John William Pope Center Guest Editorial
The university system in the United States has accomplished a great deal of good, but we believe that higher education in the United States, including North Carolina, has strayed from its chief goals of scholarly inquiry and responsible teaching.
All too often, universities allow teaching to become shallow and trendy, failing to challenge students intellectually and disparaging traditional principles of justice, ethics, and liberal education. Students know little about the history of their country or the institutions that led to this nation’s prosperity and liberty. Students can get by without taking rigorous courses, and non-academic activities overshadow scholarship. As a result, many college graduates have poor skills in computation, communication, and logical analysis. Faculty are allowed excessive latitude in what they teach and often get away with little teaching at all, because research is emphasized. Taxpayers as well as students and their families pay hefty prices to support a system that often appears to provide little educational value.
To address these and other problems, the Pope Center conducts studies in areas such as governance, curriculum, financing, access, accountability, faculty research, and administrative policies. We explore ways to increase the accountability of trustees, administrators, faculty, and students. And we engage in the broader dialogue about how to improve higher education around the nation.
In these endeavors, we are motivated by the principles that have traditionally guided public policy in the United States: limits on government; freedom to pursue goals through voluntary means, both for-profit and nonprofit; accountability through private property rights; and the belief that competition is an excellent regulating force.
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The Supreme Court held, in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, that it is permissible for universities to give some students preference in admission on the basis of their race. That decision was a serious mistake and it is time to correct it.
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The Supreme Court held, in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, that it is permissible for universities to give some students preference in admission on the basis of their race. That decision was a serious mistake and it is time to correct it.
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My graduate education at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought served me well
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My graduate education at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought served me well
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It seems shocking that, in 2015, it is difficult to fully answer the question, "What are college students learning?" After all, people can find out about admissions policies, degree programs, student debt levels, graduation rates, campus amenities, and financial aid options with the click of a mouse
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It seems shocking that, in 2015, it is difficult to fully answer the question, "What are college students learning?" After all, people can find out about admissions policies, degree programs, student debt levels, graduation rates, campus amenities, and financial aid options with the click of a mouse
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Student loan debt in North Carolina is not a good news-bad news story. It is a bad news-worse news story. Student debt, with a couple of exceptions, has been rising across the board at University of North Carolina schools, both in the percentage of students who need loans and the amount of their...
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Student loan debt in North Carolina is not a good news-bad news story. It is a bad news-worse news story. Student debt, with a couple of exceptions, has been rising across the board at University of North Carolina schools, both in the percentage of students who need loans and the amount of their...
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Are the humanities in trouble on American campuses? That is certainly the impression one gets from the media today; articles in publications of both left and right describe the increasing flight from the humanities into other disciplines.
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Are the humanities in trouble on American campuses? That is certainly the impression one gets from the media today; articles in publications of both left and right describe the increasing flight from the humanities into other disciplines.
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I was named head coach of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrestling team in 2003. I was fired this past June. The athletic director has publicly stated that I was fired for "performance"; specifically, that I had not been successful in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
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I was named head coach of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrestling team in 2003. I was fired this past June. The athletic director has publicly stated that I was fired for "performance"; specifically, that I had not been successful in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
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The gigantic endowments of a few universities inevitably attract attention
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The gigantic endowments of a few universities inevitably attract attention
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Measuring the performance of colleges-and holding them accountable for their performances-is an unsolved problem
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Measuring the performance of colleges-and holding them accountable for their performances-is an unsolved problem
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They say "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions," but that doesn't really describe the whole mechanism. The reason that good intentions can cause so many problems is because they lead to actions with unintended consequences.
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They say "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions," but that doesn't really describe the whole mechanism. The reason that good intentions can cause so many problems is because they lead to actions with unintended consequences.
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Colleges and universities are complex operations-often with billion-dollar budgets. The stakes are high: what happens on our campuses affects not only students but the society at large.
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Colleges and universities are complex operations-often with billion-dollar budgets. The stakes are high: what happens on our campuses affects not only students but the society at large.
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I leapt from the Uber car at LaGuardia, made my way quickly through security, and boarded the US Airways Shuttle to Washington, D.C. I removed my suit jacket, loosened my tie, and took my seat. Pulling my laptop from my leather briefcase, I opened a spreadsheet to review the layout of the...
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I leapt from the Uber car at LaGuardia, made my way quickly through security, and boarded the US Airways Shuttle to Washington, D.C. I removed my suit jacket, loosened my tie, and took my seat. Pulling my laptop from my leather briefcase, I opened a spreadsheet to review the layout of the...
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People in and out of the academic world have been pointing to a glaring defect in our education system for many years. That defect is the failure to teach students to write competently.
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People in and out of the academic world have been pointing to a glaring defect in our education system for many years. That defect is the failure to teach students to write competently.
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E. M. Forster's frightening short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which all human activity has been subsumed by a global digital network similar to the Internet (except that Forster's version is controlled by a worldwide government bureaucracy)...
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E. M. Forster's frightening short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which all human activity has been subsumed by a global digital network similar to the Internet (except that Forster's version is controlled by a worldwide government bureaucracy)...
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For the last decade I have taught entrepreneurship to literally tens of thousands of students in big classes, small seminars, and on the Internet in a massively open online course (MOOC). The sheer diversity of these students - their abilities, their backgrounds, their personal traits, and their...
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For the last decade I have taught entrepreneurship to literally tens of thousands of students in big classes, small seminars, and on the Internet in a massively open online course (MOOC). The sheer diversity of these students - their abilities, their backgrounds, their personal traits, and their...
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Suppose two unknown men are standing in front of us. One has the physique of LeBron James-six foot, eight inches tall, with 260 pounds of rippling muscle-while the other looks like a young Woody Allen-five foot, five inches tall, with narrow shoulders and Coke bottle-thick eyeglasses. We then...
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Suppose two unknown men are standing in front of us. One has the physique of LeBron James-six foot, eight inches tall, with 260 pounds of rippling muscle-while the other looks like a young Woody Allen-five foot, five inches tall, with narrow shoulders and Coke bottle-thick eyeglasses. We then...
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Results from an employer survey recently released by the University of North Carolina system suggest that graduates of the state's 16 public universities - especially those from less selective schools - are deficient in terms of their written and oral communication, work ethic, and workplace...
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Results from an employer survey recently released by the University of North Carolina system suggest that graduates of the state's 16 public universities - especially those from less selective schools - are deficient in terms of their written and oral communication, work ethic, and workplace...
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There is a powerful lesson in the emergence of companies like Uber for those who wish to reform higher education
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There is a powerful lesson in the emergence of companies like Uber for those who wish to reform higher education
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Higher education is often an ignored issue in presidential campaigns. The 2016 campaign, however, may be different.
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Higher education is often an ignored issue in presidential campaigns. The 2016 campaign, however, may be different.
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In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Regents v. Southworth that using mandatory student fees to fund student organizations and speakers does not violate the First Amendment rights of those who disagree with the content.
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In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Regents v. Southworth that using mandatory student fees to fund student organizations and speakers does not violate the First Amendment rights of those who disagree with the content.
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One day, Bill Bennett may be best remembered for saying (in 1987, while he was President Reagan's education secretary) that government student aid was largely responsible for the fact that the cost of going to college kept rising. What is called the "Bennett Hypothesis" has been heavily debated
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One day, Bill Bennett may be best remembered for saying (in 1987, while he was President Reagan's education secretary) that government student aid was largely responsible for the fact that the cost of going to college kept rising. What is called the "Bennett Hypothesis" has been heavily debated
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One issue that gets North Carolinian blood boiling is the former Center for Work, Poverty, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's law school. To conservatives it is a symbol of the left's abuse of its dominance of academia, in which a Democratic politician...
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One issue that gets North Carolinian blood boiling is the former Center for Work, Poverty, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's law school. To conservatives it is a symbol of the left's abuse of its dominance of academia, in which a Democratic politician...
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If one is looking for clues regarding what universities think a college education should be about, one obvious place to look is their freshman summer reading programs
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If one is looking for clues regarding what universities think a college education should be about, one obvious place to look is their freshman summer reading programs
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Higher education is by definition a place for advanced learning; it is not intended to be the place to learn basic skills such as the "three R's."
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Higher education is by definition a place for advanced learning; it is not intended to be the place to learn basic skills such as the "three R's."
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Conversations I've had with non-academics about university employment practices usually evoke surprise and skepticism.
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Conversations I've had with non-academics about university employment practices usually evoke surprise and skepticism.
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One of the things that most frightens non-tenured faculty members is the prospect of getting too low an average on end-of-term student course evaluations.
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One of the things that most frightens non-tenured faculty members is the prospect of getting too low an average on end-of-term student course evaluations.
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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.
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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.
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With so many more Americans going to college than in the past, you would think that anti-intellectualism would be a distant, rapidly fading memory.
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With so many more Americans going to college than in the past, you would think that anti-intellectualism would be a distant, rapidly fading memory.
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Tomorrow is the day we celebrate our nation's founding-and the first time that a nation was deliberately founded on reason and the rule of law instead of on accidents of history. The central question of this article is "how are the founding and related topics treated in today's academia?" It is a...
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Tomorrow is the day we celebrate our nation's founding-and the first time that a nation was deliberately founded on reason and the rule of law instead of on accidents of history. The central question of this article is "how are the founding and related topics treated in today's academia?" It is a...
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Just over a year ago, New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt looked at some data on the "college wage premium"
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Just over a year ago, New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt looked at some data on the "college wage premium"
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To hear some policymakers talk, one would think colleges and universities exist mainly to enhance economic growth rather than to educate.
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To hear some policymakers talk, one would think colleges and universities exist mainly to enhance economic growth rather than to educate.
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Listen to members of the education establishment, and you will hear that not enough people are going to college. Listen to higher education reformers, particularly political conservatives, and you will hear that too many are going to college
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Listen to members of the education establishment, and you will hear that not enough people are going to college. Listen to higher education reformers, particularly political conservatives, and you will hear that too many are going to college
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Since the 1960s, the academic history profession has changed markedly. Traditional fields such as military history, diplomatic history, intellectual history, religious history, and political history have been deemphasized, when not completely eliminated.
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Since the 1960s, the academic history profession has changed markedly. Traditional fields such as military history, diplomatic history, intellectual history, religious history, and political history have been deemphasized, when not completely eliminated.
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Starting back in the 1970s, officials at America's more selective colleges and universities began using racial preferences to increase the percentages of certain minority group students on campus.
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Starting back in the 1970s, officials at America's more selective colleges and universities began using racial preferences to increase the percentages of certain minority group students on campus.
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Academia is notoriously resistant to major changes. Whereas private sector firms rise, fall, merge, reorganize, acquire, and cast off unprofitable divisions with amazing speed, colleges and universities are hampered by unwieldy systems of governance, iron-bound traditions, and intense resistance...
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Academia is notoriously resistant to major changes. Whereas private sector firms rise, fall, merge, reorganize, acquire, and cast off unprofitable divisions with amazing speed, colleges and universities are hampered by unwieldy systems of governance, iron-bound traditions, and intense resistance...
