UNC Chapel Hill

This one is just too, too rich for satire. The story is in today's News and Observer.

After years of controversy over a proposed donation to the study of Western cultures, the John William Pope Foundation of Raleigh will give UNC-Chapel Hill $2.3 million, most of which will go to the football program.

The university announced the gift Thursday. It includes $2 million for an investment fund that will generate $100,000 a year to supplement the salaries of assistant football coaches.

Poor Puppetmaster. The mean old faculty at UNC didn't like the fact that he had too many strings on his original gift to study the glories of white old rich men. So instead of supporting intellectual integrity and furthering the highest ideals of public education, the Puppetmaster takes his money and punts!

The N&O does a good job today reporting on The War on Education currently being fought between UNC campuses and We the People.

Seven tuition increases in eight years, including a 71 percent increase for North Carolinians from 1999 to 2004, raise serious questions about whether the UNC system has run afoul of the state's constitutional mandate for free tuition "as far as practicable," says a report by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research.

I haven't seen the final report, and I don't know much about the NC Center for Public Policy Research, (except for the fact that they need a new website), but the N&O's preview suggests this work is pretty solid. And it certainly doesn't tapdance around the elephants in the room. According to the article, the Center's report:

concludes that the basic structure of public higher education is sound but in need of a tuneup. The study calls on UNC leaders to get better control of big-time college sports and rid the UNC system of rampant political influence.

Given the ethics moratorium passed in Raleigh last month, I don't hold out much hope for either, but I appreciate the Center's calls for sanity.

While this is mostly a local issue, the decisions have implications for taxpayers throughout the state. I just read in the N&O that UNC CH has picked an Executive Director for the Carolina North development, his name is John P. Evans.

I don't know much about Mr. Evans, so i will pluck heavily from the N&O, or you can go read the whole story yourself.

  

John Hood is back from vacation, but the rest didn't do much good. Today he's decided that the world of public education can't survive with his brilliant insights. At least in this particular case, he acknowledges that his opinions are uninformed and biased.

RALEIGH – Just about everyone has an opinion about how to improve education, and it’s usually an opinion passionately held and forcefully argued. Schools are the single-largest expenditure of state taxpayers’ funds. Educational mediocrity is the common denominator of many other social maladies. Most folks have spouses, siblings, parents, or other family members in the teaching profession. And everyone has been a student.

Cross-post from UNCG Campus Watch

The Constitution of the State of North Carolina guarantees the General Assembly will provide that "the benefits of The University of North Carolina... as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense" (Article IX, Sec 9). With the counting of out-of-state athletes as in-state students, the General Assembly is starting to turn its back on the very people for whom the University was originally established in 1789.

NC Policy Watch raises a whole bunch of eyebrows this morning with its dead-on assessment of the UNC Board of Governors and their propensity for questionable judgment. The way I see it, there's no more than a handful of Rich White Guys for Bidness and Industry running the show here in North Carolina these days. Basnight, Black, Easley and Pope are the first tier. Then there's a back-bench club of also-rans, of which tobacco lobbyist Jim Phillips is apparently a member.

It is not surprising that lobbyists are on the Board, considering how Board members are chosen. They are elected by the General Assembly. People who want to serve in effect lobby legislators for support. Who better at that than people paid to lobby for a living?

Check out Orange Politics for a complete run down in the latest chapter in relations between UNC and the Town of Chapel Hill. At issue is planning for a mega campus that UNC wants to build right in the middle of town over the next 50 years. The town rightfully wants to have a say in the project, but UNC would rather not have to worry about the impacts of its development decisions on the people who live here. Of special note in the current dust-up is UNC's perennial nukular option, thrown on the table this time by Trustee Rusty Carter.