Online education, especially as it has been implemented in the past year, isn’t for everyone. But it has had one unexpected benefit: transparency. Across the country, parents have had a chance to see for themselves what their children are learning. At the K-12 level, it’s been eye-opening. But college students need less supervision. So, even … Continue reading “What Are Students Learning? Make Syllabi Public”
Students have had to make many sacrifices over the past year, be they financial, academic, or personal. The sudden changes and conflicting campus policies have taken a significant toll on their well-being and mental health. After a lifetime of in-class learning alongside their peers, colleges pushed them off-campus and into de facto isolation via Zoom. … Continue reading “The Pandemic May Be Ending, But Student Anxiety Isn’t”
For college campuses across North Carolina, the fall ushered in a less-than-ideal reality. The coronavirus, although under greater control than in the spring, was—and is—widely circulating. Within the first few weeks of the semester, hundreds of students tested positive at UNC campuses including UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and East Carolina University. Since then, … Continue reading “How Many Students Are Hospitalized with COVID-19? NC Colleges Don’t Know”
As schools have moved online due to the coronavirus, they have partnered with proctoring services to monitor online exams and prevent cheating. Those services go by names such as Respondus LockDown, ProctorU, Proctorio, and Examity, among others. What gets overlooked as the contracts are signed, however, is student privacy. Forbes compared such proctoring measures to … Continue reading “Did You Know? With Remote Classes, Universities Breach Student Privacy “
The Florida legislature voted this spring to allow three universities to raise tuition well above the average for Florida’s state universities – up to 40 percent over four years for the University of Florida and Florida State, up to 30 per cent in the case of the University of South Florida. Although Governor Charles Crist had threatened a veto, he changed his mind, and tuition is going up in the fall of 2008.
When it comes to setting tuition, who is right – the legislators, following the lead of university administrators, who want significant increases in tuition — or the governor, who signed the bill reluctantly and vetoed a system-wide 5 per cent increase in tuition this fall? (Editor’s note: The legislature eventually overrode the governor’s veto.)