Commission Turns Thumbs Down on “UNC-Rocky Mount” Proposal
Last week, a study commission examining the feasibility of bringing North Carolina Wesleyan College into the University of North Carolina system released its findings and recommendations.
The study commission was created through legislation backed by legislators from eastern North Carolina last year. Political and business leaders from Rocky Mount had hoped that adding North Carolina Wesleyan into the UNC system would give a large boost to the region’s economy, described by one supporter as like a “Third World country.” While acknowledging the economic concerns, the report made it clear that UNC had to look at what was best for the entire state not just that particular region.
Missing the Mark in Higher Education
The old saying, “be careful what you wish for,” is especially apt when it comes to public policy, whose consequences seldom reflect intentions. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education may be about to prove this adage true once again.
Protecting Against “Heterosexism” — for $200,000?
Harvard’s president Derek Bok has written that universities have something in common with gambling addicts and exiled royalty – there is never enough money. One reason why that’s true is that people on campus are almost always spending other people’s money and when that’s the case, there’s a strong tendency to demand all sorts of unnecessary things. After all, if available money doesn’t get spent on what you want, it will get spent on what someone else wants.
The story of the proposed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Center at NC State is a good illustration of the infighting that erupts when interest groups battle over how to spend other people’s money.
Senate introduces flurry of higher education bills
RALEIGH – Bills that would provide full funding for all University of North Carolina budget requests, create a ROPE Scholars program, and alter tax deductions for contributions to 529 plans were among the bills introduced in the State Senate Wednesday.
The introductions came during a busy day in the General Assembly that marked the deadline for bills in the State Senate to be filed with the Senate Principal Clerk’s office. The House has a similar deadline of April 18 for public bills and May 9 for appropriation bills.
300,000 UNC students in ten years?
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.
Duke Praised for Educational Innovations
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.
Duke Brings Coherence to Curriculum, Says Policy Report from Pope Center
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.
Executive Summary: The Decline and Revival of Liberal Learning at Duke: The Focus and Gerst Programs
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.
Higher education leaders plea case to legislators
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.
Easley’s budget request makes rounds at General Assembly
RALEIGH – A week after Gov. Mike Easley released his record-setting $20 billion budget, legislators were at work dissecting the proposal.
Members of Easley’s budget team were in the General Assembly Tuesday and Wednesday providing legislators details of the proposals included in the budget for the 2007-09 biennium. With Easley’s budget being released last Thursday, it was difficult for appropriations meeting to start until now, because members typically leave Raleigh following Thursday’s sessions.
Easley’s budget, as has been the case throughout his administration, calls for increases in the spending on education, which comprises 58 percent of the governor’s budget. The University of North Carolina would receive an appropriation of $2.7 billion, an 11.3 percent increase from the 2006-07 appropriations. The percent increase far outpaces those of other branches of governments.