Higher Education for Illegal Immigrants
Should the UNC system enroll illegal immigrants?
Harry Potter Goes to College
Editor’s note: The latest installment in the wizarding movies, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will likely make an appearance under many Christmas trees this year. A more important question is whether the books should make an appearance in college courses. This article was originally published in the Charlotte Observer on August 9, 2007.
Universities across the country are adding Harry Potter to the curriculum in disciplines as diverse as English, philosophy, history, Latin, and science. Edmund M. Kern, an associate professor of history at Lawrence University and author of the reader’s guide The Wisdom of Harry Potter, is teaching an entire course on Harry Potter this fall.
The generation of students entering college this year has a mania for J. K. Rowling’s seven-book series about a young boy’s adventures in a fantastic magical world. Harry Potter’s ongoing battle against evil, with its themes of choice and consequences, life and death, and love and hate, reverberates among this generation as Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five captured the students of the 1960s.
But are Harry Potter books good enough for the college curriculum?
All Rights, But No Freedom
Mock constitutional convention at UNC-Chapel Hill produces a document inspired by radical politics.
Accountability – What Is It?
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
You can send your son to college, but you can’t make him think.”
This little ditty ran through my mind as I was trying to understand the accountability movement of colleges and universities. Under pressure from the federal government, higher education institutions are scrambling to find ways to measure and report “learning outcomes” – that is, to show that students learn something after four years at their institution. This week, at a Washington, D.C., meeting of a Department of Education accreditation advisory group, that pressure will increase.
Fifty years ago, the student was accountable for learning, not the college.
Freedom of Speech, But Not for Trustees?
Is it a college trustee’s duty to follow or lead?
In Defense of a Dutiful Trustee
On November 26, The Dartmouth published a column called In Violation of a Trustee’s Duty, by Bill Montgomery of the Dartmouth Class of 1952. The article called for Todd Zywicki’s punishment or forced resignation as a member of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees because of remarks made by Zywicki while speaking at the 2007 Pope Center Conference.
Since we at the Pope Center are not privy to all of the insider information at Dartmouth, we cannot comment about all of the charges against Zywicki by Mr. Montgomery. However, we expect that the charges we know nothing about are no more substantial than the charges for which we do have knowledge, and those are completely without merit.
Meet the New Boss
Most people expected the “insider” to become the next president of the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS). The big question was, which insider would the governing State Board of Community Colleges choose at its December 6 meeting?
In what might be considered a triumph of the visionary over the financial expert, Dr. Scott Ralls, the current president of Craven Community College in New Bern, was selected over Kennon Briggs, the system’s vice president for business and finance for the past ten years. Before becoming Craven CC’s president, the 43-year-old Ralls was the NCCCS vice president for economic and workforce Development.
Another Battle in the Student Fees War
At most colleges and universities, each student is required to pay fees in addition to tuition and living expenses. Those fees are used to pay for a vast array of things on campus, whether or not the student has any interest in them.
Over the years, there has been a lot of litigation over student fees, with some students arguing that the system for collecting and distributing money is not just unfair but illegal. On November 20, a federal court in New York threw another wrench into the already convoluted legality of student fees.
Campus Safety vs. Civil Liberties
The slaughter of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech by a disturbed gunman on April 16, 2007 had an impact on the American campus similar to the impact the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had on the entire nation. It became more than a loss of lives; it was a reminder that danger can strike at any time, and a warning shot urging a new vigilance. In the immediate aftermath, universities across the country rushed to tighten up their emergency procedures and to increase safety precautions.
Within two days of the shooting, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper initiated the formation of a task force to study the emergency readiness of local colleges. Shortly after, UNC President Erskine Bowles convened The Campus Safety Task Force to specifically scrutinize the UNC system’s preparedness. The Task Force’s final report was introduced six months later at the November Board of Governors meeting by Leslie Winner, UNC system vice president and General Counsel who chaired the commission. The Board of Governors passed the task force’s proposals resoundingly.
Exporting and Importing at the University
T. Norman Van Cott is a professor of economics at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.
I’ve been an economics professor at public universities for going on 40 years, the last 30 at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. In the parlance of economics, this means I’ve been a long-time “exporter” of economics knowledge. Those paying my salary –students, parents, and taxpayers — have been “importers.” Students and parents import voluntarily. Taxpayers less than voluntarily.
Considerable effort goes into these exports. Noble and self-sacrificing on my part? Hardly. Rather, economics exports are a means to an end for me, a self-serving end no less. To wit, my exports enable me to buy — that is, import — things produced by others. An amazing array of things. Things ranging from life-sustaining necessities to frivolous amenities (including leisure activities). Far more of these things, in fact, than I ever could ever obtain were I producing them myself. The bottom line is that I export in order to import.