GREENVILLE � Enrollment across the University of North Carolina could reach 300,000 by 2017, according to projections presented during a Thursday policy meeting.
The projections also point to a growing number of Hispanic students from North Carolina who will seek higher education. UNC leaders say if that occurs, a number of campuses will not have a majority of one race or ethnic group.
GREENVILLE – University of North Carolina leaders announced Friday the members of a “blue ribbon” panel that will examine the system’s future and how it can meet the needs of the state.
The initiative, UNC Tomorrow, was launched at last month’s Board of Governors meeting with Norma Mills, former Chief of Staff for Senate Pro Tem Marc Basnight, serving as the executive director for the study. The entire process is scheduled to take 18 months, with a report to be presented early next year.
Duke University’s undergraduate curriculum — like many others – went through a period of erosion beginning in the late 1960s. For many schools, that decline has continued, but not at Duke, according to a new paper just released by the Pope Center. “The Decline and Revival of Liberal Learning at Duke: The Focus and Gerst Programs,” written by Russell K. Nieli, examines how Duke stopped the decline and suggests ways in which other schools can help their students find more meaning in their education.
Nieli, who graduated from Duke in 1970 and now teaches at Princeton, observes that the administration at Duke – as at many other prominent universities – succumbed to two Siren songs during this period. One was to relax the constraints of the old idea of a core curriculum in order to give students more control over their college education. The result was a “distribution requirements” system that allowed students to pick most of their courses from a smorgasbord of offerings.
That change destroyed the educational commonality that had once tied Duke students together. “Gone were the days when almost all Duke students would have read the Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, and King Lear; when you could strike up a conversation with even a Duke chemistry or biology major on the differences between St. John’s Gospel and the Synoptics; when students eagerly debated in their dorm lounges whether Yeats, Eliot, and Pound were fascists or high-minded traditionalists; and when Southern students and faculty took special pride in the outstanding literary achievements of the great Southern writers,” Nieli says.
Two academic programs at Duke University are helping
undergraduates experience a well-rounded education and could be copied by other universities.
This is the message of a new report from the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, “The Decline and Revival of Liberal Learning at Duke: The Focus and Gerst Programs,” by Russell K. Nieli.
Duke is responding to a problem that afflicts many universities: There is no longer a “core curriculum. “
Students round out their education by selecting courses that meet loose “distribution requirements,”
but the resulting education can be fragmented, limited, and incoherent.
Two academic programs at Duke University are helping undergraduates experience a well-rounded education, and these programs could be copied by other universities. This is the message of a new report from the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, “The Decline and Revival of Liberal Learning at Duke: The Focus and Gerst Programs,” by Russell K. Nieli.
Duke is responding to a problem that afflicts many universities: There is no longer a “core curriculum. “ Students round out their education by selecting courses that meet loose “distribution requirements,” but the resulting education can be fragmented, limited, and incoherent.
Duke has countered this fragmentation by forming the Focus and Gerst programs.
To view the executive summary of the report, click here.
Duke University grew from a small liberal arts college founded before the Civil War into a major national university by the 1960s. Throughout those years, the school (named Trinity College until 1924) was known for its solid, traditional curriculum and its opposition to the racism that was prevalent across most of the South. Unfortunately, Duke was badly affected by the student upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Catering to students’ demands for greater control over their education, the university abandoned its old core curriculum in favor of a loose “distribution requirements” system, thereby discarding the idea that certain subjects are vital to a well-rounded education.
Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Richard Bishirjian is president of Yorktown University, an online liberal arts college dedicated to teaching the forms of knowledge we have inherited from western civilization.
Two events occurred in Washington, DC, in late February that could foreshadow a significant decline in the independence of American colleges and universities.
First, representatives of accrediting associations, state universities, and private colleges engaged in negotiated ‘rule-making’ with representatives of the Department of Education. This rule-making was to establish procedures by which college students are tested, and by which colleges and universities will be compared on the basis of that testing. The other event was even more ominous — an announcement that actions would be taken to control the independent system of accreditation of American higher education by establishing a national accreditation foundation.
House members approved this week a bill that outlines the procedures for nominating members to the UNC Board of Governors.
The bill sets specific deadlines for when nominations can occur, as well as when a vote must take place. Many of these procedures were missing in previous administrations and the publication of the rules brings transparency to the nomination process that has been missing in years past.
House members must approve eight members to fill their portion of the 16 open seats on the Board of Governors. These terms would begin on July 1.
RALEIGH – The heads of the University of North Carolina, the North Carolina Community Colleges, and the organization of independent colleges all appealed for money at a legislative committee hearing Tuesday.
Hope Williams, president of the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities, asked that the governor’s new EARN scholarship program apply to students in private schools as well as public. She made the request during a joint meeting of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Education. UNC President Erskine Bowles and Community College System President Martin Lancaster also discussed the budget recommendations made by Gov. Mike Easley last month.
Business and political leaders from Rocky Mount and eastern North Carolina have championed the idea of transforming North Carolina Wesleyan College into a public institution within the UNC system. A study commission authorized by the legislature is wrapping up its findings, and supporters are already referring to the school as “UNC-Rocky Mount.”
Their argument is that a public institution would spur economic development in Rocky Mount and eastern North Carolina and give more students access to higher education. Before the state commits to spending a substantial amount of money making a private college, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, into the 17th state-supported campus, the costs and benefits need to be carefully examined.