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 … Continue reading “Does Education Matter?”
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.
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….”
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.”
An idea dating from 1789 has recently been resurrected – the creation of a national university for the United States. George Washington proposed exactly that in his first inaugural address and two young idealists have now set up an organization that will push for the creation of such a university.
Writing in the June 16th Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), Chris Myers Asch, chairman of the Campaign for a U.S. Service Academy argues that the U.S. needs to have a national university “designed to cultivate a steady flow of first-rate young leaders dedicated to civic leadership.” (Another article on the subject is available here.) Asch and Shawn Raymond, both of whom taught in the Teach for America program and subsequently founded a non-profit group to provide after-school tutoring to low-income students, are promoting the establishment of a United States Public Service Academy because they think it’s time to “tap into a renewed sense of patriotism and civic obligation among young people.”
Every year as students graduate and enter the workforce, the media is prone to write stories that chronicle the lives of selected students as they struggle with student loan repayments. They usually write sad pieces on how loan payments make it difficult for students to live as they’d wish.
A recent study by the College Board entitled “How Much Debt Is Too Much? Defining Benchmarks for Manageable Student Debt,” by Sandy Baum of Skidmore College and Saul Schwartz of Carleton University, jumps into that issue. The authors, while finding that only a small minority of students have trouble managing their student debts, suggests several “policy” changes that they believe should be made.
The body of the paper consists of the authors’ analysis of an appropriate “benchmark” for how much debt it’s prudent for students to have. Their concern is that with too much debt, former students will have to sacrifice or delay other major things in life, such as home ownership. After much analysis and discussion, they say that “repayment will rarely be a problem if payments are below 7 percent of income and that few students would be well advised to exceed 17 percent.”
RALEIGH – A state legislator is calling for a controversial budget provision seen by many as a gift to athletic booster organizations to be overturned before the costs get out of hand.
Rep. George Cleveland, R-Onslow, said that a budget provision in last year’s budget that allowed UNC institutions to consider out-of-state residents as in-state residents for purposes of awarding scholarships was bad fiscal policy for taxpayers. Cleveland has since introduced legislation to overturn the provision. The bill is House Bill 2423.
Taxpayers, Cleveland said, should not front the costs of a program that helps out-of-state students.
“I don’t see why taxpayers should worry about it,” Cleveland said about scholarship funding. “That is a school problem, not a taxpayer problem.”
When I first saw the email heading – “Could NC Wesleyan become a UNC school?” – I thought it was going to be a joke.
But as I read through the news item, I found out that several members of the General Assembly are quite serious about wanting to have North Carolina Wesleyan College be taken over by the University of North Carolina system. The idea is laughable, but they’re serious.
A provision was included in the Senate budget bill to study (at a cost to the taxpayers of $50,000) the feasibility of bringing this liberal arts college that is affiliated with the United Methodist Church into the big UNC congregation. Why on earth would we want to start ladling public money into a school that has managed quite well for half a century on funds raised from willing donors and students?
Large donations to colleges and universities have a troubled history, but nothing compares with the legal battle between Princeton University and the Robertson family. This fight has important lessons for anyone who is contemplating a gift to an institution of higher education.
Here’s the background.
Charles Robertson was a Princeton graduate, class of 1926. His wife inherited a fortune through her grandfather, the founder of the A&P grocery chain. In 1961, the Robertsons created the Robertson Foundation and endowed it with $35 million worth of A&P stock. The certificate of incorporation stated the purposes of the Foundation:
“To establish or maintain and support, at Princeton University, and as a part of the Woodrow Wilson School, a Graduate School, where men and women dedicated to public service may prepare themselves for careers in government service, with particular emphasis on the education of such persons for careers in those areas of the Federal Government that are concerned with international relations and affairs….”
RALEIGH – The University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Community College System are slated to receive budget increases of more than 10 percent in a budget proposal released Tuesday by Gov. Mike Easley.
Easley’s budget announcement, which was announced during a press conference, came on the same day legislators returned to Raleigh for the start of the short session. More information about the budget is expected to be released Monday during a Joint Appropriations Committee meeting that will include a budget briefing.
In all, Easley is recommending a state budget of $18.85 billion, up from $17.2 billion for the current fiscal year. The budget request increases spending thanks in part to a $2 billion surplus in revenues.
