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CommentariesAt first glance, the selection of the new chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill seems ideal. Indeed, it appears as though Holden Thorp was not just groomed for the job, but created for it.... More » Bucking the System, Diversity-Style “Our school is accredited.”... More » Global Warming Grinches Steal Earth Day There’s a lot to be said for Earth Day, which we celebrate tomorrow, April 22. When I was a child, Earth Day events fostered my awareness of the environment. In elementary school, the focus was on oil spills and endangered species such as the Right Whale or the giant panda. In middle school, rainforests ruled on Earth Day. By the time I got to college, recycling programs—from bottles to tires—were in vogue.... More » Great Books: The “Comeback Kid” of Higher Education? In academia today, Shakespeare has given way to feminist theory, while Plato has been reduced to a paraphrase and the Aeneid to a footnote. But a few scholars and teachers still love Great Books.... More » Engaging the Disengaged Student College professors yearn for academically interested students—eager young minds that want to grasp new ideas and soak up information. But not many students are like that. Most come to college to get a degree and have fun while doing it.... More » The death of Martin Luther King, Jr., which we commemorate today, is a painful reminder of the nation’s tragic experience with racial divisions. But Dr. King’s life was also a paean to hope. As everyone knows, Dr. King believed that a day would arrive when his children would be judged not by their color but by the content of their character.... More » Does Liberal Education Have a Future? (For a .pdf version of this speech, click here.)... More » UNC Shouldn't Be the University of No Candor As of this writing, the men's basketball team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is ranked number one in the country. Indeed, such a high ranking is not that unusual for teams of many sports (outside of football, of course) from UNC-Chapel Hill.... More » Seamless Transition Between Schools Needs Stitching Achieving the much-vaunted “seamless” transition between North Carolina’s community colleges and universities may require more than superficial fixes. That is the impression given by a report prepared last year for the North Carolina State University history department.... More » A Clear Case for Streamlining Government The question before the General Assembly is what to do about the North Carolina Center for Nursing (NCCN). One of the proposed solutions is to simply eliminate the state-funded think tank, and it might be time to do so. Or at least remove it from the state budget.... More » Rejecting Victimhood for Individuality I was torn. The cookies at the Gender Gap Bake Sale looked delicious, and I could buy one for only 75 cents. That’s because I am a woman. Men had to pay $1 each. Trouble is, it would have violated my sense of justice; getting a cheaper cookie struck me as a handout or maybe a sly trick to get my consent to policies to raise women’s wages. I considered paying full price but I didn’t want to cause a scene. So I walked by.... More » Dismal K-12 Education Makes Colleges Look Good The nonprofit organization that I head, the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, frequently criticizes North Carolina’s colleges and universities. But as many North Carolina parents know, higher education problems are small when compared to the failings of elementary and secondary education.... More » The Buck Stops Elsewhere at Duke The Sex Workers Art Show (SWAS) swept through the southern Piedmont region recently, leaving disgust, incredulity and facile arguments about freedom of speech in its wake. It also provided the final push that toppled one president of a prestigious college, and further exposed the appalling lack of judgment of another.... More » These two facts should remain mere coincidence: one, that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is seeking to replace retiring Chancellor James Moeser, and two, that College of William & Mary President Gene Nichol abruptly resigned after 19 tumultuous months as head after learning that the college's board wouldn't renew his contract in July.... More » Ignoring the Ideological Elephant in the Classroom The state university system recently invested considerable time and money in the UNC Tomorrow Commission to see how North Carolina’s public colleges can “best meet the needs of the state and its people over the next 20 years.” The commission placed particular emphasis on how to provide for the future prosperity of North Carolina.... More » A Broader Role for the University On Its Way? In 2006 when Erskine Bowles gave his inaugural address as president of the University of North Carolina, he took a surprising tack. In describing the goals of the university, he listed strengthening K-12 education as the first. “Nothing is more important,” he said.... More » Something for Everyone Might Mean Less for All Editor's Note: A slightly shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer on January 1, 2008.... More » A Refreshing Twist on Education: Competition Critics have been pointing out the failings of education schools for decades, with few positive results. So why not foster competition instead?... More » Jon Sanders' Top 10 Nuttiest N.C. Campus Events For 2007 Editor’s note: Jon Sanders compiles an annual “Top Ten” list of what he calls the “nuttiest campus events” in North Carolina. This year’s list makes a notable exception, granting the top spot (see below) to something that didn't happen. What didn’t happen, he says, was so strikingly necessary that its predictable non-occurrence warrants attention.... More » Americans Want to Help Immigrants, Up to a Point In 1982, the Supreme Court decided that K-12 education could not be denied to illegal immigrants. Symbolically speaking, these children have now grown up and, twenty-five years later, the issue is whether illegal immigrants should be denied a college education at public community colleges and universities.... More » Deconstructing America by Decree Assume that a popularly-elected government enacts a law. The law has the backing of an overwhelming majority of the people. Yet government officials decide they don’t like the law and choose to ignore it.... More » Editor’s note: The latest installment in the wizarding movies, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will likely make an appearance under many Christmas trees this year. A more important question is whether the books should make an appearance in college courses. This article was originally published in the Charlotte Observer on August 9, 2007.... More » “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.... More » Things We Could Do Without in the State Budget On Monday, legislators gave final approval of a $20.7 billion budget for the 2007-08 Fiscal Year. Less than a day later, Gov. Mike Easley signed and sealed the package.... More » In January, Nick Saban signed an eight-year $32 million contract with the University of Alabama to become its next football coach, making him the highest-paid college coach in the nation.... More » Many NC universities require summer reading for freshmen. Here are the titles used this year:... More » College Summer Reading Can Be Useful – Or Not Many colleges and universities these days have a “summer reading” program for incoming students, which requires them to read a book and be prepared to discuss it during the first few days of class. The programs are designed to create a common ground among new students, challenge them to think critically about new ideas and introduce them to university work and intellectual life at a university.... More » Lloyd Hackley is UNC’s problem solver Lloyd Hackley is on the job again.... More » Is it time for Title IX to end? My first introduction to writing professionally was as a sports writer for a couple of newspapers in West Virginia. The assignments were simple – go to the games, follow the action, report on what you saw, and occasionally offer commentary and features on the athletes and events.... More » Being an Angry Faculty Radical Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry To recap the news out of Durham this year: In April, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper declared Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans – the Duke University lacrosse players accused by "exotic dancer" Crystal Gail Mangum of rape and sexual assault – "innocent of these charges."... More » New A&T Chancellor Has Long Road Ahead When N.C. A&T Chancellor Stanley Battle was named to the position last November, he said he wanted to make the school among the best in the nation. Little did he know at the time that the goal would begin with a rebuilding process.... More » The Duke Lacrosse story is, finally, over.... More » Swett’s nomination should spur changes in UNC Board of Governors selection CHAPEL HILL – Purnell Swett has a decision to make, and members of the State House of Representatives have some explaining to do.... More » The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly RALEIGH – Early Friday morning, while many in North Carolina were sound asleep, state House members approved a $20.3 billion budget that keeps in place temporary taxes that were scheduled to end and provides more than $11 billion in funding for education in the state.... More » A mini scandal amid a maxi push for federal control It’s happening beneath the radar of most media and the public, but it is a major conflict, nonetheless. The prize that is being fought over is accreditation – who decides which schools are “good enough” so that their students can receive federal financial aid (such as Pell grants).... More » Guns, Troubled Students, and Campus Security Last week, Pope Center writer Shannon Blosser expressed our sorrow at the lives horribly cut short by the massacre at Virginia Tech. He said that it was wrong to “play the blame game,” as some of the media had started to do, so quickly after the tragedy. It was more appropriate, he said, to honor the victims whose lives ended so suddenly.... More » Let’s Hold Off the Blame Game at Virginia Tech It seems fruitless on this day to comment on the “inside baseball” of the state budget process or the academic climate within higher education. There are other days and other weeks for those serious conversations.... More » UNC-Rocky Mount doesn't stand up to fiscal analysis Business and political leaders from Rocky Mount and eastern North Carolina have championed the idea of transforming North Carolina Wesleyan College into a public institution within the UNC system. A study commission authorized by the legislature is wrapping up its findings, and supporters are already referring to the school as "UNC-Rocky Mount."... More » Legislature Should View “EARN” Scholarship with Caution Responding to Governor Mike Easley’s plan to provide tuition-free college for two years, Shannon Blosser of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy said, “The legislature should view this program very cautiously. It could create an expensive entitlement for students that will put heavy burdens on taxpayers.”... More » The Raleigh News and Observer has been quarrelling with a group based in Chapel Hill called the Citizens for Higher Education (CHE). CHE is the second-largest political action committee (PAC) in the state, measured by the amounts of money given to legislators. Its goal is to ”build political support for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state’s other research universities.” In other words, it lobbies the legislature to obtain special benefits for the state’s leading public campuses.... More » V-Day: Stripping Away Modesty and Dignity Ask a random stranger what “V-Day” is. You might get some interesting answers. Some will probably confuse it with VE-Day or VJ-Day, the days marking the end of World War II in Europe and Japan. Perhaps some will think it’s simply an abbreviation of Valentine’s Day. However, no incorrect guesses could possibly be as interesting, or as shocking, as the truth. V-Day stands for “Vagina Day” and takes place the same day as the more traditional Valentine’s Day.... More » The skills college graduates need One of the phrases we hear over and over again from the American higher education establishment is that it’s “the envy of the world.” I have never actually seen evidence to back that contention up, like a statement from the German Prime Minister saying, “We Germans are so envious of your wonderful higher education system in America.” I have, however, seen quite a lot of evidence that Americans aren’t terribly impressed with the results of our colleges and universities.... More » Offer to help, get your hand chewed off Recently the new dean of the school of humanities, arts, and sciences at NC State asked to meet with Art Pope, who heads the John W. Pope Foundation. The Foundation has given substantial financial assistance to higher education in North Carolina over the years and Dean Toby Parcel wanted to see if it would be possible to arrange additional support, particularly for foreign language programs.... More » Gary Becker and Richard Posner Discuss Student Aid Programs Two famous University of Chicago professors, Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner have a blog on which a great variety of topics come up for discussion. Becker is the 1992 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and Posner is a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who has written many books in the field of law and economics. In an exchange posted on December 3, they traded thoughts on the proposals floating in Washington for making student loan programs less costly.... More » Higher Education Would Benefit From an Economic Perspective It is often said that the United States has the best system of higher education in the world, and certainly North Carolinians take pride in their universities. But readers of these pages know that the image often differs from the reality.... More » Miami officials miss opportunity to set an example In the aftermath of the Oct. 14 brawl between Florida International and the University of Miami, Miami President Donna Shalala has said all the right things. She’s done all the wrong things when it comes to punishing the players involved.... More » Spellings makes recommendations for higher education’s future WASHINGTON – Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced Tuesday proposals to reform higher education that would increase need-based financial aid and create a national database to provide more information to families.... More » NCAA should leave academic requirements to schools It must be getting close to college football season, because my mind keeps wondering to all things college football, the NCAA, and the Fiesta Bowl.... More » Miller discusses problems with college writing This is a portion of Nan Miller's speech to the John Locke Foundation Monday. Miller discussed a recent study examining college writing courses to a crowd of 40 people. This excerpt shows typical conversations one may have about college writing programs.... More » Chapel Hill — On Friday afternoon, an act of terrorism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill left students and faculty in disbelief, wondering why a former student would ram an SUV into a crowded group of students. Many of them extended their disbelief to include a willful denial that the attack was an act of terrorism at all.... More » Bringing Health and Fitness to the University The newly-installed Chancellor of the University of East Dakota at Middleburg (UED at M), Dr. D. Reginald Von Buskirk, was determined to make improvements at the campus. His predecessor had been content to collect his annual salary of $250,000 in return for a bit of tinkering with the curriculum to make it more relevant to students – the popular new Sociology course on “The Simpsons” had been his idea – but the school had mostly stagnated under his leadership. Von Buskirk was made of different stuff. The most important thing he had learned in earning his doctorate in education administration was that leaders must be bold. That idea had so overwhelmed him that he wrote his dissertation on it, “Leadership Styles and the Boldness Imperative.” His advisor had called it “the most inspiring twenty pages I’ve ever read.” Von Buskirk had a bold idea for UED at M.... More » Controversy surrounds DTH cartoon CHAPEL HILL – For the second time this school year, The Daily Tar Heel, UNC-Chapel Hill’s student newspaper, is in the middle of a firestorm over content in its publication. This time the criticism comes from UNC-Chapel Hill administrators.... More » A look at UNC-A diversity program How do you define diversity? Let me restate that question… How do you measure diversity? Some at UNC-A are currently feeling troubled over what they see as a lack of diversity at the school. That’s why they’ve created “The New Diversity Task Force”. The student newspaper, The Banner, reports that students and faculty are questioning what can be done about this “growing problem”.... More » The High Cost and Low Productivity of Our Higher Education System: What it Means for America 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.... More » How not to get folks to believe your kooky conspiracy theory For Christensen, Jones, and their ilk, it seems, you're either with them or against them. Either you believe without question that there's a grand conspiracy of global domination as manifested by the massive, U.S.- and Israel-orchestrated hoax called 9/11 — or you're part of it.... More » |
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