Fifty years ago, college education was sold to students as a way of broadening their intellectual horizons. The curriculum was filled with courses in literature, philosophy, history and so on. If you were looking for job training, that was mostly found in the job market itself, or at technical institutes and community colleges.

Strangely, the situation has changed almost 180 degrees. Today most people look to higher education for job training (or at least preparation) and great numbers of students believe that without a college degree, they will be unemployable in all but menial labor. At the same time, the old idea that the purpose of a college education is to broaden one’s intellectual horizons has been largely relegated to the broom closet. True, quite a few institutions still pay lip service to the importance of a liberal education, but in fact it is quite easy for students at most of them to earn a BA without taking any of the kind of courses that used to be the pillars of the curriculum. Students who want to learn about, say, philosophy or history would be better off looking for a good lecture series on tape than looking through the course catalogue.

RALEIGH – Three members of the UNC Board of Governors participated in a town hall-type of meeting with members of the Capital Area Republican Club Tuesday night. Although a wide variety of topics were covered, most of the discussion centered on the search for a new UNC president.

Brent Barringer, Frank Grainger, and Peter Hans discussed the candidate search in general as well as the candidacy of Erskine Bowles in particular during their presentations. All three said that the board would consider all candidates, but with the media and politicians getting behind Bowles it was making it hard to conduct a search. Those same sentiments were expressed by Board of Governors Chair Brad Wilson during the board’s regular meeting earlier this month.