The year 2020 brought changes that colleges would have never made by choice. Enrollment declines, remote classes, and dramatic employee cuts (for faculty and some staff alike) were unthinkable a … Continue reading “Reforming Higher Ed in 2021”
UNC has announced its intent to reopen all 16 campuses this fall with in-person instruction. But the system will have to make significant changes before moving forward. Jenna A. Robinson … Continue reading “How UNC Can Save Money Post-COVID-19”
Editor’s Note: This is an abridged version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The American Scholar, a lecture he gave to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837. This is the third … Continue reading “Emerson’s Vision of the American Scholar”
As priorities shift in the minds of higher education leaders and students, it’s important to take stock of recent changes on the local and national levels. At the Martin Center, … Continue reading “Our Hopes for Higher Ed Reform in 2020”
Editor’s Note: This article by Randolph Bourne, a writer and public intellectual, was originally published as “The Idea of a University” in The Dial on November 22, 1917. This is the … Continue reading “The Idea of a University: When Trustees Turn a College into a Commodity”
Jenna A. Robinson, President Jacques Barzun’s magnum opus, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, has been a revelation—of my own inadequate history education. As the title says, … Continue reading “What We’re Reading: Western Culture, Groupthink, and Queer Criminology”
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from the 1910 introduction to The Harvard Classics by Charles W. Eliot, a long-serving president of Harvard and an advocate of a liberal arts … Continue reading “The 20th-Century Idea of a Cultivated Man”
The latest publication from The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, “University of North Carolina System 2019 Fact Sheet,” provides information on enrollment, tuition, graduation rates, student debt, and … Continue reading “University of North Carolina System 2019 Fact Sheet”
Jenna A. Robinson, President In March, Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay penned “A Principled Defense of the University” for Areo. Coming from two of the authors of the “Sokal … Continue reading “What We’re Reading: A Defense of the University, Governance Guidebooks, and a Higher Ed Satire”