American Council Of Trustees and Alumni

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Events

  • Thursday, July 16, 2009

    ALEC Meeting: ACTA to present at American Legislative Exchange conference in Atlanta.

2009 ATHENA Roundtable

Online registration is now open for our annual conference, Nov. 5-6 at Mount Vernon.

Register

ACTA in the News

Teach Them How to Think

ACTA has launched a national campaign to reinvigorate the free exchange of ideas on campus. The cornerstone of the campaign is a new report featuring exemplary efforts to promote intellectual diversity in and out of the classroom. Protecting the Free Exchange of Ideas highlights best practices from 40 institutions that are part of a growing movement to make sure students are exposed to a wide range of subject areas and viewpoints. It is featured in USA Today and is being sent to the individual board members of nearly 600 institutions responsible for the education of more than six million students. With employers consistently saying critical thinking is at the top of the list of skills they prize, ACTA’s campaign aims to help universities challenge students and sharpen their ability to think for themselves.

Stanley Fish & Robert P. George at ATHENA

Renowned professors Stanley Fish and Robert P. George will hold a colloquy entitled “Getting Back to First Principles” at this year ATHENA Roundtable, to be held Friday, November 6th at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. George, the first-ever recipient of ACTA’s Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education, and Fish, author of Save the World on Your Time, will debate the meaning of academic freedom and how best to foster intellectual pluralism on our campuses. The colloquy is one of several panels that will address the challenges before us and focus on what leaders across the country are doing to reclaim higher education. Other confirmed speakers include George Mason University historian Richard Norton Smith, GMU president Alan Merten, and University of the District of Columbia president Allen Sessoms. Following the Roundtable, we will gather for a gala dinner to honor the winner of the Fifth Annual Philip Merrill Award.

Latest From ACTA's Blog - ACTA's Must-Reads

Illinois trustees at the center of scandal

The Chicago Tribune has reported that trustees and administrators at the University of Illinois are at the center of a scandal regarding the admission of politically-connected students who were less qualified than the general pool of applicants...

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And you thought health care was the priciest thing going

One of today's most e-mailed Chronicle of Higher Education articles (bearing the provocative title "Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?") contains a rather jarring statistic, particularly given current debates here in Washington: According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care...

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