Nicolaus Mills

Commencement season is upon us, and like thousands of other college teachers, I will be saying goodbye to the seniors I know. But I will be saying goodbye worried about the increasing threat to higher education that I see coming from a growing phenomenon--- the imperial university.

What...

Last month colleges sent out their acceptances to high school seniors, and the news at some of the most prestigious colleges in the country was not good for those trying to get in. At six of the eight Ivy League schools, fewer than 10 percent of the applicants were admitted,...

As President Obama struggles to find a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis and remain a friend of Israel, he would do well to look at what another Democratic president, Harry Truman, did in 1948 while seeking reelection and dealing with the birth of Israel.

After extricating...

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 now off the front pages, it is time for a sober look at what the 9/11 memorial building tells us. The news, unfortunately, is not good when we compare our own era with that of post-World War II years.

In a 1945...

As a college teacher, I have been going to commencements ever since I got my own Ph.D. I still like them after more than a quarter century of attendance, but as this year's commencement season winds down, I've come to realize that what I most look forward are the parents...

When we think of the toll that America's failing economy is having on the poor and on blue-collar workers, we typically think of what we can measure. We focus on those who collect unemployment, who couldn't make mortgage payments or who lost their health care.

What we don't think of...

Once upon a time colleges worried about having too many students willing to settle for gentleman's C's. Now they worry about having too many students feeling entitled to automatic A's.

To combat grade inflation, Princeton has adopted guidelines that say no more than 35 percent of...

OBIT-WORTHY: VETS GET THE SHORT STICK
By Nicolaus Mills

These days you have you have to be a person of accomplishment to get your obituary featured in the New York Times or any major paper. Otherwise you are relegated to that long list of unimportant dead who get...

HIGHER ED BRAGGING RIGHTS
By Nicolaus Mills

If anyone doubts the impact that the ratings game is having on higher education, all he needs to do is look at the way colleges are seeking to increase their applicant pool. As Eric Hoover points out in a recent New...

IN PRAISE OF FAIRWAY
By Nicolaus Mills

If you are an out-of-towner visiting New York, the place to shop is Zabar's. It has an authenticity Bloomingdale's lacks, and the food you bring back from Zabar's, especially from the deli counter, is sure to be different--or just plain better---than...

The 1978 film Animal House, which featured the late John Belushi as the head prankster of Delta Tau Chi, a college fraternity whose members want as little to do with books as possible, remains one of the best slapstick comedies of all time. But these days the new college animal...

NEW YORK HEAD CASE
By Nicolaus Mills

If Governor David Paterson has his way, New York State's ban on mixed martial arts will be repealed some time this spring. The sport, which combines boxing, wrestling, and jujitsu and allows a competitor to strike his opponent even when the...

At Sarah Lawrence, the college where I teach, our endowment has been hard hit by the recession, and so have the incomes of our students' parents. We have, as a result, done the opposite of what we would do if we were a business bent on making a profit....

On Thursday night I went to a discussion of "Justice After Guantanamo" at BookCourt in Brooklyn, an independent book store six blocks up from Borough Hall on Court Street. The discussion featured a panel made up of David Bromwich, a Yale professor who has written extensively on human rights, Joseph...

The massive turnout for Michael Jackson at Tuesday's memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles reflects his success as a crossover artist who appealed to both whites and blacks. The downside is the tributes to Jackson since his death on June 25 have come with a high political...

In 1980 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its new American Wing to rave reviews. Any why not? The 1980 wing featured the spectacular glass-enclosed, glass-roofed Charles Engelhard Court and had 130,000 square feet of exhibition space -- more room than many museums have for their entire collections.

Since 1980,...

Sixty years ago, J. D. Salinger tried teaching. In 1949, long before he became famous, he gave a college writing class.

The experience was a painful one for Salinger and he chose never to repeat it. As he told New Yorker editor William Maxwell, who made...

Dog Days at the WhiteHouse
By Nicolaus Mills

At last Malia and Sasha Obama have the dog they were promised by their parents. Bo, a six-month-old Portuguese water dog, a gift from Senator Edward Kenny and his wife Victoria, has become part of the extended White House family....

MARSHALL PLAN LESSONS FOR IRAQ
By Nicolaus Mills

A soon-to-be-released government study of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq, which President Bush once called "the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan," has labeled
the program a $100 billion failure. The report is one that...

THE COLLEGE BOARD CRISIS
By Nicolaus Mills

While the crisis of confidence in the nation's banking system has been capturing headlines this fall, a second crisis in confidence---this one on the reliability of the standardized tests (SAT and ACT) used by most colleges and universities in their...