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2024 Year in Review: The College Fix’s most popular articles

Reporting by The College Fix over the last 12 months has shown that higher education continues to be a hotbed of controversy.

In addition to covering examples of rampant antisemitism on colleges and universities, a string of campus hate-crime hoaxes, and a never-ending list of cancel culture examples, we also reported on issues of waste, fraud and abuse, administrative bloat, election integrity issues, various culture wars and DEI and anti-racism controversies.

It’s never a dull moment at The College Fix. Here’s a monthly look at some of the most popular articles in 2024:

January
UMich now has more than 500 jobs dedicated to DEI, payroll costs exceed $30 million

It’s difficult to calculate the massive amount of money universities spend on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts each year, but a major The College Fix investigation into the topic that looked at administrative bloat nationwide was able to put something of a price tag on it at dozens of universities — including the University of Michigan, which employs at least 241 paid employees focused on DEI and payroll costs exceeding $30 million annually.

February
UCLA prof suspended after refusing lenient grading for black students demands $19 million-plus in damages

Remember the UCLA professor suspended for refusing to grade black students leniently in the wake of George Floyd? His lawsuit was finally scheduled to go to trial, and he demanded $19 million-plus in damages, arguing UCLA destroyed his premier expert witness practice for following the law (refusing to discriminate on the basis of race). This could be bigger than the Gibson Bakery verdict. The trial has been postponed until 2025 due to a busy court calendar in Los Angeles. We will continue to follow the story closely.

March
Marriage promotes ‘white supremacy’: George Mason professor

“I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy.” That according to George Mason University Professor Bethany Letiecq in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The scholar argued that the government has coerced “its citizens to enter into an institution built upon White heteropatriarchal supremacy” and marriage as an institution has allowed white heterosexual couples “to gain access to benefits, rights, and protections.”

April
Mayo Clinic argues it has legal right to punish professors for voicing unpopular opinions

Often stories that highlight the courage of scholars who refuse to kowtow to the powers that be resonate with the masses. One such story is that of Dr. Michael Joyner, who sued the Mayo Clinic for violating his academic freedom and freedom of speech. Its administrators had suspended him and told him to stop talking to the press after he shared contrarian views on controversial topics such as COVID-19 treatments and testosterone’s effects on athletic performance. Unfortunately, in July, a judge sided with the clinic.

May
Truman Scholarships overwhelmingly awarded to progressive students for tenth year in row

In 2015, The College Fix began an ambitious annual project to determine the political and ideological bent of the winners of prestigious, $30,000 federal grants using a combination of the winners’ official biographies, self-reported work histories on LinkedIn, and social media profiles and posts. Nearly a decade spent tracking the political makeup of Truman Scholarship award winners yields similar results year after year – liberal activism is awarded while conservatives are blackballed. This year’s results continued to validate those findings. The problem is so bad that a congressional probe was launched into the matter.

June
Gen Z goes to work instead of college – ‘you can make really good money’

One trend in 2024 was higher education alternatives, which is why this article from June was so popular among the masses. It focused on how Iowa young people found better opportunities in manufacturing and decided to forego college. More high school grads and twenty-somethings are embracing the idea of learning a skill and avoiding a mountain of debt.

July
MIT grew staff size by 1,200 while enrollment barely budged

Colleges and universities continue to hire administrators and staff despite the looming higher education bubble, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is no exception. As part of its investigation into administrative bloat, The College Fix determined that over the last decade MIT grew its staff size by 1,200 — including six “diversity, equity, and inclusion” assistant deans — while enrollment barely budged.

August
TRENDING: Evolutionary biologists reject ‘white, male’ framework, embrace ‘queer’ DEI research

The troubling embrace of DEI by STEM scientists is in full swing in most fields. The College Fix highlighted one such growing trend within evolutionary biology, where many scholars now argue more needs to be done to infuse “justice” and “belonging” into the field and presenting research to that end. Some professors are calling for the prioritization of DEI events at conferences, “mandatory LGBTQIA+ DEI education trainings,” and dismantling “heteronormative evolutionary concepts in research/teaching,” such as the conflation of sex and gender and material that invalidates queer identities.

September
Yale divinity students forced to read from witch’s ‘spell’ at orientation

When Yale was founded in 1701, it was dedicated to training for the Christian ministry. Times have changed. As The College Fix exclusively reported, this year Yale’s Divinity School coerced students to read from a “spell” written by a “witch” as part of its Before the Fall Orientation. Students were led to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from a “Radical Gratitude Spell.”

October
Teacher fired for refusing to use student’s preferred pronouns gets $575K settlement

A win for the good guys: a Virginia educator who was fired six years ago for refusing to refer to a biologically female student as “he/him” became the recipient of an almost $600,000 settlement. What’s more, the school board changed its policies to “respect fundamental free speech and parental rights.”

November
‘Devastated’: Classes at Harvard, Penn, Columbia, Swarthmore and others canceled over Trump win

Donald Trump surprised the world with his overwhelming decisive victory in this year’s presidential election, taking back the White House with a major red wave of support that galvanized voters from a wide swath of demographics, including black and Latino voters. No one was more shocked than the liberal elites tucked away in their ivory towers, many of whom responded by canceling classes to grieve.

December
Cornell pole dancing club hosts trainings for ‘trans’ and ‘plus-size’ students

Ah, the Ivy League. What will they come up with next? Here’s one for you. A pole dancing club at Cornell University funded partially by student fees is working to break barriers and address what its leaders describe as misconceptions and stereotypes about the activity by hosting training workshops for overweight students and men who identify as women.

MORE: 103 things higher ed declared racist in 2024

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Fix Editor
Jennifer Kabbany is editor-in-chief of The College Fix.