Outside the Beltway

Alex Pareene’s annual hack list omits an obvious candidate: Alex Pareene.

The best single means of becoming such an economic winner is to gain admission to a top university

The Supreme Court seems likely to severely limit the use of race-based preferences at public universities

A wonderfully descriptive story in the New York Times Style section that’s almost surely mere anecdote being touted as trend.

Andrew Hacker argues that, while quantitative skills are “critical for informed citizenship and personal finance,” making kids master algebra to graduate high school has disastrous consequences.

David Brooks is wistful for the noblesse oblige of the elites of yore.

The Wall Street Journal publishes a screed aimed at those about to graduate college.

Our psychological and cultural biases make evaluating information and arguments rationally next to impossible.

Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign stumbled badly this week.

When Dan Drezner tweeted “I’m not going to read anything dumber than this today,” my inclination was to scoff. He actually undersold it.

Jim Yong Kim is an impressive man. But he’s got no background in banking, finance, or economics.

It’s the 5% versus the 1% moreso than the 99% against the 1%.

Are colleges teaching the right lessons about the 9/11 attacks?

A new look at Clarence Thomas’s 20 years on the Supreme Court, from a critic, is surprisingly positive.

Trump continues his antics: pulling out 2008 campaign memes and doing his best to paint Obama as a mysterious “other.”

While elite schools confer many advantages on their graduates, they also wall them off from normal people and create an entitled, out-of-touch elite.

79% do not think Ivy League students make better workers. 18% are undecided.

We’re producing more PhDs and JDs than there are full time openings for professors and lawyers.

The repeal of DADT may open the doors for ROTC to return to many elite institutions, if cost doesn’t get in the way.

Do graduates of elite colleges earn more because of where they went to school? Or because of the traits that got them selected?

Columbia political science professor David Epstein has been charged with a 3-year incestuous relationship with his adult daughter.

A third of the Forbes 50 were born billionaires. Does that mean the game is fixed?

America’s elite universities have proportionately fewer slots than their English and French counterparts. Does it matter?

David Brooks blames our economic woes on a change from a culture that valued productive work to one of gentility. And Bill Cosby.

Washington Monthly ranks colleges “based on what they are doing for the country — on whether they’re improving social mobility, producing research, and promoting public service” rather than “wealth, exclusivity, and prestige.” Too bad they don’t hire that way.

Harvard has overtaken Princeton to retake the top spot in the US News college rankings.

An essay claiming that the TED talks are “the new Harvard” is gaining some traction from a lot of people who ought know better.

Rural whites are outperformed by Jews and Asians and passed over by blacks and Hispanics in the name of “diversity” by elite universities.

A Russian spy may be stripped of a degree he earned at the Kennedy school under a stolen identity.