The High Cost of Campus Parking
When students pay tuition, they also pay a mix of mandatory and optional fees. One constant headache for students has been paying for a parking permit to leave their car…
Did You Know? COVID-19 Budget Cuts Hit Students and Profs, Not Admins
It only took a global pandemic to force public and private universities to cut their spending. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that about 650,000 jobs were cut in the…
To Fight Student Loan Debt, North Carolina Schools Need to Stop Pushing Parent PLUS Loans
Student loan debt has received more attention lately, but one aspect has been left out of the debate: parents taking on loans for their children. While undergraduate students generally can…
Biden Could Shake Up Higher Ed—If He Doesn’t Endorse the Status Quo
Now that President Biden has been sworn in as the 46th president, he wants to hit the ground running and attend to urgent priorities. One of his first moves was…
Did You Know? UNC Schools Will Get Millions in COVID-19 Funding
Last week, Congress approved the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, a $2.4 trillion spending package that includes $23 billion in aid for public and non-profit colleges and universities. The relief…
Reforming Higher Ed in 2021
The year 2020 brought changes that colleges would have never made by choice. Enrollment declines, remote classes, and dramatic employee cuts (for faculty and some staff alike) were unthinkable a…
Did You Know? In 2020, Students Stopped Transferring
Students listened to public health advice for 2020: stay at home. A report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that transfer students fell by 8.1 percent compared to…
Money for Nothing: The Worst of Student Loan Debt Hits College Dropouts
I can’t remember a single alternative to college proposed to me, for me, my entire school-age life. That I would go to college after high school was presented by adults…
Leaving the Blight of Higher Education: Part I–Farewell, Students
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. In May of 2020, my wife and I took our retirement after more than 30 years of teaching college, the…
NC State’s Quixotic Foreign Language Requirement
For decades, universities have required students to fulfill a foreign language requirement. However, some research has shown that two semesters of a foreign language appears to have no meaningful effect…