Why You’re Not Getting the College Education You Paid For

Sterling Beard / June 13, 2011

Anywhere else it would have been grounds for dismissal. But when J. Michael Bailey, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, allowed demonstrations with sex toys as a part of a course, he was immune to firing, let alone outside pressure, because he had tenure.

­That was just one of the examples author and former Wall Street Journal editor Naomi Schaefer Riley gave while discussing the problems of university tenure in her talk “The Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For,” held Wednesday at The Heritage Foundation.

“The most pernicious aspects of university tenure,” she said, “do not make headlines at all.” Though the system may protect those whom The New Criterion’s Roger Kimball infamously deemed “tenured radicals,” its other flaws are worse. (more…)