NCAA should leave academic requirements to schools
It must be getting close to college football season, because my mind keeps wondering to all things college football, the NCAA, and the Fiesta Bowl.
Yet, when I think of the NCAA today there are more important things that come to mind besides if West Virginia University have a shot a national championship. With recent actions to declare some high schools as ineligible to receive accreditation from the NCAA because of weak academics, making it harder for their students to participate in college sports, we are left scratching our heads. Where do concerns about academic quality fit into the realm of the NCAA?
Does Education Matter?
Does education matter? Alison Wolf addresses the question in her new book, “Does Education Matter: Myths about Education and Economic Growth.” The author, who holds the Sir Roy Griffiths professorship…
Drafts give glimpses into higher education report
Higher education institutions in the United States must improve in “a drastic way,” according to a draft version of the commission that has been given the task of assessing American higher education and its future. The final version of the report is expected sometime in August, but even the draft has sparked great interest.
The draft has been circulating since the end of June and is seen as a glimpse into the recommendations that will be included in the final version. The report is being produced by a national committee initiated by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Among the members of the commission is former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt.
A second draft has begun to circulate. Missing from the second draft are some of the more hard-hitting criticisms of the current higher education system.
John Edwards wants “greater access to college” – good policy or bad?
In an interview published in the July 7th The Chronicle of Higher Education, former North Carolina senator John Edwards set forth his views on higher education, arguing in favor of federal policies to make college education nearly as universal as K-12 is, with the government picking up the expense for students who can’t afford it.
Let’s take a look at his arguments, which are similar to those of former governor Jim Hunt and others who think that the country needs to “invest” more in higher education.
The first question from the interviewer asked how important a college education is for the poorest students to succeed. Edwards replied, “It’s everything….Education is absolutely critical…and that’s going to be more intensely true going forward than it is today….”
From the home office in Chapel Hill, the top 15 pork barrel higher education projects
At some point today, legislators will give final approval to the budget compromise that was hatched out before the Fourth of July weekend. It marks the end of the budget process that began in May and extended just days past the start of the 2007 fiscal year.
Like any governmental budget, this one has enough pork to make a pig farmer smile. This year’s higher education budget contains many generous helpings.
In honor of the passage of the state budget, the Pope Center unveils its list of the top 15 pork barrel projects. We determined projects for the list based on two questions. Is the project really needed? Should it be privately funded? While some of the projects in the list seem worthwhile, it would be better if they were funded through voluntary contributions.
So without further adoo and in true David Letterman style, from the home office on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, here is this year’s “Top 15 Higher Education Pork Barrel Projects.”
Why college graduates don’t write well
We keep hearing that America’s colleges and universities are the envy of the world, which seems to imply that they impart to students an extremely high level of knowledge and deep, refined skills necessary for success in today’s world. The trouble with that idea is the fact that many students manage to obtain college degrees despite the fact that they don’t even have the basic language and math skills that would have been taken for granted among high school students fifty years ago. Last year’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy report showed that basic literacy of college graduates is low and falling and a new paper released this week by the Pope Center shows that college graduates also have weak writing skills and explains why that is the case.
In “English 101: Prologue to Literacy or Postmodern Moonshine?” retired English professor Nan Miller, who taught writing for twenty-six years, examines the changes in the typical freshman composition course. She laments that those crucial courses are now dominated by “composition theorists.” Miller writes that “Composition is now taught according to their vision, in spite of evidence that shows a sharp decline in literacy among college graduates.” The ideas of the theorists, she contends, “hold students hostage to a bad idea.”
Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education
People usually wait until they have retired to write books that air a good deal of dirty laundry. Maybe it’s a mark in favor of tenure that a professor who…
Miller Discusses Problems with College Writing
This is a portion of Nan Miller’s speech to the John Locke Foundation Monday. Miller discussed a recent study examining college writing courses to a crowd of 40 people. This excerpt shows typical conversations one may have about college writing programs.
Imagine for a minute that you have a daughter who is a freshman at Carolina. That�s the question I put to you. What if� (when the ink is barely dry on the tuition check) you had this conversation with your daughter. I�ll call her Page, and let�s say that she has been at Carolina for about a month and has left Chapel Hill for her very first weekend at home. She might be bursting with the details about her social life, but you are impatient to hear about the courses you just wrote the big check for. So you interrupt�
Study Examines College Writing Courses
RALEIGH � Postmodern theorists have changed the way composition courses in college are taught, eliminating literature and grammar instruction by imposing group discussions with little involvement from the teachers, according to a new study released Monday by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
The study, written by Nan Miller, a former English professor at North Carolina State University and Meredith College, discusses several fallacies that she believes have severely lowered the quality of writing among college students.
Jim Hunt believes colleges are not measuring up
In a report recently issued by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt and businessman Thomas Tierney address the question “How does American higher education measure up for the 21st century?” Not very well, they conclude.
I happen to think their conclusion is correct, but not for the reasons they give. The difficulty is that Hunt and Tierney are obsessed with the notion that we have a quantity problem. We don’t. We have a quality problem.
The tone for the report is set by former New Mexico governor Garrey Carruthers in his foreword. He states that, due to the demands of the “knowledge-based global economy,” it is imperative that “more Americans must prepare for, enroll in, and successfully complete degree and certificate programs.” Carruthers provides not the tiniest bit of evidence to support his assertion, but this is only the foreword. He calls for government, schools and colleges, and public leaders to “ratchet up the educational level” of the populace.