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.

Gov. Easley releases budget recommendations

Feb 22, 2007 ·

RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley on Thursday released his $20 billion budget recommendation to the General Assembly, which calls for a new $150 million scholarship grant as well as a special bond election for university projects.

The budget also increases spending on on-line education programs offered through the University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Community College System.

Easley presented his budget at a press conference in Raleigh. Officials from his administration will meet with legislators Tuesday morning to discuss further details of his budget proposal.

Where the Money Is?

Feb 20, 2007 ·

The Raleigh News and Observer has been quarrelling with a group based in Chapel Hill called the Citizens for Higher Education (CHE). CHE is the second-largest political action committee (PAC) in the state, measured by the amounts of money given to legislators. Its goal is to ”build political support for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state’s other research universities.” In other words, it lobbies the legislature to obtain special benefits for the state’s leading public campuses.

Walter Williams to speak in Chapel Hill

Feb 16, 2007 ·

Syndicated columnist and George Mason University Professor of Economics Walter Williams will deliver a speech on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on February 26.

Williams’ talk is entitled “The Legitimate Role of Government in Society.” He will deliver the speech at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Law, at 100 Ridge Road in Chapel Hill inRoom 5042, on Monday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. The UNC-Chapel Hill College Republicans and the UNC-Chapel Hill Federalist Society are jointly sponsoring the event.

Williams is also a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

V-Day: Stripping Away Modesty and Dignity

Feb 12, 2007 ·

Ask a random stranger what “V-Day” is. You might get some interesting answers. Some will probably confuse it with VE-Day or VJ-Day, the days marking the end of World War II in Europe and Japan. Perhaps some will think it’s simply an abbreviation of Valentine’s Day. However, no incorrect guesses could possibly be as interesting, or as shocking, as the truth. V-Day stands for “Vagina Day” and takes place the same day as the more traditional Valentine’s Day.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of 17 universities in North Carolina hosting “The Vagina Monologues” on or around Valentine’s Day this year. Nationally, “Vagina Warriors” at over 1000 universities will participate in the unusual festivities.

Big Education Conference Misses the Boat

Feb 8, 2007 ·

Every year since 1986, the Institute for Emerging Issues has held a highly publicized conference devoted to some current policy issue. For 2007, the theme was “Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina.” Sadly, there was very little said about actually transforming higher education in the state over the two days of the event – that is, how it might be made a better and more valuable experience for students. Instead, the speakers were mostly fixated on the supposed need for North Carolina (and the United States as a whole) to put more students into and through college.

In other words, it was about quantity rather than quality. What needs to change, according to most of the speakers, is the number of young Americans entering and graduating from college, not the educational worth of the courses they take. This made for a rather monochromatic conference, rather like attending a concert where every piece was just a variation on the same theme.

The main theme was that America’s higher education system is “underperforming.” Whereas in the past the United States had the highest percentage of its workforce holding college degrees of any nation, today a number of countries now surpass the U.S. and more are catching up. Several speakers, including Governor Mike Easley, asserted that this situation poses a threat to our standard of living. Businessman Thomas Tierney stated that there is a “direct relationship between completion of higher education and economic growth,” and since the U.S. is losing its “lead” over other nations, our standard of living is in jeopardy.

Bowles leads accountability charge in first year

Feb 7, 2007 ·

CHAPEL HILL – When Erskine Bowles took over as president of the University of North Carolina system in 2006, his top priorities were to make the system more accountable to taxpayers and to make the system more efficient. His interest in those goals was among the reasons that Bowles, a former business executive and Clinton administration chief of staff, was the top choice as a replacement for then-president Molly Broad.

In his first year, Bowles lived up to his promises in these areas. Throughout the year, Bowles and the Board of Governors initiated policies that focused on ways to “manage this organization in the most efficient, effective manner we possibly can,” as he told the Board of Governors in his first address. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure we operate this place in a manner that you can be proud of, that any organization could be proud of,” Bowles said in January 2006.

Is Law School a Waste of Time?

Feb 1, 2007 ·

Strange as it may seem, it is quite possible for someone who has never gone to law school to be a good attorney.

An article that appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal makes that exact point. In “Meet the Clients,” (available here) New York attorney Cameron Stracher writes, “One of the biggest problems with the current state of legal education is its emphasis on books rather than people. By reading about the law rather than engaging in it, students end up with the misperception that lawyers spend most of their time debating the niceties of the Rule Against Perpetuities rather than sorting out the messy, somewhat anarchic version of the truth that judges and courts care about.”

Is Leftist Bias on College Campuses a Myth?

Jan 25, 2007 ·

Conventional wisdom has long claimed that campuses are hotbeds of leftist thought with professors far more likely to be Marxists than Republicans. Recent research has taken steps to substantiate these claims. Eight separate studies of faculty politics and campus climate have demonstrated that professors with a leftist philosophy vastly outnumber those with a conservative or libertarian philosophy at four-year universities across the nation. The various studies address two major themes: that faculty members are liberal and that their liberal inclinations can affect classroom performance.

Now, a new study conducted by John B. Lee for the American Federation of Teachers concludes that those studies documenting liberal bias on campus might be incorrect, or at least inconclusive. “The ‘Faculty Bias’ Studies: Science or Propaganda,” takes eight of the recent studies on faculty politics and judges them by five general tests of social science research. According to Lee, “basic methodological flaws keep a critical reader from accepting the conclusions suggested by the authors.”

Unfortunately, Lee misses the point. Instead of refuting the results, Lee devotes his time to dissecting the methods employed by the researchers who have found evidence of leftist domination. Quibbling over details shouldn’t detract from the seriousness of the problem. Whether the number of professors who use their classrooms to peddle their own socio-political views is in the millions or in single digits, it shouldn’t be tolerated at all.

Legislative agenda centered on PACE study

Jan 24, 2007 ·

RALEIGH – Legislators return to Raleigh today for the start of the 2007 regular session, with Democrats holding stronger majorities in both the state House (68 Democrats to 52 Republicans) and Senate (31 Democrats to 19 Republicans). Within a week, legislators will begin to wade through wish-list items from the University of North Carolina system. The list includes policy changes and a large spending request to give more money for faculty salaries.

The first General Assembly session of the new year will be held at noon. Today’s sessions are primarily ceremonial, with swearing-in ceremonies and the official transfer of the Speaker of the House chair to Orange County Democrat Rep. Joe Hackney. Democrats elected Hackney to replace the embattled Rep. Jim Black. Senate Democrats elected Sen. Marc Basnight to serve an unprecedented eighth term as Senate President Pro Tem.

Duke’s Curtis Crisis

Jan 18, 2007 ·

Last spring, 88 Duke faculty members signed a public statement stating unequivocally that something “happened” to the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case. They promised to “turn up the volume” regarding the “social disaster” the lacrosse players had unleashed. And the professors said “thank you” to widely publicized protesters who had put up “wanted” posters with the lacrosse players’ photos while carrying signs reading “Time to confess” and “Castrate” outside the lacrosse players’ house.

The “Group of 88” included Kim Curtis, who before late March had compiled a lengthy if unspectacular tenure as a longtime visiting political science professor. Then came the lacrosse incident. For faculty members predisposed to an extreme version of the race/class/gender trinity, the case was too tempting not to exploit. Before signing onto the Group of 88’s statement, Curtis attended rallies denouncing the players (background, in this photo). On March 29, she emailed fellow Durham activists expressing outrage that defense attorneys had (correctly) stated that no DNA match would occur to any lacrosse player. “The self assurance,” wrote Curtis,

in the statement issued yesterday by the team that they will be exonerated by the results of the DNA testing makes me wonder if we’ve gotten the full story about who was at the house that night. Were there others present who in fact carried out the rape and who are being protected by everyone else who was there? How do we know who was there?