Pending bills represent progress toward reforming higher ed in North Carolina
Pending bills represent progress toward reforming higher education in North Carolina. However, they are only scratching the surface of the work that needs to be done. The scandals at UNC-Chapel Hill show that the UNC system desperately needs to be made more transparent. And more attention should be directed to reducing the cost of a university education by making the system more efficient. Even so, some reform is better than none.
Big-name commencement speakers: revered tradition or a waste of time and money?
There is an argument to be made for giving students the commencement speaker they want. Many schools choose based on student input: it’s their graduation, and they or their parents paid hard-earned money to make that happen. But how many of those students would spend money on a commencement speaker if given the choice to save it?
Brown University doubles down on "diversity"
Despite howls of denial, there can be no doubt that "diversity" hiring (i.e., hiring faculty who wouldn’t have been hired but for their race, ethnicity, gender expression, etc.) produces "diversity hires" with lower academic qualifications just as surely as lowering admission standards to enroll more underrepresented minorities admits students who have lower qualifications.
Reforms aimed at fighting grade inflation are falling short
The methods that some universities have devised to combat grade inflation—capping high grades and adding more “contextual” information to transcripts—are problematic. While it may be good for universities to experiment with some of these reforms, they don’t appear to be final solutions to a complex problem that has been festering for decades.
Scandal reveals two cultures at Chapel Hill
Among the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill there are two quite different views of the university’s recent athletic/academic scandal.
I wish my job didn’t exist
I love working for Norwich University, but I wish my job did not exist. When I tell folks this, I always get a confused look or a laugh. I follow up by explaining that I’m part of the administrative bloat that universities have taken on to ensure we’re dotting all the “I’s” and crossing all the “T’s” of state and federal regulations.
All diversity, all the time, everybody, right now
Diversity proponents are pushing an extreme agenda that will go far beyond academia’s already major commitment to the concept. An event at UNC-Chapel Hill illlustrates just how far they intend to go.
10 ways the Ivory Tower is eroding American values
Students are not actually trained to think for themselves. And radical professors and administrators simply replace one dogma with another instead of creating open-minded critical thinkers. In other words, professors spend their time tearing down American values only to replace them with alternate campus values.
Two conflicting visions of higher education, Part II
Higher education policy must begin with a vision and a sense of purpose, without which it becomes an incoherent jumble that contradicts itself and pulls in conflicting directions. One problem facing academia today is that it has long been largely subject to one vision, and now a very different, competing vision is emerging that seeks grand reforms.
Two conflicting visions of higher education, Part I
Higher education policy must begin with a vision and a sense of purpose, without which it becomes an incoherent jumble that contradicts itself and pulls in conflicting directions. One problem facing academia today is that it has long been largely subject to one vision, and now a very different, competing vision is emerging that seeks grand reforms.