Should Illegal Immigrants Be Admitted to College?

At InsideHigherEd.com, Elizabeth Redden writes about the North Carolina Community College System’s effort to develop a stable admissions policy vis-a-vis undocumented immigrants. Last week, the NC Attorney General issued a statement saying that the state’s community college system should return to its former policy of not admitting undocumented immigrants to college-level courses. The AG was primarily concerned about federal law. From an earlier Redden article:

The North Carolina Community College System set off a firestorm in November when it issued a directive indicating that all 58 colleges must begin admitting undocumented students under the open admissions policy. But the state attorney general’s office has now called for reversing course. The office sent out an advisory letter Tuesday suggesting a return to an earlier system policy, propagated in 2001, which limited enrollment of illegal immigrants on the basis that federal law restricts their eligibility for most state and local public benefits. “Postsecondary education is one of those benefits that undocumented or illegal aliens are not eligible to receive,” the 2001 policy reads.

Faculty Lean Left; Students Don’t Care

Scott Jaschik at InsideHigerEd.com writes about a soon to be published study of professors’ and students’ political views.

One of the key arguments made by David Horowitz and his supporters in recent years is that a left-wing orientation among faculty members results in a lack of curricular balance, which in turn leads to students being indoctrinated rather than educated. The argument is probably made most directly in a film much plugged by Horowitz: “Indoctrinate U.“

A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and says that it’s true that the professoriate leans left. But the study - notably by one Republican professor and one Democratic professor - finds no evidence of indoctrination. Despite students being educated by liberal professors, their politics change only marginally in their undergraduate years, and that deflates the idea that cadres of tenured radicals are somehow corrupting America’s youth - or scaring them into adopting new political views.