Athletics

Team sports help students build healthy habits and provide valuable lessons in collaboration and sportsmanship. Yet, at their worst, they can corrupt or degrade universities’ missions. The following articles suggest ways to preserve the benefits of university athletics while reducing the academic, financial, and social costs of big-time college sports.

From the home office in Chapel Hill, the top 15 pork barrel higher education projects

Jul 6, 2006 ·

At some point today, legislators will give final approval to the budget compromise that was hatched out before the Fourth of July weekend. It marks the end of the budget process that began in May and extended just days past the start of the 2007 fiscal year.

Like any governmental budget, this one has enough pork to make a pig farmer smile. This year’s higher education budget contains many generous helpings.

In honor of the passage of the state budget, the Pope Center unveils its list of the top 15 pork barrel projects. We determined projects for the list based on two questions. Is the project really needed? Should it be privately funded? While some of the projects in the list seem worthwhile, it would be better if they were funded through voluntary contributions.

So without further adoo and in true David Letterman style, from the home office on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, here is this year’s “Top 15 Higher Education Pork Barrel Projects.”

Cleveland introduces bill to overturn scholarship provision

May 26, 2006 ·

RALEIGH – A state legislator is calling for a controversial budget provision seen by many as a gift to athletic booster organizations to be overturned before the costs get out of hand.

Rep. George Cleveland, R-Onslow, said that a budget provision in last year’s budget that allowed UNC institutions to consider out-of-state residents as in-state residents for purposes of awarding scholarships was bad fiscal policy for taxpayers. Cleveland has since introduced legislation to overturn the provision. The bill is House Bill 2423.

Taxpayers, Cleveland said, should not front the costs of a program that helps out-of-state students.

“I don’t see why taxpayers should worry about it,” Cleveland said about scholarship funding. “That is a school problem, not a taxpayer problem.”

Academic Year 2006: The Final Exam

May 4, 2006 ·

Students on campuses across North Carolina will soon take their final exams. Some have already started. Those exams are supposed to measure what a student has learned in the course, although they may do little more than increase the profits of stores that sell caffeine all night.

So if we were to take a final examination of what we learned this academic year, how would we do? What have we learned from the events that transpired since mid-August when students traded in their sun block and golf clubs for textbooks and book bags? Certainly there have been enough significant events in higher education to make us think about academe in both positive and negative lights. Reviewing for an end-of-year exam, what should we cover?

Commission publishes

Apr 6, 2006 ·

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education reconvened today in Indianapolis hosting a two-day meeting. It is the fourth such meeting since Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings organized the group to examine higher education issues in America today. This week’s meeting focuses on affordability and accreditation.

As a prelude to various meetings, the Commission has released several “Issue Papers” that discuss different topics that have come before the board. It is believed that the “Issue Papers” will help the Commission in their work and ultimate policy recommendation, which could come later this year.

The Top 10 Nuttiest Campus Events in N.C. 2005

Dec 29, 2005 ·

The holiday season is full of traditions. Reporters scour stores looking for toys that could kill your kids. Lawyers’ offices fill with activist atheists upset that some poor soul wishes them “Merry Christmas.” And the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy compiles its annual top 10 list.

Dialogue sought on higher education

Dec 14, 2005 ·

RALEIGH — The U.S. Department of Education has appointed a commission that will engage in what U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings termed a “national dialogue” about the role of higher education in the 21st century. The 18-member Commission on the Future of Higher Education, including professors, university presidents, business leaders and government officials, will release a report next year.

Spellings said she hopes the commission will not only find ways to improve higher education but also ways for higher education to meet the needs of an increasingly global economy. The commission is expected to release its recommendations to the public in August.

Filmmaker points to bias in higher education

Dec 8, 2005 ·

Evan Coyne Maloney experienced academic biases in higher education first hand as a student at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. At the time, he thought the bias problem might be limited just to Bucknell.

That was until he read Illiberal Education by Dinesh D’Souza and heard about how students at other colleges faced similar situations of academic bias in the classroom. Now, 11 years after Maloney graduated from Bucknell, he is educating others on the problem of academic bias through a series of video documentaries that have received critical acclaim.

Maloney’s video documentary series on higher education is entitled “Brainwashing.” There have been two installments “Brainwashing 101,” and “Brainwashing 201: The Second Semester.” “Brainwashing 201” recently won Best Short Film at the Liberty Film Festival in October.

Chasing the Almighty Sports Dollar

Oct 13, 2005 ·

It’s October, in case you haven’t noticed by the cooler temperatures and the leaves changing colors. You can also tell that fall is here by the way college administrators have begun the traditional fall march of chasing the pipe dream of increased college revenue through athletics.

Locally, two colleges have hung the athletics carrot over the heads of their alumni and supporters with big dreams of new athletics venues and playing against bigger competition. At North Carolina Central University, school officials want to move from Division II athletics to Division I in all sports except for football, where the school would compete in Division I-AA. At North Carolina State, the school is raising money to construct an Arnold Palmer designed golf course.

Pope Conference A Success

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RALEIGH – Presentations by Richard Vedder and Mike Adams were among the highlights of the annual John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Conference held Oct. 8 at the Hilton-Raleigh-Durham Hotel at Research Triangle Park.

This year’s conference was built around the theme of “Higher Education in America: Do Students and Taxpayers Get Their Money’s Worth?” A group of 12 speakers, including a panel of students, debated various topics in higher education today including the lack of core curriculum, taboo subjects, and what is actually taught in the classroom.

The High Cost and Low Productivity of Our Higher Education System: What it Means for America

Oct 10, 2005 ·

I am honored by the invitation to speak to you today. The Pope Center is a very positive force in rethinking higher education in America. I am somewhat surprised, frankly, that I was invited to speak, since I am an economist, and economists suffer from two defects. First, they are deadly dull. It is usually more fun watching paint dry than listening to an economist. Indeed, it might even be preferable to have a hemorrhoid operation without an anesthetic from an unlicensed French physician to having to listen to an economist pontificate.