The UNC Board of Governer’s meeting on May 14 led to the approval of two financial “tools” that could change the way that UNC pays back construction bonds, according to Associated Press reports. The tools are included in two legislative bills that should reach the General Assembly within weeks.
A new study by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy finds that the UNC system uses criteria that inhibit its ability to contract out various services. These criteria, known as “outsourcing criteria/guidelines,” apply to all UNC-system schools and were recently part of the Outsourcing Steering Committee’s decision not to privatize residential housekeeping services at UNC-Chapel Hill. These criteria also guided the university’s decision not to privatize various other services at UNC-CH, including heating, ventilating and air conditioning, ground maintenance and vehicle maintenance.
A barrage of hate mail, physical confrontations and death threats at Duke University has prompted suprisingly little reaction from a school that prides itself on tolerence and diversity. The trouble began when two freshmen, Berin Szoka and Jay Strader, submitted a series of op-editorials to The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, protesting the creation of a Hindi major at Duke.
According to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative organization based in Washington D.C., public acceptance of lying in academe has increased in recent years. The May-June issue of AEI’s magazine, The American Enterprise, includes several articles that blame postmodern scholarship on this recent trend.
According to a report by Roesel, Kent and Associates of Marietta, Ga., privatization of residence hall housekeeping at UNC-CH would not save money and would, infact, cost the university an additional $59,620. To arrive at that figure, RKA & Associates compared in-house and contracting out cost over a five year period.
A case before the Supreme Court could change the way public universities in North Carolina and across the nation allocate student-activities fees. The Justices agreed to hear a suit five law students at the University of Wisconsin brought against their school over how the university allocated a portion of the mandatory activity fees it collects. Across the country, there has been several similar cases recently concerning potential First-Amendment violations by universities in their collection and expenditure of mandatory fees.
The report on privatization of housekeeping services at UNC-Chapel Hill, which was performed by Roesel, Kent & Associates in Atlanta, Ga., prompted few questions from the Outsourcing Steering Committe when it was presented on April 12, despite several problems with the report.
A hacking incident at Duke University this week threatened the school’s entire computer system and raised questions about Internet security. For several days, a computer hacker used a computer to exploit a temporary security hole in godzilla6, which is one of the six servers on the acpub system.
N.C. A&T State University should learn who will be its new chancellor on Friday, March 19. As of press time on Thursday, March 18, President Molly Broad’s office had not made public the names of the four candidates for the position, except one name: Harold Martin, vice chancellor for academic affairs at N.C. A&T.
St. Augustine’s College of North Carolina made national headlines last week when it announced the firing of admissions director, Keith M. Powell. The announcement prompted the resignation of the entire admissions staff, except for a counselor who was on vacation until Monday, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on March 11. Graham Watt, executive assistant to the president, said that the decline in enrollment at St. Augustine’s did not factor into the decision to fire Powell. Watt told The News and Observer on March 9 that the decision was part of a larger effort to make the college more efficient: “We talked about it as an administrative team…. It brings the whole process together. It just works better when you have people not bumping into each other and working in harmony.”