In his State of the Union address, President Obama pitched his plan for making two years of community college as “free and universal in America as high school is today.” He thinks it would be a great thing. But at the community college where I taught English from 2007 to 2010, Georgia Perimeter College, the joke was that it was already an extension of high school.
Over the past eight years I have experienced a rich and sometimes tumultuous education about the economics, politics, and culture of today’s campuses.
Attend a North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges meeting and you are likely to fall asleep as board members and community college system office staffers take turns dispassionately checking off the month’s agenda items to unanimous approval.
Teacher quality was the central theme of an education summit held by the UNC system’s Board of Governors at the SAS Campus in Cary, North Carolina, on January 27.
I am strongly committed to higher education, especially in the sciences and math where we are lagging other countries. I also understand that there are students of limited means, and they need a hand up in life. But we seem to no longer draw rational lines between serious students who need assistance, and the many non-serious students who squander it.
Looking back at Ross’s first four years at the helm, we see leadership marked by tentativeness and preservation of the status quo. But as Ross begins his fifth and final year as president, there are opportunities for him to champion meaningful changes and to leave a positive legacy.
The new federal proposal that the president is calling "America’s College Promise" is short on details but has inspired much commentary.
We’ll hear more on Tuesday in the State of the Union address and in President Obama’s next budget proposal, but he gave us enough information about the idea in a speech for us to estimate the potential program’s cost to North Carolina taxpayers.
Over the past two years, the University of North Carolina has been implementing recommendations laid out by the General Administration and Board of Governors in their 2013 report, “Our Time, Our Future: the UNC Compact with North Carolina.” For example, the system has streamlined the transfer process for students going from community colleges to UNC and defined “core competencies” that all graduates should possess.
During each legislative session, education is at the forefront of budget and policy discussions. Expenditures on elementary, secondary, and higher education (the University of North Carolina plus the community college system) added up to more than $11.5 billion last year, or 58 percent of the North Carolina General Fund budget.
Reform in 2015: our hopes for the new year
