Publications

“The State of the State University” by Jenna Ashley Robinson compiles publicly available data about the University of North Carolina system.

Jenna Ashley Robinson and Duke Cheston examine how well Pell grants serve students and taxpayers.

Martin Morse Wooster shows in this report that universities often neglect the wishes of contributors.

This report provides the Pope Center’s criteria for cutting university budgets, along with specific cuts to the 2011-13 UNC budget.

Policymakers today commonly assume that investing taxpayers’ funds into higher education leads to major payoffs in economic growth. This report looks at broader economic studies that attempts to correlate expenditures with results.

The report examines the speech, assembly and religious protections for students and faculty at North Carolina’s universities–both public and private. Using the speech code rating system from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the Pope Center found that none of North Carolina’s universities received a “green light.”

This paper addresses the question of whether taxpayer funding is appropriate for a school that focuses on professional arts training, attracts nearly half its college students from outside the state, and appears to send most of its graduates elsewhere. It is, on a per capita basis, the most costly school in the University of North Carolina system.

College Bound? Make the Right Choices is the Pope Center’s latest tool for improving colleges and universities “from the bottom up” through better choices. Its purpose is to help high school students and their parents become smarter purchasers of higher education. This booklet by Jenna Ashley Robinson helps young people think through what they want from college—and choose their colleges accordingly.