Hardest College Course Ever? 6,000 pages

Maybe there are some tougher classes out there. But you have to admit, the reading load for this one is pretty intense:

Poet W. H. Auden was a professor at the University of Michigan during the1941-42 academic year, teaching “Fate and the Individual in European Literature.” His syllabus required over 6,000 pages of reading including Dante’s “The Divine Comedy,” Dostoevsky’s “The Brother’s Karamazov” and Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”

Which would be awesome, were it not required for a single college course.
The syllabus (first unearthed by the blog “more than 95 theses“) identifies the reading list as being for the “first semester…”

Nevertheless, 3,000 pages of Shakespeare and Sophocles in four months still sounds dense.

Sounds like a fantastic reading list!

Full story at The New York Daily News.

Source: College Fix

Pro-Life student group sues Oklahoma State University

An anti-abortion group is suing Oklahoma State University for refusing to allow them to distribute leaflets on campus, The Oklahoman reports.

Cowboys for Life, an OSU student organization, claims university officials singled the group out because it opposes abortion rights. …

The group had sought to hand out leaflets and carry signs in October at three locations on campus. The lawsuit alleges Kent Sampson, OSU’s director of campus life, refused to allow the group to display graphic images in heavily trafficked areas of campus.

… Brently Olsson, the group’s attorney, said the signs and leaflets featured pictures of an aborted fetus. The group uses the graphic imagery to show the result of abortion, Olsson said.

Olsson compared the group’s use of graphic images of abortion to similar practices employed by William Wilberforce, an 18th-century British abolitionist crusader who showed the public the ghastly conditions endured by slaves aboard slave ships.

The images used in Cowboys for Life’s leaflets and signs may be disturbing, Olsson said, but they make the group’s point effectively.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: College Fix

Fat Cats: Bloated College Administrations Hike Tuition Costs

By Jennifer Karbany

College tuitions were never cheap, but they used to be much more affordable, particularly at mainstream state-funded institutions. But as tuition costs nationwide have soared, student loan debt has ballooned, and the Great Recession’s end is nowhere in sight, a new critical eye on the country’s broken higher education system has revealed plenty of room for improvement.

A recent series of articles in The Wall Street Journal highlighted many problems university systems across America grapple with, among them – bloated administration costs that jack up tuition prices.

Scott Thurm’s Dec. 14 article “Who Can Still Afford State U?” notes that “administrative costs have soared nationwide, and many administrators have secured big pay increases.”

“Teaching loads have declined for tenured faculty at many schools, adding to costs,” Thurm continues. “Between 2001 and 2011, the Department of Education says, the number of managers at … universities grew 50 percent faster than the number of instructors. What’s more, schools have spent liberally on fancier dorms, dining halls and gyms to compete for students.

Meanwhile, times couldn’t be worse for adding new administration costs.

“Now, cash-strapped states across the country are cutting…

Read more.

Source: The College Fix

Public Schools Give Condoms to 14-Year-Olds

By Nathan Harden

Students as young as 14 in Philadelphia will soon have access to unlimited free condoms, courtesy of the city government. And while parents will be able to “opt-out” by sending a letter to their child’s school, administrators have made it clear that they will not monitor or restrict access to the condoms, even for those students whose parents have signed “opt-out” letters.

In other words, if your child attends high school in Philadelphia, then the government has taken control of your 14-year-old’s access to birth control, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that 22 city high schools will receive large, clear plastic condoms dispensers over the holiday break. The dispensers will be mounted to the wall just inside doorway to the administrative offices of the schools.

The 22 schools targeted for the program reported the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases among students. Free condoms are already available…

Read more.

Source: The College Fix

Across America, High-Profile Professionals Want Schools Armed

By Jennifer Kabbany

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre’s carnage, a variety of high-profile professionals across America – including a sheriff, attorney general, city councilman, county prosecutor and state lawmaker – are calling for teachers or other school employees to be armed in the classroom.

Recently at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., 26 people were shot and killed, including 20 young children, by a gun-wielding, mentally instable 20-year-old man. It was the latest in a long list of fatal school shootings that have occurred over the last 15 years.

Now, while some call for stricter gun-control, others say it’s time for teachers to pack heat.

Breitbart.com reports that a Tennessee proposal “would specifically allow the state to pay for training and arming some teachers, who would then secretly possess a firearm in the classroom. The plan was introduced by a Republican in the Republican-controlled state legislature and has received some support from the Tennessee governor, Bill Haslam (R).”

Meanwhile, the…

Read more.

Source: The College Fix

Data Show An Armed Citizenry is a Safer Citizenry

By Joseph Diedrich

“Would you feel safe putting a sign in front of your home saying, ‘This home is a gun-free zone?’ Law-abiding citizens might be pleased by such a sign, but to criminals it would be an invitation.”

That is an anecdote offered by noted gun researcher John Lott, who along with Professor William Landes did a study in 1999 which found that “from 1977 to 1999, states that adopted right-to-carry laws experienced a 60 percent drop in the rates at which (gun) attacks occur and a 78 percent drop in the rates at which people are killed from such attacks.”

More recently, Lott pointed out that “with just one single exception, the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

As far as public policy is concerned, Lott and Landes recommend that to reduce the occurrence and severity of mass shootings, the general public must have increased availability and easier access to firearms. Their study also concludes that concealed handgun laws reduce the number of multiple victim public shootings.

Read more.

Source: The College Fix