Articles

Articles

Jul 30, 2007 ·

House, Senate leaders approve $20.7 billion budget

House and Senate leaders have approved a $20.7 billion budget plan for the 2008 fiscal year. It’s a spending package that includes $2.6 billion for the UNC system and $938 million for community colleges.

UNC’s Fiscal Year 2007 budget was $2.2 billion.

The spending package comes one month into the 2008 fiscal year. Legislators had approved a continuing budget authorization in June after negotiators could not come to an agreement on critical aspects in the budget. Gov. Mike Easley is expected to sign the bill once it arrives at his desk.

Jul 27, 2007 ·

Athletics Arms Race

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.

The signing sent shockwaves across the college athletics landscape. Not only had Alabama signed a premier coach who had led Louisiana State University, a SEC rival, to a share of the national title in 2004, but it sparked criticisms – and fear – that Saban’s hiring would elevate the salaries of already highly-paid coaches to even higher levels. The fear was that it would place severe financial strains on the universities and their athletic departments.

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About the Speakers

Stephen H. Balch is the founder and president of the National Association of Scholars, America’s largest membership organization of scholars committed to higher education reform. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and for fourteen years taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. He is a trustee of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and has helped found four other higher education reform organizations.

Richard J. Bishirjian is president and professor of government at Yorktown University, an online university that espouses classical education. Bishirjian has a Ph.D. in government and international studies from the University of Notre Dame and has studied under philosopher Eric Voegelin and political theorist Michael Oakeshott. He is the author of a history of political theory and editor of A Public Philosophy Reader.

Jul 25, 2007 ·

Keeping College Grads in the State

Politicians will try just about anything that might boost their state’s economy. There aren’t many measures that will actually do that, so they resort to policies that they can plausibly say will produce economic benefits.

One idea that has been cropping up a lot in recent years is that a state can give its economy a lift by trying to keep students who graduate from colleges within its borders from taking jobs elsewhere. Several states have gone down that path, most recently Maine and West Virginia.

In Maine, Governor John Baldacci recently signed legislation that makes residents who graduate from a college or university in the state eligible for ten years of state tax credits of about $2,100 annually as long as the individual works in Maine. In West Virginia, Governor Joe Manchin recently said that in order to get “more of a return” on his state’s investment in higher education, he would like to see residents who have graduated from a college in the state be exempted from the West Virginia income tax until they turn 26. He also suggested giving students who remain in the state tax credits for money devoted to repaying student loans.

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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.

This is a splendid idea. Done well, such reading programs can help to get college students off to a good start by concentrating their minds on the nature of and reasons for academic study.

Unfortunately, if it is done poorly this becomes at least a missed opportunity. If a school chooses a book that has no timeless message, it will fail to make any lasting impression on the students. And if a school selects a book that is faddish or polemical, it is worse than a missed opportunity. It conveys to the students the idea that college is more about what to think than about how to think. Sadly, at some institutions that happens to be the case in many of the courses taught, but still it’s best to start freshmen off with a good impression.

Jul 18, 2007 ·

Lloyd Hackley is UNC’s problem solver

Lloyd Hackley is on the job again.

After serving as interim chancellor for a year at N.C. A&T, Hackley was named last week to serve in the same position at Fayetteville State University. This after Chancellor T.J. Bryan resigned under pressure due to concerns about the school’s nursing program and financial condition.

Media reports following Bryan’s resignation indicate that UNC President Erskine Bowles asked for her resignation in a meeting in Chapel Hill.

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An Inconvenient Truth

The issue of climate change has entered its rock concert/college curriculum phase, which is a sure indicator that the issue has peaked and will now begin a long slow fade in the public mind.

The recent staging of simultaneous “Live Earth” rock concerts along with news that Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth (a lavishly photographic companion book to the movie) has become assigned reading at North Carolina’s Elon University follows a familiar pattern seen repeatedly over the past 40 years. Gore’s lavish, simultaneous “Live Earth” concerts on several continents follows the model of “Live Aid” and “Farm Aid” in the 1980s¬—“consciousness raising” events after which public interest quickly waned.

Elon University says it is assigning Gore’s book, rather than a serious scientific and policy work such as the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), because it conveys an “important rhetorical message.” Elon makes clear that it is interested in spawning activism above the university’s traditional mission of imparting understanding.

Jul 12, 2007 ·

New Era Looms for Community College System

The North Carolina Community College System is choosing a successor to H. Martin Lancaster, its current president, who will step down in May 2008. In a series of meetings, the search committee has solicited public comment about the “qualifications and characteristics” needed by the next president.

The July 11 meeting in Raleigh, chaired by Norma B. Turnage, vice chair of the committee, was low-key, with only eight commentators. But enough issues surfaced to suggest that the next president will face some troublesome conflicts.

Jul 11, 2007 ·

Do Sports Programs and Community Colleges Mix?

Community colleges are and supposed to be an educational stepping stone for people who didn’t make much of their K-12 years or find that they need to learn a new skill if they are to find a new job. The idea that those schools would become more effective in their role by adding organized sports programs seems strange. Quite a few of them are doing so, however.

Are community colleges and sports programs a sensible mix?