6 things we’re thankful for in higher education
It is Thanksgiving week, and six Pope Center staff members express thanks for some things that happened this year in higher education.
UNC-Chapel Hill goes after binge drinking, but the real enemy may be date rape
In 2012, a UNC-Chapel Hill freshman with a blood level of alcohol nearly three times the legal limit was found dead. Winston Crisp, vice chancellor for student affairs, saw this as indicative of a nationwide problem—one he has been working to address since then.
Does North Carolina sufficiently support its public universities?
A new report from the Center for American Progress alleges that the “Great Recession” that began in 2008 devastated public university investments nationwide. Specifically, it says that over a five-year period, tuition has skyrocketed, states have withdrawn public investment, and low-income families have been pushed out of higher education.
It is possible to control college costs—and I did it
Many college leaders speak as though the upward cost spiral is permanent and unavoidable. From experience, I can say that’s not true.
Tuition increases at American colleges began in earnest in the 1960s and ’70s, when I was a mathematics professor and later dean at C.W. Post College. The first changes driving the increases were the reductions in teaching loads.
The UNC Board of Governors takes action on a leak to the press
In the past few months, under the chairmanship of John Fennebresque, the UNC Board of Governors has been more aggressive than in the past, drilling down into more topics and increasing its discussions in committees and in the full board meetings. But now the board is being distracted by a spat over confidentiality at Winston-Salem State University, one of the board’s sixteen college campuses.
Campus civility declines as attention turns to groups, not individuals
I recall vividly in the early 1980s spending fifteen minutes walking two hundred yards with my older faculty mentor from our offices to Davidson’s post office. Along the way, he greeted or was greeted by Davidson students, staff, other faculty, and townspeople. For each there was a hearty “good morning” or a “you are looking so well,” or to an advisee, “how is your calculus class going?”
How did we get into the Student Loan Mess?
For all of the words devoted to our student loan mess (or "crisis" or "bubble"), little has been written on its origins. We know that student loan debt now exceeds $1 trillion and that many young Americans are struggling with a heavy burden, but how things got that way is largely a mystery.
Leisure studies: an academic field based on a utopian mistake?
With most academic fields, we know what they are about. Political science teaches about political systems and their workings; philosophy about how people have thought on questions such as ethics; literature courses have students read and contemplate worthwhile books.
The Goucher College video app is a terrible idea
Back in the early 1990s, while I was in the middle of a long business career, I recall reading that the University of Pennsylvania had decided to add an unusual essay requirement for their undergraduate applicants. Specifically, the students were asked to submit “Page 217” of their 300-page autobiography. Remember now, these budding autobiographers were all of 17 years old.
Student course evaluations aren’t worth much, and there are better ways
The John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy has released its biennial report on the University of North Carolina system, “The State of the State University 2015: Critical Facts about the University of North Carolina System.”