Articles

Articles

Feb 16, 2007 ·

Walter Williams to speak in Chapel Hill

Syndicated columnist and George Mason University Professor of Economics Walter Williams will deliver a speech on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on February 26.

Williams’ talk is entitled “The Legitimate Role of Government in Society.” He will deliver the speech at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Law, at 100 Ridge Road in Chapel Hill inRoom 5042, on Monday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. The UNC-Chapel Hill College Republicans and the UNC-Chapel Hill Federalist Society are jointly sponsoring the event.

Williams is also a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Feb 15, 2007 ·

Glimmers of Good Ideas from “Emerging Issues” Conference

Although the recent “Emerging Issues” conference at North Carolina State University missed the boat on the big issues, there were a few bright spots that education leaders ought to know about.

While many speakers contended that American higher education is “underperforming” because some other countries graduate more people from college, a few recognized that our educational problems begin long before college. Chancellor Charlie Reed of the California State University system, for example, focused on the need to improve the quality of students entering higher education. Reed said that many students are not taking the right courses and are often unprepared for college when they arrive on campus. Others never get to college at all because they don’t get “on track.”

Part of the problem, Reed argued, is that many students, parents, and even teachers are unaware of what students need if they are to enter college. Especially among poorer families in California, students can kill their chances of going to college before they’re even in high school.

Feb 14, 2007 ·

House Committees Announced

House committee assignments were handed out this week, completing the committee assignment process for the General Assembly. Senate committee assignments were announced last week.

Four committees (including subcommittees) will take up higher education issues during the 2007-08 legislative session in the state House. That also includes a committee charged with nominating members to the UNC Board of Governors.

In 2005, the selection process was
clouded in controversy when legislators failed to follow General Statutes that outline the nomination and voting procedures. General Statute 116-6, which lists the BOG election procedures, states “If a sufficient number of nominees who are legally qualified are submitted, then the slate of candidates shall list at least twice the number of candidates for the total seats open.” It also says that nominees are to be approved 30 days after legislative appointments are completed. Legislators followed neither provision in 2005, leaving some to vocally criticize the vote.

Feb 12, 2007 ·

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.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of 17 universities in North Carolina hosting “The Vagina Monologues” on or around Valentine’s Day this year. Nationally, “Vagina Warriors” at over 1000 universities will participate in the unusual festivities.

Feb 8, 2007 ·

Big Education Conference Misses the Boat

Every year since 1986, the Institute for Emerging Issues has held a highly publicized conference devoted to some current policy issue. For 2007, the theme was “Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina.” Sadly, there was very little said about actually transforming higher education in the state over the two days of the event – that is, how it might be made a better and more valuable experience for students. Instead, the speakers were mostly fixated on the supposed need for North Carolina (and the United States as a whole) to put more students into and through college.

In other words, it was about quantity rather than quality. What needs to change, according to most of the speakers, is the number of young Americans entering and graduating from college, not the educational worth of the courses they take. This made for a rather monochromatic conference, rather like attending a concert where every piece was just a variation on the same theme.

The main theme was that America’s higher education system is “underperforming.” Whereas in the past the United States had the highest percentage of its workforce holding college degrees of any nation, today a number of countries now surpass the U.S. and more are catching up. Several speakers, including Governor Mike Easley, asserted that this situation poses a threat to our standard of living. Businessman Thomas Tierney stated that there is a “direct relationship between completion of higher education and economic growth,” and since the U.S. is losing its “lead” over other nations, our standard of living is in jeopardy.

Feb 8, 2007 ·

Boseman, Swindell named to leadership posts

RALEIGH – State Senators A.B. Swindell and Julia Boseman will be among the key legislators that will push higher education policy and funding through the North Carolina Senate during the 2007-08 legislative session.

Both were named to key leadership posts on committees that have oversight of higher education spending and policy in the state Senate. Committee assignments for state senators were announced Thursday. The state House has not made committee assignments.

Swindell and Boseman, both Democrats, will chair the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and Higher Education as well as the Senate Education/Higher Education Committee. Swindell is the senior chairman.

Republican Richard Stevens, of Wake County, will serve as the ranking Republican co-chairman on both committees.

Feb 7, 2007 ·

Bowles leads accountability charge in first year

CHAPEL HILL – When Erskine Bowles took over as president of the University of North Carolina system in 2006, his top priorities were to make the system more accountable to taxpayers and to make the system more efficient. His interest in those goals was among the reasons that Bowles, a former business executive and Clinton administration chief of staff, was the top choice as a replacement for then-president Molly Broad.

In his first year, Bowles lived up to his promises in these areas. Throughout the year, Bowles and the Board of Governors initiated policies that focused on ways to “manage this organization in the most efficient, effective manner we possibly can,” as he told the Board of Governors in his first address. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure we operate this place in a manner that you can be proud of, that any organization could be proud of,” Bowles said in January 2006.

Feb 5, 2007 ·

Bush FY 2008 budget includes more financial aid

Increases in federal higher education spending were among the proposals included in President Bush’s $2.9 trillion budget for fiscal year 2008, which he presented to the Democratic-controlled Congress Monday.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which issued a report in September, had foreshadowed many of the budget proposals, including increases in Pell Grant funding and reforms of the federal financial aid system.

According to White House budget information, Bush is proposing a five-year increase in the Pell Grant funding. The increase would take the maximum Pell Grant award from $4,050 to $5,400.

Feb 1, 2007 ·

Is Law School a Waste of Time?

Strange as it may seem, it is quite possible for someone who has never gone to law school to be a good attorney.

An article that appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal makes that exact point. In “Meet the Clients,” (available here) New York attorney Cameron Stracher writes, “One of the biggest problems with the current state of legal education is its emphasis on books rather than people. By reading about the law rather than engaging in it, students end up with the misperception that lawyers spend most of their time debating the niceties of the Rule Against Perpetuities rather than sorting out the messy, somewhat anarchic version of the truth that judges and courts care about.”

Jan 25, 2007 ·

Is Leftist Bias on College Campuses a Myth?

Conventional wisdom has long claimed that campuses are hotbeds of leftist thought with professors far more likely to be Marxists than Republicans. Recent research has taken steps to substantiate these claims. Eight separate studies of faculty politics and campus climate have demonstrated that professors with a leftist philosophy vastly outnumber those with a conservative or libertarian philosophy at four-year universities across the nation. The various studies address two major themes: that faculty members are liberal and that their liberal inclinations can affect classroom performance.

Now, a new study conducted by John B. Lee for the American Federation of Teachers concludes that those studies documenting liberal bias on campus might be incorrect, or at least inconclusive. “The ‘Faculty Bias’ Studies: Science or Propaganda,” takes eight of the recent studies on faculty politics and judges them by five general tests of social science research. According to Lee, “basic methodological flaws keep a critical reader from accepting the conclusions suggested by the authors.”

Unfortunately, Lee misses the point. Instead of refuting the results, Lee devotes his time to dissecting the methods employed by the researchers who have found evidence of leftist domination. Quibbling over details shouldn’t detract from the seriousness of the problem. Whether the number of professors who use their classrooms to peddle their own socio-political views is in the millions or in single digits, it shouldn’t be tolerated at all.