ISI with an averagescore of 53.2%.

Of the 50 schools sur-veyed, 16 schools’ se-niors scored lower thanfreshmen showing anegative value added.Civic learning issigniﬁcantly great-er at schools withtraditional corecurricula.Civicly educated citi-zens are more active-ly engaged in voting,volunteer communityservice and politicalcampaings.

“The Coming Crisis inCitizenship”

ISI‛s AmericanCivic LiteracyProgram‛sFindings

All statistics courtesy of ISI.