Three North Carolina universities received praise recently from a higher education research organization headed by the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. Portfolio of Excellence, just released by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which is chaired by Lynne V. Cheney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, reports on “exemplary higher education projects across the country.”
Talk of a new women’s center at UNC-Wilmington has at least one student organization asking questions. According to John Kaiser, Chairman of the Conservative Leadership Group (CLG) at UNC-W, it’s not the idea of having a women’s center at the university that upsets members of his group, but the secrecy surrounding the issue.
Fully in keeping with the idea of the university as a place to identify real social problems and address them honestly, all three research institutions in North Carolina hosted performances of Eve Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues” and taught students to find empowerment in reciting an awkward Latinate term despite rumors of the fearsome social dictate against doing so.
Talk of a Women’s Center at UNC-Wilmington has at least one student organization asking questions. According to John Kaiser, Chairman of the Conservative Leadership Group (CLG) at UNC-W, it’s not the idea of having a women’s center at the University that upsets members of his group, but the secrecy surrounding the issue.
N.C. State Visiting Professor John L. Hubisz works to rid inaccuracies from textbooks, specifically middle-school science textbooks.
Boosting need-based financial aid could help increase overall student enrollment as well as minority enrollment at UNC-system schools, according to Dr. Judith Pulley, Vice President for Academic Planning for UNC. UNC leaders are asking the state for an estimated $19.5 million (for the 2001-03 budget biennium) to boost financial aid. Last year, they received $6.3 million.
UNC wants $28.5 million and the Community College System $61.5 million in order to make faculty salaries competitive with peer institutions.
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While 41 percent of non-Hispanic whites attend college in the United States, only 22 percent of Hispanic youths go, according to “Education=Success.”
The diversity that N.C. State’s Rupert Nacoste seeks is one that understands that a university is a place for the conflict of ideas.
Accreditation is one of those “the emperor is wearing no clothes” phenomena overloading our educational system.
The report “Measuring Up 2000” makes North Carolina look good in some respects and bad in others. But before rushing to praise state policymakers where the grades are high or criticize them where the grades are low, we need to examine several questionable assumptions that undermine the validity of those grades.
