Academics

Future leaders in business, government, and civil society need more than just job skills. The following articles defend the value of liberal education, with a focus on academic quality and rigor, fundamental knowledge, and the ideas that have shaped Western Civilization. They also scrutinize academic programs that have departed from these ideals in the name of progressive ideology.


Dropping Scores to Admit More Minorities Means “Strange Bedfellows”

Large public university systems in California, Texas and Florida may have increased minority enrollment in the face of an end to affirmative action. But the change may not be the result of increased minority test performance. In fact, many schools are dropping the SAT and ACT academic achievement exams as admissions requirements altogether, according to a recent USA Today report, automatically admitting students who are top-ranked in their high schools.





Meredith Student

A Meredith College student says she wants to clear up misconceptions about the controversy that disrupted her class last spring when political science professor Clyde Frazier released his manuscript “Is Masculinity Obsolete?” Contrary to several reports, the attacks on Frazier’s manuscript stemmed not from students in the class, but from feminist professors and students who obtained and circulated the manuscript after hearing about it from members of the class.



A Great Place to Party? Survey Says… Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received the dubious honor of being rated on www.PartySchool.com – a web site that rates schools’ party scenes, gives advice on planning parties (including a list of drinking games “to get the party started”), and provides the “world’s only patented, scientifically proven cure” for combatting hangovers. PartySchool.com awarded UNC-CH with 4 out of 5 stars for its “wild” party scene.


NEA Gives Thumbs Up to Distance Education

The National Education Association (NEA) this week released a study showing positive support among NEA-member faculty for distance education. The study polled more than 400 plus instructors who had taught distance-learning courses and 130 who had not in an effort to assess distance learning’s strengths and weaknesses. Currently, one in 10 higher-education NEA members teaches a distance-learning course.


College Graduates Don’t Know Much About English

The average English major graduates knowing much about racial, ethnic, and sexual politics, but very little about literary history and classic authors, according to a new study of undergraduate English programs by the National Association of Scholars, a higher education reform group in Princeton, New Jersey.


Who Is James Moeser?

On April 14, James Moeser was elected chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Because UNC opted for a secret search, however, North Carolinians were left wondering who James Moeser was and what he could do for UNC-CH.