Costs

American colleges and universities spend billions of dollars a year from state, federal, and private sources. The following articles identify ways to cut costs and ensure that public investment in higher education provides value to students, taxpayers, and society.

Confessions of a Recovering Higher Education Bubble Hawk

May 27, 2015 ·

My previous beliefs regarding higher education’s impending doom—shared by many others—were reinforced by pundits who sounded alarms whenever a new report predicted catastrophe or an insolvent college made headlines. I fell into a trap identified by Thomas Jefferson in a 1787 letter to Charles Thomson, then secretary of the Continental Congress: “The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.”

Is it Time to Cast Off the Tradition of Three-Month Summer Vacations?

May 25, 2015 ·

College is no longer just for recent high school graduates; in North Carolina’s community college system, the third-largest system in the nation, the average student is 28. College students of the older, “non-traditional” variety need flexibility. They often have steady jobs, families, and other priorities, and they would prefer the option to finish as quickly as possible, without semester-long breaks. Does it really make sense that they are tied to the same academic calendar as their younger peers who prefer summers off?

Pending bills represent progress toward reforming higher ed in North Carolina

May 11, 2015 ·

Pending bills represent progress toward reforming higher education in North Carolina. However, they are only scratching the surface of the work that needs to be done. The scandals at UNC-Chapel Hill show that the UNC system desperately needs to be made more transparent. And more attention should be directed to reducing the cost of a university education by making the system more efficient. Even so, some reform is better than none.

I wish my job didn’t exist

Apr 29, 2015 ·

I love working for Norwich University, but I wish my job did not exist. When I tell folks this, I always get a confused look or a laugh. I follow up by explaining that I’m part of the administrative bloat that universities have taken on to ensure we’re dotting all the “I’s” and crossing all the “T’s” of state and federal regulations.

Tenure has its purpose, but shouldn’t last a lifetime

Apr 13, 2015 ·

Tenure entrenches academics in their jobs. While it’s a bulwark of academic freedom, tenure also shields those who are not currently earning their keep, as well as many who never did. The current system stymies innovation, most clearly in the area of hiring new faculty. I call for changing it.

The libertarian roots of the Lumina Foundation, Part I

Apr 3, 2015 ·

Major donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation dominate higher education philanthropy today. Most are aware of the Gates Foundation’s roots in Bill’s vast wealth, but the story of how Lumina came to be is more complicated.