The Pope Center’s effort to make the UNC system more transparent to the public reveals a lot but raises more questions.
By Jenna Ashley Robinson
Editor’s note: This is the second story in a Pope Center series exploring finances of the UNC system in order to better understand whether the system is properly acting as a fiduciary of taxpayer money.
Despite warnings from the AAUP’s yearly study on faculty compensation suggesting that faculty salaries are dangerously low, the fact is that professors in the UNC system earn generous incomes. On average, full-time tenured faculty make much more than North Carolina’s median household income, which was $44,670 according to the 2007 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
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University faculty are finally noticing that college students don’t read very well, but Neil Postman and Jacques Ellul saw it years ago.
By Thomas Bertonneau
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The Hollywood gadfly brought his unique brand of radical politics to UNC-Chapel Hill's Martin Luther King celebration.
By Jay Schalin
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The UNC School of the Arts: Should It Be Self-Supporting?
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
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. The Revenue-to-Cost Spiral in Higher Education
The cost of higher education has been rising rapidly. This paper by Robert E. Martin explains why. The cause is the incentives inherent in the nature of higher education. Higher education is a nonprofit sector; profit and even clear ownership are missing. Martin compares higher education with the broader profit-seeking economy, where costs must be controlled if firms are to survive. He finds that higher education, due to its nonprofit nature and its focus on creating reputation, spends just about all the money it gets, avoiding cost control.
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Higher Education Headlines
North Carolina
No Longer a Sacred Cow
John Hood says the usual defenses of UNC largesse seem to be falling on deaf ears in the ailing economy. In the Carolina Journal. A Degree in Three
Mount Olive College has figured out a way to save its students $22,000--by getting them a degree in three years. In the Raleigh News & Observer. National
The Payoff on High Expectations
Early-college schools, once for the affluent and overachieving, are serving more low-income, at-risk students. In the NY Times. Finances First
Amid complaints about a newly selected president--an accountant with no advanced degree--trustees at private college say fiscal concerns trumped all. On Inside Higher Ed. Turning Tenure Around
The president of Ohio State University is ready to re-examine and recalibrate how professors are awarded tenure. In USA Today.
Opinion
Sex Week at Yale
Yale University is indulging in Sex Week--essentially, a series of guest lectures and sex-related special events. On Phi Beta Cons. Is Everyone Entitled to a Degree?
Jackson Toby sits down with Education News to discuss the college degree and the means to pay for it. Earning a B.S. Degree
Higher Education writer Kevin Carey explains how to get a college degree without really trying. In the Chronicle of Higher Education. |
