UNC’s Federal ‘Overhead’ Left Untouched — For Now

May 23, 2003 ·

Last year, 15 universities comprising the University of North Carolina system (excluding the N.C. School of the Arts) received $123.6 million in what are known as “overhead receipts” from federal research grants. That money, which the UNC system prefers to call “facilities and administrative receipts,” is money given on top of the actual grant amount that is intended to defray the administrative and institutional costs in conducting the actual research.

Campus divestiture movements diverge on targets

Mar 21, 2003 ·

Movements are underway on college campuses nationwide to cause them to “divest” in holdings that support some cause promoters find odious. The campaigns hearken back to those in the 1980s where colleges refused to do business with South Africa because of its policy of apartheid. The most well-known current campaign is the one seeking universities to divest in Israel, but there is another campaign underway to have universities divest in terror.

Defense of free expression and inquiry at UNC-CH not thorough enough

Feb 21, 2003 ·

“I have been proud,” announced Chancellor James Moeser of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in his “State of the University” speech this past September, “to speak for the entire community in defending our fundamental rights as Americans from any who would seek to limit the scope of free expression and inquiry. In the past 12 months, UNC has shown the world what it is to be a great, free, American public university.”

New web site offers data backing up grade-inflation concerns

Feb 7, 2003 ·

A Duke University professor of environmental science has reinvigorated the national debate over grade inflation. Professor Stuart Rojstaczer announced a web site, GradeInflation.com, wherein he has compiled data on over 50 colleges and universities nationwide showing how average grade-point-averages at them over time have risen. Rojstaczer also announced his findings in a Jan. 28 Washington Post column.

Petty UNC-CH officials rebuffed in attempt to de-recognize Christian group

Jan 10, 2003 ·

The laurels were still fresh from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s defense of academic freedom and religious pluralism in its requirement that incoming freshmen read portions of the Koran. Nevertheless, UNC-CH found itself facing a lawsuit threat from a Christian student organization, which said the school had threatened to revoke its official recognition on campus.

The Top 10 Nuttiest Campus Events in N.C. for 2002

Dec 20, 2002 ·

One of the fun things about a new year is looking back and razzing the events of the old. January, after all, is named after the Latin god Janus, who has two faces, one looking forward and the other backward. With a new year fast approaching, let us look back on the nuttiest, most ridiculous happenings in higher education in North Carolina in 2002 — and look forward to more of the same in 2003.

Conservatives on campus speak out against ideological intolerance

Dec 13, 2002 ·

“Down with ‘Diversity,'” proclaims the October 2002 cover of New Sense magazine at Duke University, published by the students of the Duke Conservative Union. “Trampling UNC’s Intellectual Diversity,” proclaimed the March 2002 cover of Carolina Review, a conservative student publication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Review cover, which featured a grinning donkey treading underfoot the word “DIVERSITY,” also asked, “If all your professors are Democrats, is Carolina diverse?”

No excuses for media mistreatment of UNC-CH salary study

Nov 8, 2002 ·

A recent study of faculty salaries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has revealed a significant salary gap between white male faculty and minority faculty. Now that this pay gap has been proven, it’s time for the university to address this obvious pay bias.
The next step is hard but clear: UNC-CH must take corrective action to pay white males more. The good news is at least they’re now getting paid more than females.

New General-Education Curriculum Proposed for UNC-Chapel Hill

Oct 25, 2002 ·

Over a hundred faculty worked with a handful of students and staff members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to produce a proposed new general education curriculum for the university.
Their report, “Making Connections: An Initial Proposal to Revise the General Education Curriculum,” is a significant step toward the first major overhaul of UNC-CH’s general education curriculum since 1980.