Why Innovation Beats Politics in Reforming Higher Education
There is a powerful lesson in the emergence of companies like Uber for those who wish to reform higher education. All the focus tends to be on political and policy debates, but meanwhile innovators are busy working around the status quo without waiting for permission or consensus.
Election 2016: Where the Republican Candidates Stand on Higher Education
Higher education is often an ignored issue in presidential campaigns. The 2016 campaign, however, may be different. The focus on higher education looks to be unusually strong, with issues such as student debt affecting many millions of potential voters and receiving multiple mentions in campaign speeches and interviews on both sides of the aisle.
The Faux Field of Dreams: If You Build A University Research Park, They May Not Come
Before committing taxpayer money and university resources to public-private research parks, higher education officials and elected leaders should reconsider a more proven way for regional universities to enhance economic outcomes. And that is to provide a quality educational experience that increases citizens’ human capital, thereby producing positive “spillover effects” in the local area.
Governance Newsletter – July 2015
We provide criteria for resizing the UNC system, review the results of a Civitas Institute poll, challenge faculty to teach more, and explain why the North Carolina General Assembly should…
Gene Nichol’s Poverty Fund: Two Views
Shortly after the Center for Work, Poverty, and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill’s law school was closed, Gene Nichol, a controversial law professor who served as the center’s director, announced the creation of a “Poverty Fund” that may be a continuation of the Poverty Center by another name. The Pope Center’s director of policy analysis, Jay Schalin, penned an ardent critique of the new Poverty Fund. This led to a response by John K. Wilson, an editor for Academe Blog, an online publication of the American Association of University Professors, who regularly writes on academic freedom issues. At Wilson’s suggestion, Schalin prepared a second response. The Pope Center presents both responses in this special feature.
Subsidizing Higher Ed Makes It More Costly; It Also Makes Incomes More Unequal
Federal student aid programs were expected to have nothing but good economic and social consequences for America. Instead, however, they are simultaneously making higher education more costly (that is, soaking up more of our limited resources) and, owing to “credentialitis,” making the distribution of income more unequal.
Remediation’s End?
For quite a few years, North Carolina’s colleges and universities have blurred the line between higher and basic education by admitting students who need remedial classes before they can handle college-level work. Fortunately, several provisions moving through the General Assembly may change the face of remediation by shifting it back to lower levels of education where it belongs.
The Hidden Costs of Tenure
In effect, tenure is a barrier to entry in the academic job market that makes it difficult to replace poorly performing faculty with better alternatives.
Gene Nichol’s “Poverty Fund” Is About the Politics, Not the Poverty
The reopening of UNC–Chapel Hill Law School’s Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity as the “North Carolina Poverty Research Fund” by law professor Gene Nichol shows great contempt for the UNC system Board of Governors, the state legislature, and the people of North Carolina. It also may be illegal.
Universities Are Not Economic Saviors, So Let’s Stop Pretending That They Are
To hear some policymakers talk, one would think colleges and universities exist mainly to enhance economic growth rather than to educate.