Academics

Future leaders in business, government, and civil society need more than just job skills. The following articles defend the value of liberal education, with a focus on academic quality and rigor, fundamental knowledge, and the ideas that have shaped Western Civilization. They also scrutinize academic programs that have departed from these ideals in the name of progressive ideology.

College Summer Reading Can Be Useful – Or Not

Jul 20, 2007 · and

Many colleges and universities these days have a “summer reading” program for incoming students, which requires them to read a book and be prepared to discuss it during the first few days of class. The programs are designed to create a common ground among new students, challenge them to think critically about new ideas and introduce them to university work and intellectual life at a university.

This is a splendid idea. Done well, such reading programs can help to get college students off to a good start by concentrating their minds on the nature of and reasons for academic study.

Unfortunately, if it is done poorly this becomes at least a missed opportunity. If a school chooses a book that has no timeless message, it will fail to make any lasting impression on the students. And if a school selects a book that is faddish or polemical, it is worse than a missed opportunity. It conveys to the students the idea that college is more about what to think than about how to think. Sadly, at some institutions that happens to be the case in many of the courses taught, but still it’s best to start freshmen off with a good impression.

An Inconvenient Truth

Jul 18, 2007 ·

The issue of climate change has entered its rock concert/college curriculum phase, which is a sure indicator that the issue has peaked and will now begin a long slow fade in the public mind.

The recent staging of simultaneous “Live Earth” rock concerts along with news that Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth (a lavishly photographic companion book to the movie) has become assigned reading at North Carolina’s Elon University follows a familiar pattern seen repeatedly over the past 40 years. Gore’s lavish, simultaneous “Live Earth” concerts on several continents follows the model of “Live Aid” and “Farm Aid” in the 1980s¬—“consciousness raising” events after which public interest quickly waned.

Elon University says it is assigning Gore’s book, rather than a serious scientific and policy work such as the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), because it conveys an “important rhetorical message.” Elon makes clear that it is interested in spawning activism above the university’s traditional mission of imparting understanding.

Lloyd Hackley is UNC’s problem solver

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Lloyd Hackley is on the job again.

After serving as interim chancellor for a year at N.C. A&T, Hackley was named last week to serve in the same position at Fayetteville State University. This after Chancellor T.J. Bryan resigned under pressure due to concerns about the school’s nursing program and financial condition.

Media reports following Bryan’s resignation indicate that UNC President Erskine Bowles asked for her resignation in a meeting in Chapel Hill.

New Era Looms for Community College System

Jul 12, 2007 ·

The North Carolina Community College System is choosing a successor to H. Martin Lancaster, its current president, who will step down in May 2008. In a series of meetings, the search committee has solicited public comment about the “qualifications and characteristics” needed by the next president.

The July 11 meeting in Raleigh, chaired by Norma B. Turnage, vice chair of the committee, was low-key, with only eight commentators. But enough issues surfaced to suggest that the next president will face some troublesome conflicts.

Do Sports Programs and Community Colleges Mix?

Jul 11, 2007 ·

Community colleges are and supposed to be an educational stepping stone for people who didn’t make much of their K-12 years or find that they need to learn a new skill if they are to find a new job. The idea that those schools would become more effective in their role by adding organized sports programs seems strange. Quite a few of them are doing so, however.

Are community colleges and sports programs a sensible mix?

Is it time for Title IX to end?

Jun 27, 2007 ·

My first introduction to writing professionally was as a sports writer for a couple of newspapers in West Virginia. The assignments were simple – go to the games, follow the action, report on what you saw, and occasionally offer commentary and features on the athletes and events.

That’s easy enough given my admiration for sports. I’ve always believed that sports were a great avenue in helping boys and girls to learn about character and to gain self-respect. I recall vividly a number of athletes who attributed part of their maturity to lessons learned on the playing field.

Even with my admiration for sports, I have a hard time justifying the continued support for Title IX, which celebrated its 35th anniversary over the weekend. The law, which was included in the Education Act of 1972, simply states that programs that receive federal support cannot discriminate on the basis of gender. While it did not specifically mention athletics, the language triggered a growth in the number of collegiate athletic opportunities for women.

The Student Loan Scandal – A Problem of Leadership

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Editor’s Note: Peter Wood is executive director of the National Association of Scholars. A longer version of this essay was originally published May 14, 2007 on Minding the Campus

In mid-January, a brief item appeared on an inside page of The New York Times, headlined “Student Lender Investigated.” The article noted that the New York Attorney General’s office was looking into “student loan marketing” by Sallie Mae, “the nation’s largest lender to students.” Attorney General Cuomo had requested information about “preferred lender lists,” i.e. the lenders that colleges and universities recommend to their students. The article also noted that “some loan companies have criticized” such lists, alleging that lenders got onto the list “in exchange for payments or other benefits.”

Being an Angry Faculty Radical Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

Jun 25, 2007 ·

To recap the news out of Durham this year: In April, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper declared Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans – the Duke University lacrosse players accused by “exotic dancer” Crystal Gail Mangum of rape and sexual assault – “innocent of these charges.”

In June, rogue district attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred and removed from office after being caught in dozens of instances of professional misconduct in his management of the case.

New A&T Chancellor Has Long Road Ahead

Jun 21, 2007 ·

When N.C. A&T Chancellor Stanley Battle was named to the position last November, he said he wanted to make the school among the best in the nation. Little did he know at the time that the goal would begin with a rebuilding process.

Battle takes over a school that is mired in controversy due to a March 2007 internal audit that found more than $2 million in mismanaged funds or funds that were acquired by the school illegally. That includes mismanagement by a vice chancellor of more than $500,000 of the Future Engineering Faculty Fellowship, a federal grant by the U.S. Office of Naval Research to increase the number of doctoral candidates in engineering at historically black colleges and universities. The school could be required to pay some of that money back, and criminal charges are possible.

Do’s and Don’ts on Helping Students to Succeed in College

Jun 20, 2007 ·

Except for the rather small number of selective colleges and universities, most schools face the problem of ill-prepared and poorly motivated students. At many lower-tier institutions, such students are the norm. The problem they create for the faculty and administration is difficult and serious: they want a college degree, but lack the skills to actually earn one.

What, if anything, can schools do to increase the likelihood that weak and disengaged students will find the path to academic success?

In a recent article in The Chronicle Review, Indiana University professor George D. Kuh (co-author of the recent book Piecing Together the Student Success Puzzle) offers some thoughts on that subject. They’re worth considering.