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.

Textbook prices add costs to students

Sep 14, 2006 ·

UNC-Chapel Hill freshman Austin Fowler spent about $500 this semester on textbooks. His classmate Andrew Wein spent about $400.

“On top of that, Student Stores didn’t have a CD I needed,” Wein said. “They only had used copies, which don’t work because they are made so that they can only be activated once.”

Students like Fowler and Wein are experiencing a growing national problem. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office found that “college textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation for the last two decades.”

Higher Education has been Oversold

Sep 7, 2006 ·

It was just this time of year – the beginning of a new academic year – in 1980, when it first occurred to me that higher education in America had been oversold.

I was new to the college teaching ranks and didn’t know just what to expect from students. A few days earlier, I had handed out copies of a chapter from a book that I wanted the students to read and be prepared to discuss. It was an 8-page assignment.

Once the class began and I asked some questions about the assignment, it became evident that few (if any) of the students had done the reading — or if they had read it, they hadn’t bothered to make sure they understood it. After several tries at jump starting a discussion, one student put up his hand and I eagerly called on him.

He said, “Couldn’t you, you know, just tell us the main point?”

Moeser sets $1 billion challenge for UNC-CH

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CHAPEL HILL – Chancellor James Moeser Wednesday set a goal of raising $1 billion in external research grants by 2015, a substantial goal that would require a significant boost in fundraising annually.

The challenge was among the policy recommendations Moeser made in his annual “State of the University” address, delivered to a gathering of faculty, staff, and students in the Great Hall of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union. It was the sixth address for Moeser since arriving at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2000. He kept with the tradition of previous speeches he used the time to announce new policy initiatives. Previous speeches have launched global education projects as well as the Carolina Covenant initiative.

New Paper Claims Higher Education is Oversold

Sep 5, 2006 ·

RALEIGH – A new paper published by the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy argues that higher education has been oversold to the public. Many students who are not really interested in academic pursuits are spending a lot of time and money to get a credential that is much less valuable than they suppose.

The paper, “The Overselling of Higher Education,” was written by Executive Director George Leef and focuses on many of the common themes that dominates higher education policy today. Among the topics addressed in the paper is the common belief that we have entered a “knowledge economy” where it’s important for nearly everyone to go to college. Leef contends that that idea is mistaken, but because it is so widely believed, colleges have been flooded with students who would have been better off if they had chosen to do something else.

Two Studies Agree – UNC Governance Should be Changed

Aug 31, 2006 ·

In one of his earliest political speeches in 1964, Ronald Reagan said, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

Reagan’s point was that governmental structures hardly ever are abolished. And it’s almost as rare for them to be reduced in size. That is pertinent when considering the University of North Carolina Board of Governors (BOG). At 32 members, it is the largest state university governing board in the nation.

Last year, the Pope Center, in conjunction with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released a study written by Phyllis Palmiero, an expert in the administration of higher education. That paper, “Governance in the Public Interest,” concluded among other things that the UNC BOG is too large and ought to be selected by the governor rather than through an arcane legislative process.

NCSU Manager Fired after Audit

Aug 30, 2006 ·

RALEIGH — A project manager at North Carolina State University was fired after he received compensation from contracts that he was responsible for administering, according to a report released Monday by the Office of the State Auditor.

The project manager, who was unnamed in the auditor’s report, was also involved in submitting a bid by a company he managed on the side, interacting with other companies that submitted bids to NCSU, selling equipment to those companies from his own organization, all of which are violations of state law, according to the audit. According to the state General Statutes, no employee may receive a direct benefit from a contract in which the employee is responsible for the administration of the contract.

The case has been sent to the 10th Prosecutorial District for review and possible criminal charges. In his response to the audit’s findings, Chancellor James Oblinger said the project manager was fired in May.

Workforce Training Doubles in Year

Aug 28, 2006 ·

CHAPEL HILL — Workforce training performed at community colleges grew at a rate of almost 100 percent in the past year, according to officials from the community college system.

From July 2005 to June 2006, community colleges trained 23,799 workers through its New and Expanding Industry Training program, Dr. Larry Keen, vice president for economic and workforce development, told members of the State Board of Community Colleges at a recent meeting. That is up from 12,398 during a similar period in 2005 and 10,117 in 2004.

The Intellectual Monoculture of Higher Education

Aug 17, 2006 ·

“It just won’t do to have an all-white university,” Harvard’s president Derek Bok said several years ago, attempting to justify the policy of favoring non-white applicants. The rallying cry for “diversity” proponents has long been that our institutions should “look like America” – that is, to mirror the composition of society with regard to racial, ethnic, and other classifications of individuals. Taking them at their word, what about diversity of philosophy? What about intellectual diversity?

In education, you would think that diversity of ideas would be at least as, if not more important than skin color or sexual preferences. But when it has been pointed out that college faculties tend to be very homogeneous when it comes to their beliefs on socio-economic questions, the response from the higher education establishment has mostly been that it’s a threat to academic freedom even to discuss the matter. No need for “all colors of the rainbow” when it comes to points of view on the proper relationship between state and society. Many academic departments are intellectual monocultures, with hiring preferences by those in authority filtering out any new professors whose opinions are much different from the norm. They think that is perfectly fine.

Bowles makes cuts to streamline UNC administration

Aug 10, 2006 ·

CHAPEL HILL – When Erskine Bowles, the business executive who had served as President Clinton’s chief of staff, took over the UNC system in January, he proposed a visionary agenda that would dictate his activities. Among the top priorities was running the organization more effectively and through the prism of his business experiences.

In the past week, we’ve seen some of the results of that agenda. Bowles announced last week that he plans to cut 10 percent, or $1.3 million, from the UNC General Administration budget. The move would eliminate 15.5 positions, half of which are currently filled, including four vice presidents and six associate vice presidents. However, when taking into account three new positions created by Bowles earlier this year, the net reduction of the cut is 12.5 positions.

Higher education is very high in labor cost and approximately 80 percent of the UNC General Administration budget in the past has gone towards personnel.

A New Academic Field – “Whiteness Studies”

Aug 3, 2006 ·

For several decades now, American colleges and universities have been expanding their academic offerings to include courses in different species of identity politics: Women’s Studies, Black (now African-American) Studies, Latino Studies, Queer Studies and more. Whereas traditional academic fields were rooted in some distinct body of knowledge such as chemistry, mathematics, or economics, these new fields are not about transmitting knowledge so much as they’re about transmitting the edgy and often intellectually shaky attitudes of the professors. Women’s Studies, for example, is mostly about trying to inculcate a sense of grievance in young, impressionable women and that is accomplished with the use of some disreputable arguments about the supposedly discriminatory nature of our economic system.