Richard Cornuelle, the Indianapolis libertarian activist who started United Student Aid Funds (USAF), had a fight on his hands. His organization, whose downfall led ultimately to the creation of today’s college-access giant known as the Lumina Foundation, was created with the goal of competing with the federal government’s nascent student loan programs.
Although UNC has tried to maintain an image of running squeaky clean sports programs that ensure student-athletes a high quality education, for decades it has actually been recruiting players who shouldn’t have gotten out of high school, then ushering them through a “curriculum” consisting largely of easy courses with negligible educational value.
UNC Board of Governors meetings are hard to navigate for the uninitiated, such as a member of the public. The committee rooms are small, spread out, and poorly labeled. All the people who attend the meetings seem to know each other. Finding a place to sit in the boardroom often means arriving an hour before the meeting begins. And if you don’t get a seat, you’re out of luck. Although the main board meeting is video-streamed into the lobby, it’s hard to hear and it isn’t recorded.
Major donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation dominate higher education philanthropy today. Most are aware of the Gates Foundation’s roots in Bill’s vast wealth, but the story of how Lumina came to be is more complicated.
Campuses are not adept at handling sexual assault issues because they lack experience, resources, and an unbiased agenda. Due process is immediately thrown out the window when we rely on the campus to punish the accused; injustice is built into the system. The customary standard, “innocent until proven guilty,” is reversed when we call on colleges to adjudicate rape.
American labor unions are in serious decline and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become nothing more than a legal enforcer for panicked union bosses. A recent example is the December 2014 decision in Pacific Lutheran University that may force more private-sector higher education faculty to accept unionism if they want to work.
Recent developments at Trinity College with the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment provide rare good news for supporters of donor intent. Here, after an over two-decade struggle, the endowment’s purposes have been restored to the donor’s wishes.
It is heartwarming to see state officials do the jobs they were elected to do. Too often they have shied away from their obligations to ensure that the university system adheres to appropriate standards of scholarship.
All that the favorable job statistics for college graduates tell us is that having a degree positions you better in the job market compared with people who do not have those credentials. Many employers who need workers for jobs that require only basic abilities and a decent attitude now screen out people who don’t have college degrees. Companies looking to hire for positions such as sales supervisor and rental car agent, for instance, often state that they’ll only consider applicants who’ve graduated from college. What they studied or how well they did is largely beside the point.
Walker’s proposal would make every member of the UW system a public authority—a designation that would allow the state’s universities to take bureaucratic control of their own operations. This would effectively wash away the state’s control over major decisions such as tuition rates, hiring and firing practices, employee compensation, purchasing goods and materials, and construction projects.
