“Rubber stamping” is the norm at the State Board of Community Colleges
Attend a North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges meeting and you are likely to fall asleep as board members and community college system office staffers take turns dispassionately checking off the month’s agenda items to unanimous approval.
State officials seek to reform UNC’s teacher preparation programs
Teacher quality was the central theme of an education summit held by the UNC system’s Board of Governors at the SAS Campus in Cary, North Carolina, on January 27.
Saving academia from itself
Today’s new independent academic centers were conceived to solve a real and difficult modern problem—how to counter academia’s gradual purging of a vast array of ideas and knowledge that are still very much alive and central to the nation’s intellectual and political dialogues.
Americans used to save for college; moves toward making it free are not progress
I am strongly committed to higher education, especially in the sciences and math where we are lagging other countries. I also understand that there are students of limited means, and they need a hand up in life. But we seem to no longer draw rational lines between serious students who need assistance, and the many non-serious students who squander it.
What progressives need to know
George Ehrhardt, one of the few avowed conservative political scientists at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, has published an article that attempts to explain to the political left what the political right’s views are on higher education.
President Ross, it’s not too late for a legacy
Looking back at Ross’s first four years at the helm, we see leadership marked by tentativeness and preservation of the status quo. But as Ross begins his fifth and final year as president, there are opportunities for him to champion meaningful changes and to leave a positive legacy.
How the president’s "free community college" proposal will affect one state
The new federal proposal that the president is calling "America’s College Promise" is short on details but has inspired much commentary.
We’ll hear more on Tuesday in the State of the Union address and in President Obama’s next budget proposal, but he gave us enough information about the idea in a speech for us to estimate the potential program’s cost to North Carolina taxpayers.
Stanley Fish on the five schools of thought about academic freedom
When we speak about “academic freedom” what, exactly, do we mean? How far should academic freedom extend? How do we know when someone claiming it has actually abused it?
Should the University of North Carolina enhance its “global brand”?
Over the past two years, the University of North Carolina has been implementing recommendations laid out by the General Administration and Board of Governors in their 2013 report, “Our Time, Our Future: the UNC Compact with North Carolina.” For example, the system has streamlined the transfer process for students going from community colleges to UNC and defined “core competencies” that all graduates should possess.
6 politically diverse social psychologists agree: the field needs more diversity
One of the most honest and revealing academic articles in a long time will soon be published in the premier journal in social psychology.