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…
University Administrators’ Pandemic Power Grab
Universities’ profligate spending habits have caught up with them after substantial losses in student enrollments due to COVID-19. As undergraduate enrollment fell by 4.4 percent and students had fewer “on-campus…
UVA and the Dangerous Politicization of Our College Campuses
It is no secret that our colleges and universities have witnessed a sea change in campus culture over the past two decades. Political correctness has run rampant. High-profile incidents such…
Heavy Is the Head that Wears the Crown
Since 2015, the University of North Carolina system’s Board of Governors (BOG) has endured one controversy after another, beginning with protests over decisions to close three “academic centers” for being…
The Last Refuge of Pure Meritocracy
Racial consideration for college admissions hearkens back to Grutter v. Bollinger, the landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 2003. It held that affirmative action programs can pass muster as…
Police Education Is Not Police Training: Virtue Signaling Is Not the Road to Improvement
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, a number of colleges have cut back their interactions with local police departments and are redesigning their law enforcement programs. The University of…
America Wants Its Public Colleges Back and The Chronicle Isn’t Happy About It
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently released a report decrying the politicization of public higher education governance, entitled The New Order: How the Nation’s Partisan Divisions Consumed Public-College Boards and…
Free Speech and Liberal Education–Two Endangered Pillars of Society
Fifteen years ago, American higher education was beset with serious problems, especially rising costs, politicization of the curriculum, the mania over diversity, and falling academic standards. At that time, however,…
Using ‘Transparency’ to Obscure: The Daily Tar Heel and UNC’s Title IX Records
“Sunlight,” Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” Few aspects of the contemporary academy more need enhanced sunlight…
How Many Students Are Hospitalized with COVID-19? NC Colleges Don’t Know
For college campuses across North Carolina, the fall ushered in a less-than-ideal reality. The coronavirus, although under greater control than in the spring, was—and is—widely circulating. Within the first few…