Academic Freedom - Academic Freedom For Colleges and Universities

Academic Freedom For Colleges and Universities

A prominent feature of the English university concept is the freedom to appoint faculty, set standards and admit students. This ideal may be better described as institutional autonomy and is distinct from whatever freedom is granted to students and faculty by the institution.

The Supreme Court of the United States said that academic freedom means a university can "determine for itself on academic grounds:

  1. who may teach,
  2. what may be taught,
  3. how it should be taught, and
  4. who may be admitted to study."

In a 2008 case, a Federal court in Virginia ruled that professors have no academic freedom; all academic freedom resides with the university or college. In that case, Stronach v. Virginia State University, a district court judge held "that no constitutional right to academic freedom exists that would prohibit senior (university) officials from changing a grade given by (a professor) to one of his students." The court relied on mandatory precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Sweezy v. New Hampshire and a case from the fourth circuit court of appeals. The Stronach court also relied on persuasive cases from several circuits of the courts of appeals, including the first, third, and seventh circuits. That court distinguished the situation when a university attempts to coerce a professor into changing a grade, which is clearly in violation of the First Amendment, from when university officials may, in their discretionary authority, change the grade upon appeal by a student. The Stronach case has gotten significant attention in the academic community as an important precedent.

Read more about this topic:  Academic Freedom

Famous quotes containing the words academic, freedom, colleges and/or universities:

    The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    Ah! Freedom is a noble thing!
    Freedom makes man to have liking:
    Freedom all solace to man gives:
    He lives at ease that freely lives!
    John Barbour (1316?–1395)

    So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity—or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity—by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
    —A.N. (Andrew Norman)