Let the Sunshine In
Last November, voters in Michigan overwhelmingly mandated an end to the use of racial and ethnic preferences in, among other things, public university admissions there. In a Democratic year in a blue state–and over the opposition of the educational establishment, most leaders in both political parties, the media, big business and labor unions, and even prominent clergy–58 percent of the people rejected this kind of discrimination.
One would think and hope that the citizens of North Carolina would feel the same way. Most Americans agree that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, people should be judged not on the color of their skin, but the content of their character. When it comes to higher education, that means treating all applicants under the same standards, not having different criteria depending on a student’s race.
Pope Conference Scheduled
The Pope Center will hold its annual conference on higher education, “Building Excellence into American Higher Education, on Saturday, October 27, 2007, at the Hilton Raleigh-Durham Airport at Research Triangle Park.
The keynote speaker will be Harry Lewis, former dean of Harvard College and author of “Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education.”
Gov. Easley releases budget recommendations
RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley on Thursday released his $20 billion budget recommendation to the General Assembly, which calls for a new $150 million scholarship grant as well as a special bond election for university projects.
The budget also increases spending on on-line education programs offered through the University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Community College System.
Easley presented his budget at a press conference in Raleigh. Officials from his administration will meet with legislators Tuesday morning to discuss further details of his budget proposal.
Where the Money Is?
The Raleigh News and Observer has been quarrelling with a group based in Chapel Hill called the Citizens for Higher Education (CHE). CHE is the second-largest political action committee (PAC) in the state, measured by the amounts of money given to legislators. Its goal is to ”build political support for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state’s other research universities.” In other words, it lobbies the legislature to obtain special benefits for the state’s leading public campuses.
Walter Williams to speak in Chapel Hill
Syndicated columnist and George Mason University Professor of Economics Walter Williams will deliver a speech on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on February 26.
Williams’ talk is entitled “The Legitimate Role of Government in Society.” He will deliver the speech at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Law, at 100 Ridge Road in Chapel Hill inRoom 5042, on Monday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. The UNC-Chapel Hill College Republicans and the UNC-Chapel Hill Federalist Society are jointly sponsoring the event.
Williams is also a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
V-Day: Stripping Away Modesty and Dignity
Ask a random stranger what “V-Day” is. You might get some interesting answers. Some will probably confuse it with VE-Day or VJ-Day, the days marking the end of World War II in Europe and Japan. Perhaps some will think it’s simply an abbreviation of Valentine’s Day. However, no incorrect guesses could possibly be as interesting, or as shocking, as the truth. V-Day stands for “Vagina Day” and takes place the same day as the more traditional Valentine’s Day.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of 17 universities in North Carolina hosting “The Vagina Monologues” on or around Valentine’s Day this year. Nationally, “Vagina Warriors” at over 1000 universities will participate in the unusual festivities.
Big Education Conference Misses the Boat
Every year since 1986, the Institute for Emerging Issues has held a highly publicized conference devoted to some current policy issue. For 2007, the theme was “Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina.” Sadly, there was very little said about actually transforming higher education in the state over the two days of the event – that is, how it might be made a better and more valuable experience for students. Instead, the speakers were mostly fixated on the supposed need for North Carolina (and the United States as a whole) to put more students into and through college.
In other words, it was about quantity rather than quality. What needs to change, according to most of the speakers, is the number of young Americans entering and graduating from college, not the educational worth of the courses they take. This made for a rather monochromatic conference, rather like attending a concert where every piece was just a variation on the same theme.
The main theme was that America’s higher education system is “underperforming.” Whereas in the past the United States had the highest percentage of its workforce holding college degrees of any nation, today a number of countries now surpass the U.S. and more are catching up. Several speakers, including Governor Mike Easley, asserted that this situation poses a threat to our standard of living. Businessman Thomas Tierney stated that there is a “direct relationship between completion of higher education and economic growth,” and since the U.S. is losing its “lead” over other nations, our standard of living is in jeopardy.
Bowles leads accountability charge in first year
CHAPEL HILL – When Erskine Bowles took over as president of the University of North Carolina system in 2006, his top priorities were to make the system more accountable to taxpayers and to make the system more efficient. His interest in those goals was among the reasons that Bowles, a former business executive and Clinton administration chief of staff, was the top choice as a replacement for then-president Molly Broad.
In his first year, Bowles lived up to his promises in these areas. Throughout the year, Bowles and the Board of Governors initiated policies that focused on ways to “manage this organization in the most efficient, effective manner we possibly can,” as he told the Board of Governors in his first address. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure we operate this place in a manner that you can be proud of, that any organization could be proud of,” Bowles said in January 2006.
Is Law School a Waste of Time?
Strange as it may seem, it is quite possible for someone who has never gone to law school to be a good attorney.
An article that appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal makes that exact point. In “Meet the Clients,” (available here) New York attorney Cameron Stracher writes, “One of the biggest problems with the current state of legal education is its emphasis on books rather than people. By reading about the law rather than engaging in it, students end up with the misperception that lawyers spend most of their time debating the niceties of the Rule Against Perpetuities rather than sorting out the messy, somewhat anarchic version of the truth that judges and courts care about.”
Is Leftist Bias on College Campuses a Myth?
Conventional wisdom has long claimed that campuses are hotbeds of leftist thought with professors far more likely to be Marxists than Republicans. Recent research has taken steps to substantiate these claims. Eight separate studies of faculty politics and campus climate have demonstrated that professors with a leftist philosophy vastly outnumber those with a conservative or libertarian philosophy at four-year universities across the nation. The various studies address two major themes: that faculty members are liberal and that their liberal inclinations can affect classroom performance.
Now, a new study conducted by John B. Lee for the American Federation of Teachers concludes that those studies documenting liberal bias on campus might be incorrect, or at least inconclusive. “The ‘Faculty Bias’ Studies: Science or Propaganda,” takes eight of the recent studies on faculty politics and judges them by five general tests of social science research. According to Lee, “basic methodological flaws keep a critical reader from accepting the conclusions suggested by the authors.”
Unfortunately, Lee misses the point. Instead of refuting the results, Lee devotes his time to dissecting the methods employed by the researchers who have found evidence of leftist domination. Quibbling over details shouldn’t detract from the seriousness of the problem. Whether the number of professors who use their classrooms to peddle their own socio-political views is in the millions or in single digits, it shouldn’t be tolerated at all.