Let’s Regulate Colleges Like Businesses
Colleges do not look like for-profit firms selling investments. After all, colleges are primarily nonprofits or state agencies, which, for our purposes, are treated equally. Nevertheless, colleges behave like for-profit…
How Long Can Universities Defer Maintenance?
You would think that the last thing colleges and universities need is more buildings—given declining enrollments, online classes, and changing attitudes about college. But that is not the way university…
How Workforce Education Can Boost Earnings and Fill Jobs
Republicans and Democrats alike agree about the importance of workforce training. They’re right: Despite a recent labor-market cooling, there are still 7.7 million unfilled jobs in the United States. Unfortunately,…
Blueprint for Reform: Surviving the Demographic Cliff
Blueprint for Reform: Surviving the Demographic Cliff is a strategic guide for state legislators and university trustees addressing the challenges posed by declining college enrollments and the anticipated demographic cliff—a…
Parents Aren’t Saving Enough for College
College has long been thought necessary for success later in life, and it is often assumed to be the best pathway for recent high-school graduates. While that may have been…
Thank a Taxpayer for UNC’s Low Tuition
Earlier this month, the UNC Board of Governors began an important conversation about possible tuition increases for some in-state undergraduate students in FY 2026-27. That shouldn’t overshadow North Carolina’s remarkable…
Colleges Are Wrong to Oppose Attendance-Taking
Are the men and women who staff America’s colleges rugged individualists determined to swat away the overweening hand of the state? Or are they simply greedy? An ongoing dispute over…
The Debt-Free Four-Year Degree
A recent Gallup survey found that confidence in America’s colleges and universities has plummeted in the past decade, with only 36 percent of today’s adults expressing “a great deal” or “quite…
Faculty Salaries Are Complicated
The Coalition for Carolina recently noted that UNC-Chapel Hill has dropped out of the top-10 “average adjusted faculty salary” rankings for the 2023-24 academic year, as measured against a select…
The Imminent Student-Loan Disaster We’re Not Talking About
Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked the administration’s ultra-generous new student-loan repayment plan, which…