Clarion Call | 2008 Archive

College summer reading programs are growing in popularity. All schools in the UNC system have such programs for incoming freshmen and transfers students. The program at UNC-Chapel Hill is representative of the entire system, and in recent articles I found plenty about the program to criticize. But it’s one thing to complain and another to come up with better ideas, so the Pope Center writers all provided a reading program of their own two weeks ago. And we realized that we had left one incredible resource still untapped: our readers. So we asked for your suggestions, and got them. There was one striking difference between the two groups of programs—our readers appear to be a lot tougher than we are!

Advocates for students often accuse credit card companies of preying on gullible young people who don’t understand debt. I was one of those student “victims” -- I got my first credit card as an undergrad from a salesman at N.C. State’s brickyard, along with a free t-shirt. I was already in debt, however. I had accrued several thousand dollars of debt in the form of student loans. Critics ignore the fact that student loans are as easy to mismanage as credit cards hawked on the quad, and the long-term consequences can be far more severe. College loan money doesn’t seem real: it’s like a credit card with no minimum monthly payments and a ridiculously high limit. So my classmates and I spent our college-loan money getting the ultimate college experience. We wanted it all: Greek life, study abroad, the newest, coolest flip-flops, Dave Matthews Band concerts, and off-campus apartments. And we got it.

It’s part of the conventional wisdom that there is a big payoff in higher earnings if you go to college. Politicians and education leaders often cite statistics showing that students who get their degree will earn as much as a million dollars more during their careers than students who have only a high school diploma. Obviously, this is a no-brainer – young people should want to go to college and officials should do everything they can to expand access for them. Higher education is a great personal and national investment since we’re entering the “Information Economy.” So it is newsworthy when someone in the education establishment challenges the idea that there is a huge payoff to getting a college degree. That’s what happened earlier this month when Charles Miller, who served as the Chairman of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education wrote to the president of The College Board, complaining that its widely circulated annual report “Education Pays” greatly exaggerates the financial benefit that a student can expect from college.

Recently, I have explored the Carolina Summer Reading Program explored the Carolina Summer Reading Program at UNC-Chapel Hill and this year’s book choice, and found it to be lacking, at best. Some possible criticisms of the program are:

More than two-thirds of American high school graduates enroll in some program of higher education. What do they want from college and what should they want from college? Those are two different, infrequently asked questions. In a recent essay entitled “Why Go to College?” Mark Henrie, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, addressed that question. It is worth reading and pondering. Henrie’s essay is in the Spring 2008 issue of The Canon, available here. The first of the two questions is really quite easy to answer. The great majority of young Americans go to college because they’ve been led to believe that having a college degree of some kind is a necessity if they’re to have a prosperous career. Even though there are some extraordinarily successful people in the business world who never earned college degrees, it’s generally assumed that most of the doors leading to success are locked to people who haven’t signaled their abilities by getting a degree.

Once again, as I reported on Wednesday the Carolina Summer Reading Program has managed to make a dubious decision about which book to ask incoming freshmen and transfer students to read and discuss. It almost seems to be a Chapel Hill tradition. Over the years, the UNC system’s flagship school has selected a cheery promotion of an uncheery religion, (Islam), presented the market economy (which has raised living standards exponentially) in a dismal light, and promoted other books of a divisive nature. This year’s choice, Covering by Kenji Yoshino, very nearly suggests the coming of a modern-day Tower of Babel in America as a good thing. At the Pope Center for Higher Education, we think a Summer Reading Program has great potential to enhance the college experience – far more than can be gained by the current program at Chapel Hill.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of Clarion Calls dealing with summer reading programs. Today’s article is about the 2008 choice for the often-controversial Carolina Summer Reading Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. On Friday, April 18, we will post an article about the program’s flaws and what a well-designed program really could offer. Then the fun starts. Members of the Pope Center staff will propose their own programs on April 25. Then it’s your turn-—we want your ideas as well. The grand prize is (drum roll please)--nothing! But we will publish your ideas on our site. Sometimes an idea comes along that is bad, really bad. An idea bad enough to rip apart the ties that unite a nation. The conclusion of the book Covering, by Yale Law School professor and gay activist Kenji Yoshino, qualifies. Indeed, the polarizing potential of his proposal was so glaring that the author was compelled to acknowledge that it might cause a modern-day “Tower of Babel.” Despite the dangers present in Yoshino’s polemic and the juvenile rationale it is based upon (or perhaps because of them), UNC-Chapel Hill is promoting the book to all incoming freshmen as this year’s choice for the Carolina Summer Reading Program.

Federal politicians tinker with the Internal Revenue Code frequently, but the rules regarding donations to colleges and universities, as well as the rules regarding the money earned by endowments have remained unchanged for many decades. It’s all tax-exempt and our institutions of higher education like it that way. Some people have begun asking whether those rules still make sense. What is the justification for the tax-exempt status of non-profit colleges and universities? In a recent paper published by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, economics professor Richard Vedder scrutinized the case for our “hands off” policy. Vedder is a free-thinking scholar and arrives at some conclusions the higher education establishment won’t like.

Academic Freedom in the Wired World: Political Extremism, Corporate Power, and the University By Robert M. O’Neil Harvard University Press, 2008, 312 pages Reviewed by George Leef Having Robert O’Neil write a book on academic freedom is a natural, about like having Tiger Woods write a book on how to play Augusta National. Although O’Neil certainly isn’t as famous as Woods, he has immersed himself in the study of academic freedom to the same degree that Tiger Woods has immersed himself in golf. O’Neil is the founder of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, and a former president of that University. The depth of his knowledge about and his commitment to academic freedom is in evidence throughout the book. Although Professor O’Neil covers the subject of academic freedom in great detail, the book leaves me somewhat dissatisfied. He is too eager to pronounce “ominous” – an overworked word in the book – a number of “threats” to academic freedom that seem rather inconsequential and stem from real disagreements rather than an effort to silence scholarly inquiry or expression.

These days, many college classes – probably more than half of lower-division courses -- are staffed by contingent faculty. To most people, that means adjuncts -- itinerant teachers who fill in when tenured faculty are too busy or when demand for large courses outstrips supply. They go from school to school, patching together a low-level career while carrying the brunt of the work of education. The actual picture is more complex, however. I know that because my wife, Leslie, and I are both off the tenure track – but at different elevations. We are a happily married couple with a joint career in academics. I have a Ph.D. in economics and work as a full-time lecturer. Leslie is a part-time lecturer in the humanities. We both very much enjoy our jobs at Penn State University. This story is not about Penn State University, which treats us well, but about the employment conditions for contingent employees. Penn State happens to be the backdrop for this exploration. I have a multi-year contract, with renewal by mutual consent. My classes are usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays and my private office has a nice view.

Many people think of unions as a fading phenomenon. In the private sector workforce, that’s true. Unions, however, are growing fast in public education – both in K-12 and at the college level. As a recently retired professor who has directly experienced the effects of faculty unionization, I would like to explain why this trend is a troubling one. The vast majority of unionized faculty in higher education are employed in government colleges and universities. Most states have enacted statutes that force administrations in public colleges and universities to recognize and bargain with faculty unions if a majority of faculty members vote to unionize. Unfortunately, those pro-union state laws usually include one of the worst features of federal labor law: exclusive representation.

In all of higher education, across the entire college campus, there is no more difficult teaching assignment than the freshman writing class. The instruction is labor-intensive like no other. Teachers grade papers for hours all weekend, evaluating the full gamut of work from the central idea to the single comma. No multiple choice tests or computerized scoring for them. Each student has his own strengths and weaknesses, and needs individually tailored coaching. This makes office hours for composition instructors run all morning several days a week. There is no set knowledge to pass along, either -- no facts and figures, laws and theorems that belong to the field and standardize what students should learn and how they should learn it. Instead, in a necessarily complex and uncertain tutelage, teachers promote discursive habits and understandings that require years of practice before students have become proficient in them. Let’s face it. Students can’t increase their vocabulary much over a 14-week semester, nor can they develop an expressive, evocative style or a confident, persuasive voice. Teachers have to pick and choose, and rest content with but a few areas and increments of improvement. Students hate it. They realize their deficiencies and dread being exposed.

ver its 61-year history, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) has never had an intercollegiate football team, but right now there is a strong push to create one. If UNCC goes ahead with this idea, it’s going to face a lot of costs and a lot of problems. Collegiate football is an expensive undertaking even if the competition is in one of the lower divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and playing in the top is very expensive. Last year, UNCC’s chancellor appointed a committee to study the feasibility of starting a football program. The committee turned to the Lee Institute, a Charlotte-based non-profit consulting firm, to crunch the numbers.

In America, many things are regulated, far less for the benefit of the public than for the benefit of the group that’s being regulated. Many organized groups seek various kinds of government regulation because it suits their interests. Politicians often give in. The legal profession is an excellent example. Government regulations serve to limit competition, thereby driving up the prices that attorneys can charge. One way that regulations limit competition is by restricting the practice of law only to people who have gone through all the expense and travail of obtaining a license to practice.

American colleges and universities have been catching flak for decades over preferential admission policies. Preferences based on race have led to plenty of litigation and legislation. Preferences for athletes have led to jokes about football players who can’t read their diplomas after they graduate. A third kind of preference, though, has elicited little controversy until recently – legacies. Legacies are students who are related to someone who graduated from the school, usually a parent or grandparent, although sometimes the relationship is further out on the family tree. If the student has the academic profile to merit admission without any preference, there is no reason to raise an eyebrow. But what if Junior applies to Dad’s alma mater and would be rejected on the basis of his grades and SAT scores? Quite a few schools will accept him in place of another student who has a better scholastic record. For centuries, that has been part of college tradition, no more to be questioned than playing Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March at graduation. That’s no longer the case.

Last year, the Pope Center released a thought-provoking article by Professor Robert Blumenthal that argued in favor of greater financial transparency for colleges and universities. At the time, I thought, “Well, it’s about time someone raised this issue!” As a budget director who has served at several public and private research universities, over the years I have often witnessed sophisticated audiences including professors and trustees grow flustered trying to understand even simple financial relationships when framed in the complex web of higher education fund accounting. It doesn’t have to be that way. A great deal of money flows through our colleges and universities. Even our own faculties ask, “Why is higher education so expensive?”

Socrates’ most famous line is this: The unexamined life is not worth living. Getting young people to examine their lives used to be one of the principal endeavors of American colleges and universities. In decades gone by, the liberal arts education that most of them offered encouraged students to think about the reasons for living and the deep choices that humans face – not just matters like, “What career should I pursue?” and “Will this course be an easy A?” In particular, the humanities brought students face to face with the great questions of philosophy, aesthetics, religion, and so on.

Tuition at UNC-Chapel Hill went up by six percent last year. The school’s endowment rose by 32.1 percent to $2.16 billion. And, according to the annual endowment report of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), the percentage of endowments paid out by colleges for expenses has dropped from 5.1 to 4.6 between 2003 and 2007. University endowments are granted tax-free status by the government, on the assumption that doing so performs some sort of public good. The question begs asking: what public good is served by universities building up enormous “war chests” while rising tuitions are making higher education less accessible for the middle class? It would appear, on the other hand, that students and taxpayers are helping to finance huge accumulations of wealth at many of the nation’s top schools.

As my colleague Jay Schalin has explained, there is a big controversy over endowment spending these days. Are wealthy schools spending enough of their money? If not, should the federal government rewrite the tax laws to make them spend more or else face some monetary consequences? I believe that this is an issue where politics should not intrude. Whatever good might come from federal intervention would be small in comparison to the harm of opening up a new Pandora’s Box of political dictation of decisions that should be left in the hands of university officials. The battle over college endowment spending reminds me of one of our most foolish blunders of the 1970s – the Alternate Minimum Tax. Allow me to explain.

To read Jay Schalin's opinion in favor of a required spending limit for college endowments, click here. To read George Leef's opinion opposing a required spending limit for college endowments, click here.

At times, the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy can cast a harsh light on college courses in North Carolina universities, revealing them to be politicized and intellectually cramped. But we are equally committed to spotlighting top-quality courses that reflect open-mindedness, academic rigor, and a tradition of excellence. To support that commitment, we have just started two efforts to identify outstanding courses – and to inform students, parents, and others about them. During 2008, the Pope Center will conduct the Spirit of Inquiry Contest, a quest to find the best undergraduate course in North Carolina (and two runner-ups). Simultaneously, at UNC-Chapel Hill over the next few months, the Pope Center will administer a survey of students that will identify the best general education classes.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time—making sure that people who wished to spontaneously grab a soapbox and publicly announce their views on the campus of Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) do so in an appropriate fashion. But by declaring a campus “free speech zone,” which limits speakers to one small area of campus, the WSSU Board of Trustees stepped right into one of the most controversial issues in American higher education. Crafting effective speech regulations that do not infringe on the rights of the regulated today requires hair-splitting attention to legal precedents and language. Recently, Fayetteville State University changed its speech codes due to pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a free speech advocacy group, and the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. In 2005, UNC-Greensboro faced a controversy similar to WSSU’s and did away with its free speech zones entirely. Once Winston-Salem’s policy became known, the criticism came hard and fast.

When Mom and Dad see little Sally’s report card, it probably never occurs to them to wonder how competent her teacher is. Teachers, after all, are professionals. They’re trained in university programs and licensed by the government, so they must be good at their jobs – right? There is a surprising amount of disagreement over that. As long ago as 1953, Professor Arthur Bestor ridiculed education schools (where nearly all aspiring teachers must obtain their credentials) as “educational wastelands.” More recently, in her 1991 book Ed School Follies, Rita Kramer wrote, “What we have today are teacher-producing factories that process material from the bottom of the heap and turn out models that perform, but not well enough.” Criticism of education schools doesn’t just come from outsiders. Some highly knowledgeable and vocal critics are to be found among the ranks of current and former education school professors. One of those critics is George Cunningham, who taught for many years at the University of Louisville. In a new paper for the Pope Center, Professor Cunningham explains why he does not believe that schools of education in North Carolina are doing an adequate job of training future teachers.

Many of America’s most famous black leaders graduated from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thurgood Marshall. In their day, most of the small percentage of black students who went to college enrolled in an HBCU, but now only 10 percent do. Some of those schools are struggling to survive. Fisk University in Nashville, for example, is considering selling its art collection to raise desperately needed funds. The great problem facing many HBCUs these days is finding ways to appeal to students who can pay. Few African-American students from affluent families enroll in them. And although HBCUs will gladly enroll non-black students, their overtures have met with little success. Are HBCUs just an anachronism, then?