The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is in crisis, according to professors and students who squared off in a debate this week over a plan to increase student tuition. The tuition increases would be used to boost faculty salaries. The debate was sponsored by UNC-CH’s Dialectic and Philanthropic societies.
Students, state legislators and private donors may soon be asked to help raise faculty salaries at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, despite evidence that UNC-CH’s faculty salaries there are among the highest in the nation.
The Pope Center’s study of faculty salaries study has come under criticism from the Economics Dept. at UNC-Chapel Hill. Department Chair David K. Guilkey criticized the study in a recent letter to The News & Observer of Raleigh. Guilkey also announced that his department would release its own rankings of faculty compensation on October 15 on its website (http://www.unc.edu/depts/econ).
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “high priority” projects and “emergency” needs apparently mean two different things. Even as buildings “crumble” and outdated labs go unrenovated — those things deemed “emergency” needs for UNC-CH under a $3 billion bond proposal to the General Assembly last July — UNC-CH announced last week that it will use $28.6 million in unrestricted grants (a gift from 1949 UNC-CH graduate David B. Clayton) to fund “high priority” projects. These projects differ drastically from the school’s “emergency” needs as outlined under the $3 billion bond proposal. And, in fact, none of the grant money will be used to fund such “emergency” needs.
A study by South Carolina Representative Harry C. Stille has rated North Carolina’s public four-year universities the second worst in the nation in academic rigor. Stille’s home state was the only state with poorer academic rigor, according to the study.
Just weeks after pledging a positive campaign to fight binge drinking at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the presidents of several UNC system schools have had a seeming change of heart. The News and Observer reported last week that the heads of UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte have signed on to a anti-drinking campaign that uses the mixed message that drinking can be done responsibly, while showing irresponsible drinking behavior among students. The new campaign is supported by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities.
A controversial program designed to bring “social equity” to the college admissions process may soon be implemented at colleges and universities nationwide. Questions remain, however, over whether the program contains race-preferential policies. The new program is called “Strivers” and was developed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which devises the SAT, as a way to account for background factors of prospective college students.
Former UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Barry Nakell has been charged for the third time with stealing.
The General Assembly’s failure to approve the University of North Carolina’s multi-billion-dollar capital-spending proposal has led many people to believe that N.C. State’s Centennial Campus won’t be able to rapidly expand. But evidence suggests that the steady growth of the campus will likely continue.
Courses on bizarre themes are being offered at some of America’s most prestigious schools and North Carolina institutions are not immune, according to a recent report by U.S. News and World Report.
Despite increased security, crime will likely continue to be a problem for area college campuses.
Minority freshmen enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin is near pre-Hopwood levels, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education Daily News online. Racial preferences were discontinued in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas following the 1996 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the Hopwood case.