Will the UNC System Rise Above Higher Education’s Status Quo?

UNC System leaders are overhauling their 2013 strategic planning initiative. Whether that will result in sound reform ideas, however, is up in the air. North Carolina’s university system is a powerful force in the state—armed with its own lobbying team, almost 50,000 employees, and a $9.5 billion annual budget. It is a machine with a tendency to aggrandize. Curbing its appetite for expansion and self-serving policies won’t be easy.


Cutting Costs Is Possible. These Schools Did It.

As the stock market gyrates and talk of a new recession begins, many universities have reason to worry. The cost of college education hasn’t stopped rising, students are fearful of being burdened by debt, and political pressure is beginning to weigh in. Congress is entertaining a bill that would require 25 percent of a school’s endowment spending to go toward student financial aid, and several presidential candidates have unveiled plans to solve the student debt crisis. At the state level, the return of state support to its pre-recession levels may be in jeopardy. But a few universities have chosen to take a different route. In addition to looking for more state revenues, they’ve found ways to reduce their expenditures and to ease the financial burden on students.


The Attempted Intimidation of Margaret Spellings

Even before she assumes control of the University of North Carolina system, former Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has become a lightening rod for attacks by faculty, students, and activists on the left. It is an attempt to intimidate her into acquiescence to the leftist faculty’s agenda.


Welcome to North Carolina, Secretary Spellings

The search for the next University of North Carolina system president has finally concluded. Margaret Spellings, secretary of the U.S. Education Department during George W. Bush’s second presidential term, was unanimously elected by the system’s Board of Governors on October 23. Spellings, who will take the helm in March 2016, is a moderate Republican, but one who shows some promise of developing into a reform-minded university leader—a very welcome possibility. She opposes what she calls universities’ “send us the money and leave us alone” approach, and some of her views on higher education challenge those of the academic establishment.


UNC-Chapel Hill nudges students into a conversation about race

UNC-Chapel Hill has launched Carolina Conversations, an initiative designed to provide forums for students to discuss sensitive topics. UNC-CH will do this in three ways: sponsor regular large-scale town-hall-style forums called My Carolina Voice, smaller gatherings called Carolina Pulse, and My Chance, a process whereby students can apply for school funding for “grassroots interactions.”


A UNC program designed to help academically weak students has not delivered

The state is spending millions of dollars on a program that each year drives roughly 300 low-performing students into a four-year university, where they tend to earn poor grades, drop out, or otherwise fail to graduate within a reasonable period of time. That’s wasting taxpayer money and the time, effort, and resources of the students, faculty, and staff involved with the program.


The police, not universities, should be handling rape accusations

Campuses are not adept at handling sexual assault issues because they lack experience, resources, and an unbiased agenda. Due process is immediately thrown out the window when we rely on the campus to punish the accused; injustice is built into the system. The customary standard, “innocent until proven guilty,” is reversed when we call on colleges to adjudicate rape.