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”
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released a report decrying the politicization of public higher education governance, entitled The New Order: How the Nation’s Partisan Divisions Consumed Public-College Boards and … Continue reading “America Wants Its Public Colleges Back and The Chronicle Isn’t Happy About It”
On July 23, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted to temporarily waive the SAT or ACT requirement for college applicants. The vote came after UNC administrators proposed … Continue reading “UNC Will Not Require the SAT Next Year”
On June 8, interim UNC system president William Roper and chairman of the Board of Governors Randy Ramsey announced the establishment of a race and equity task force. The announcement … Continue reading “UNC’s Attempt to Grapple with ‘History of Racism and Oppression’”
UNC Board of Governors meetings are hard to navigate for the uninitiated, such as a member of the public. The committee rooms are small, spread out, and poorly labeled. All the people who attend the meetings seem to know each other. Finding a place to sit in the boardroom often means arriving an hour before the meeting begins. And if you don’t get a seat, you’re out of luck. Although the main board meeting is video-streamed into the lobby, it’s hard to hear and it isn’t recorded.
It is heartwarming to see state officials do the jobs they were elected to do. Too often they have shied away from their obligations to ensure that the university system adheres to appropriate standards of scholarship.
What’s to be done about “low-productivity” degree programs?