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Public university governing boards exist to serve the people of their states. It should, therefore, be easy for the public to know what governing bodies are doing. University governance, however, isn't always as transparent as it should be. Often, the public is given little advance notice of when and where meetings will be held and what issues will be discussed. One of the silver linings of the pandemic was an increase in governance transparency. Governing boards began live-streaming meetings that hadn't previously been available for remote viewing. Many meetings, including committee and subcommittee meetings, became publicly available via live stream. Some schools even recorded and posted those meetings for later public viewing online. This was a positive step in transparency because, aside from a global pandemic, members of the public do not always have the ability to physically attend meetings in person. Another positive practice adopted during the pandemic was the policy of conducting votes by roll call. Taking votes by roll call, and later recording those votes in the meeting minutes, ensures accuracy. Unfortunately, as universities transitioned back to meeting in person, some of the gains in transparency have been abandoned. Those practices should be restored and made permanent board policy, along with additional transparency measures.

American colleges and universities are failing at civic education. Too many graduates are ignorant of basic facts about American history and institutions. According to its most recent report on what colleges and universities teach students, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) found that only 214 institutions out of 1,135 (about 19 percent) require a foundational course in U.S. government or history. Even history majors often are not required to study American history. Universities aren't just failing to teach students about their country's history and constitutional structure, many actively propagate distorted and erroneous depictions of American history. Furthermore, these universities have reimagined "civics education" as a form of political activism. An honest grounding in American history and principles will enable students to become knowledgeable, responsible, and engaged citizens. It will allow them to both understand their constitutional rights and respect those of others. And it may awaken in them an appreciation of the freedoms they enjoy and a sense of duty to preserve them.

The surest measure of a successful college or university is the academic success of its students. True academic success requires incoming students to be academically prepared for college rigor, and is demonstrated by the availability of high-quality academic programs and evidence of personal and professional growth in the years after students' graduation. Institutions that churn out students with low-quality--yet costly--degrees or who set up students for failure by whittling down academic standards, are setting them up for long-term economic and personal hardship. This is why academic transparency is crucial. Academic transparency is truth in advertising. One of the simplest ways to practice academic transparency is to make syllabi publicly accessible by posting them online before registration for classes begins. Doing so serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it allows students to make more informed decisions about what classes they should take. Secondly, the sunlight provided by having their syllabi publicly viewable may encourage professors to cull truly rigorous coursework. Finally, it allows lawmakers to see what kind of education is being offered at taxpayer-supported institutions. This and other academic transparency measures outlined in this report should be standard practice for every public college and university.

Higher education serves many purposes. One purpose dominates, however: to students, their parents, future employers, government officials, and many academic administrators, higher education is all about preparing students for the professional workforce. Other requirements, such as general education programs, are considered to be of lesser importance. In many cases, they are designed solely to support the primary goal of training professionals, providing generalized skills that can be translated to many professions. Yet treating general education programs as secondary constitutes a great loss of opportunity, as well-designed programs have the potential to help students become better citizens, deeper thinkers, and more moral people. In this report, the author explores actual learning processes at a primary level and shows why a tightly crafted general education that deliberately connects various types of knowledge and learning is vastly superior to one that that allows students wide latitude to choose among unconnected courses that may appear to be interesting at the time but offer little long-term insight. And is also preferable to one that attempts to teach skills without bothering with the content involved. This report should be read--and acted upon--by all policymakers, administrators, and academics who are truly concerned with the quality of education that colleges and universities provide.

Historically, higher learning was based on the study of the Great Works of thought of the Western canon. These works span a broad range of time, from the Classical period, to early Christianity, and the Enlightenment, all the way to the 20th century. Presently, close study of Great Works is less common at most mainstream colleges and universities. Depending on the general education programs at a given institution, or students' particular course work, it is very possible for students to graduate from college with little to no exposure to the foundational texts of Plato, Aristotle, Homer, or Dante, to name a few. If students desire a deep and broad understanding of the Great Works, they must actively seek it out. Although Great Works-specific coursework is less available, however they do still exist. The Martin Center researched 48 academic programs that involve a close study of Great Books of Western thought. Although some of the programs in this report are not advertised as Great Books programs, their curricula include an in-depth study of core texts. Uniting these programs is a desire for wisdom and understanding, and the belief that engaging with the Great Books can aid in this pursuit.

Numerous degree programs throughout the UNC System equip students with the requisite knowledge and skills for meaningful careers that generate excellent returns for both alumni and the North Carolina economy. This talent pool attracts businesses and residents to the state, expanding job opportunities, further developing the labor force, and fostering economic growth. Recent data from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) on post-graduation debt and income, however, suggest that a substantial proportion of programs fail to generate satisfactory economic outcomes that reasonably enable alumni to pay back their student loan debt. The TPPF data demonstrate the performance of more than 900 bachelor's, master's, professional, and doctoral degree programs across North Carolina. By categorizing these programs based on the debt and income of their graduates, we are able to identify those programs that are most in need of oversight, reform, or closure. The report also allows prospective students and their families to make better-informed decisions regarding their college and later careers. Unlike resources that merely review the potential income for types of programs generally, the report provides detailed information on income and debt for specific programs at specific schools in North Carolina, providing a uniquely high-resolution picture of the financial risks and opportunities faced by UNC students today.

Can an academic institution be truly free if it relies on government funding? Federal dollars mean federal mandates, and those mandates grow increasingly draconian. More and more, they stifle debate on open questions, demand denial of verifiable scientific truths, eliminate due process for students accused of misdeeds by other students, or insist on unequal treatment for different groups in ways that corrupt the academic mission. Yet, it is still possible for academic institutions to remain free of government mandates by rejecting federal funding. The Martin Center located 19 such schools successfully operating in the United States, and tried to find out what they are doing, how they are doing it, and why they are good for the intellectual life of the nation. The ability of independent schools to function outside the boundaries of the federal government efficiently and effectively--offering lower tuition than most other private schools while holding high academic standards--suggests that federal funding is hardly necessary. And it poses a further question: does federal funding hinder education rather than improving it?

The U.S. and West Virginia constitutions acknowledge the right to free speech, which must be protected at public colleges, but Senate Bill 657, which became law in 2021, requires that public colleges protect "any lawful verbal and nonverbal speech." Furthermore, many private colleges also promise free speech to their students. However a campus-climate survey published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in 2021 found that 5-in-6 college students have self-censored because of how they perceived other students, a professor, or the college administration would respond. Two-thirds of college students agreed that it was acceptable to shout down a campus speaker or to try to prevent them from speaking. FIRE reviewed the restrictions on free speech at 17 public or private colleges and universities in West Virginia and found 92 policies that restrict freedom of speech. This report reviews FIRE's ratings, gives examples of restrictive policies, and recommends ways to improve students' free speech rights. [The report was written in partnership with the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy.]

Institutions of higher education face a great deal of pressure to be accessible, inclusive, and diverse, but these goals should not come at the expense of maintaining high standards. Universal and vigilantly enforced standards exist not only to safeguard students' best interests, but are crucial to the academic integrity and core educational mission of higher education. In this document, the Martin Center recommends steps that universities and university systems can take to articulate and safeguard academic standards.

Critical Social Justice (CSJ) poses a threat to higher education and to the American way of life. This ideology divides the world into aggrieved minorities and oppressive majorities, reducing people to a group identity grounded in immutable characteristics such as race and sex. It is based on a distorted view of what a human being is, compromising the pursuit of truth and diverting institutions that adopt it away from excellence and merit and toward factionalism. It cultivates resentment and anger among the supposedly aggrieved while undermining the stability, equal treatment, and mutual toleration that contributes to individual happiness and good citizenship. Universities promote CSJ policies under the seemingly innocuous rubric of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Most schools in the University of North Carolina (UNC) System have adopted CSJ in their strategic plans, and things are accelerating across the system. A system-wide Racial Equity Task Force, which the Board of Governors seemingly empowered, released a report in 2020 to accelerate the push to extend DEI programming into all facets of all the universities. It called for more administrative DEI hiring throughout the system and establishing more new programming aimed supposedly at aggrieved minorities, including curricular changes and more developed retention programs. Scott Yenor and Anna K. Miller argue that in order to decrease the influence of critical social justice across the UNC System, policy reform is necessary. In this report, they recommend what is necessary for policy reform and provide a DEI scorecard for the 16 universities in the UNC system.

Everywhere in higher education, there is a rhetorical affirmation of the values of free speech and the development of informed citizens. North Carolina's state motto in Latin is Esse Quam Videri, which translates to "To Be Rather Than to Seem." So it is reasonable to research what kind of speech actually exists on North Carolina campuses, particularly about public policy issues. This research examines the 2018 and 2019 online calendars for 37 four-year North Carolina campuses to record all their multi-speaker policy events. These events were then classified as debates or forums in 24 different policy areas. Because some calendars were incomplete or difficult to interpret, follow-up emails were sent to campus reference librarians, archivists, and chief academic officers to try to assure accuracy. Survey after survey shows that faculty are increasingly one-sided in their political identifications, that many students are fearful of expressing their policy opinions, and that an activist minority is willing to shut down speech it opposes. In this environment, public policy debates were almost entirely absent on North Carolina campuses and where policy-related forums were present, there seems to be no consistent effort to invite panelists with different viewpoints. There are some exceptions, but most North Carolina campuses seem inhospitable locations for policy discourse open to all undergraduates. As concluded in this report, it does not seem likely on most campuses that the energy for creating frequent and responsible civil discourse about controversial public policy issues exists. That stimulus may have to come from legislators for public institutions and governing boards for both private and public campuses. As is often the case, that initiative may require some funding and regular reporting about campus policy events. [Funding for this report was provided by the John William Pope Foundation.]

Today, colleges and universities use overt admissions preferences to create student bodies that reflect the ethnic, racial, or gender demographics of the population--at the expense of academic merit and preparedness. While the original aim of the policy was to end discrimination and promote fairness, it has led to unequal treatment on the basis of race, gender, economic status, and national origin. There is evidence that racial preferences not only fail to provide any long-term equality, but also hurt minority students, especially those whom it claims to help. In this document, the Martin Center recommends steps that legislatures, university boards, and faculty governing committees can take to end the use of racial preferences on college campuses and recommit themselves to nondiscrimination, equality of opportunity, and academic freedom.

Affirmative action is framed as a way to end discrimination and promote equality. However, it has led to unequal treatment of students on the basis of race, gender, economic status and national origin. This paper recommends steps that policymakers can take to protect education and academic merit. It also provides specific policy guidelines for legislators, university board members, faculty governing committees, and other higher education decision makers. A model university policy is cited from Wyoming Catholic College. Additionally, links to several studies and resources for further reading are provided.

In this Martin Center policy brief, "Scholastic Gag Orders: NDAs, Mandatory Arbitration, and the Legal Threat to Academics," Stephen Baskerville explores how non-disparagement agreements (NDAs) and mandatory arbitration (MA) provide a veil of legally enforced secrecy, shielding administrations from negative publicity, professional censure, and legitimate oversight, as they cleanse their faculty of ideologically heterodox professors.

This report examines five of North Carolina's largest universities -- University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill, UNC Charlotte, North Carolina State University, Wake Forest University, and Duke University -- and finds that discrimination on the basis of sex is rampant at these higher education institutions. Tens of thousands of male students, staff, and faculty members at those five universities alone are limited in their access to education programs and activities that are for women only. Some of these programs even discriminate in favor of girls and against boys in the local community. There are too many violations to describe them all, however, this report provides an introduction to the full list. It seems likely that other universities in the UNC system follow the same pattern, providing evidence that systemic sexism is rampant across the entire system.

Two conditions are needed to effect large-scale reforms in academia: a hierarchical, top-down system of governance that can enact sweeping changes, and for that system to be controlled or heavily influenced by those outside the system. Strong board governance provides both of those conditions. Most university boards, especially the public ones, were created by charters or statutes that placed the board fully in charge, and, remarkably, the boards legally retain much of their power. And yet, because of a variety of pressures and distortion, most boards have relinquished their rightful positions atop college and university governance. This report is intended to operate on two levels. One is to make the case for stronger board control. Such a hierarchical system, rather than the distributed shared governance system that exists now, is necessary to effect large-scale reform. Shared governance is a sacred cow that needs to be gored. The report also works on a more immediate, pragmatic level, providing many solutions that can be implemented individually to begin the process of reforming governance. In most situations, boards still have extensive legal authority. They merely need to exercise their existing authority to put the brakes on many of academia's excesses.

How much of academia is infiltrated by activists? Some conservatives claim that "neo-Marxism" and its sister paradigms like feminist pedagogy, post-structuralism, and post-modernism have long infected certain departments in the humanities and social sciences. Those paradigms have now spread to more disciplines and funding committees. However, conservatives have been slow to explain how activist departments capture institutions. In that light, this policy brief reviews two feminist papers that detail institutional capture. The campus activism process is quite successful and it's critical to show how activists use academic departments to capture institutions (both on the faculty and the administrative sides). For leaders who want to protect institutions against a political takeover, some workable and achievable policies can help them preserve a free academy.

Higher education is in crisis. Revenues from all sources are expected to decrease at both public and private universities. The current crisis will raise existential questions for small and mid-tier institutions. Only universities with massive endowments and highly competitive admissions will escape the effects of the coming enrollment cliff. Special coronavirus relief funding from state and federal governments will improve cash flow in the short term, but they are not permanent solutions. Colleges must act now to cut unnecessary expenses while preserving core academic functions. This policy brief outlines urgent short-term reforms as well as long-term restructuring universities can undertake to survive the revenue shortfalls created by COVID-19 and state economic shutdowns.

Due Process is the right to fair and objective process in judicial matters. This is a right recognized in the 5th and 14th amendments of the United States Constitution, which provides that no one should be "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In campus judicial proceedings, institutions should rely on policies and legal precedent to decide what order to follow and how to rule in cases with contested facts or contradicting statements. Nevertheless, there are instances where students' rights to due process is violated in various ways, from expelling students without notice or opportunity to be heard; a lack of opportunity for cross-examination in disciplinary hearings; and a biased or unqualified hearing panel acting as a judicial body. The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (Martin Center) recommends that all colleges and universities provide full due process rights that are guaranteed through the United States judicial system, in order to provide justice and fairness to both the accuser and the accused. This should primarily be done in two ways. First, delegating serious felonies like sexual assault charges to appropriate authorities that are better qualified and prepared to carry out a thorough investigation without violating the rights of the accused. Universities are simply not capable of performing this high stakes legal task. Second, there must be a student equivalent of Miranda Rights. Specific recommendations for universities and policymakers are provided along with an annotated list of model legislation.

University students are America's future leaders in business, science, politics, philanthropy, and education. It is essential that universities provide for them an environment where the pursuit of truth and open inquiry are uninhibited. They must be exposed to differing ideas, engage in civil debate, and learn to appreciate America's tradition of respect for free expression and peaceful dissent. The pursuit of truth requires that all spaces are open for conversation, that the quest for knowledge is unbridled, and the path to truth is free from the hurdles of speech codes and restrictive policies. Over the last decade, the campus intellectual climate has deteriorated. Free speech issues are at the forefront of campus politics, with threats to free speech increasing worldwide. Public universities and colleges are bound by first amendment protections of free speech and many private institutions make bold promises of unfettered free expression. This report recommends that states or universities adopt policies take steps to protect freedom of speech and expression on campus.

Viewpoint diversity is essential to the academic mission of colleges and universities. Academic freedom, open inquiry, honest debate, and the search for truth rely on diverse viewpoints being welcomed and protected on campus. In the past three decades, university faculty and administrators have become overwhelmingly liberal. This orthodoxy of opinion is bad for academic research, students learning, and for universities' respect and support in the eyes of the public. This document describes the negative impact the lack of viewpoint diversity on campus has, concluding that viewpoint diversity is necessary to create a climate of truth-seeking and civil discourse--on campus as well as off. Steps that policymakers, university boards, and faculty governing committees can take to promote and protect viewpoint diversity at colleges and universities are described. [For a related document, see "Free Speech on Campus. Blueprint for Reform" (ED608290).]

In 2017, the North Carolina legislature passed House Bill 527 (now State Law 2017-196) in order to foster free, open inquiry in the state's colleges and universities. One of the provisions ordered the University of North Carolina (UNC) system Board of Governors to produce an annual report on two major categories of intellectual freedom: free speech and institutional neutrality. This report is the Martin Center's own analysis of free speech and institutional neutrality on the UNC system's 16 campuses. The report examines universities' choices for summer reading assignments and commencement speakers, whether they make public statements on controversial topics like climate change and diversity, the content of freshman orientation sessions, and universities' mission statements. It also records any barriers to student and faculty speech as well as any known disruptions or incidents that curtailed free speech in the past year. To complete this report, the Martin Center consulted schools' websites and newspaper articles. They also contacted student groups to determine whether they experienced any difficulties exercising their rights to free expression. The results of the Martin Center's analysis of free speech and institutional neutrality are presented in this report, organized by campus.

Few institutions receive more attention and more funding than our education system. And it certainly warrants that attention; after all, education plays a big part in determining the future. Reformers abound, for both higher education and the K-12 system. But they have largely missed one of the most crucial components of education, our schools of education, where future teachers are trained. They are out of sight and unapproachable for the K-12 reformers, and too technical and too much on the periphery for those who focus on higher education's shortcomings. That has proven a grave error. Education schools are fundamental to all education. They are serving the nation badly, and it's not just about test scores and graduation rates. Teacher education has become one of the most politicized corners of academia, an institution that is already out of step with the rest of the country politically. Education schools are leading the charge to "transform" the nation, and that transformation is not leading us to a better, freer, more prosperous, more humane society. This politicization of the education schools is not new, it is not invisible, and it is not occurring through random happenstance or by good ideas pushing out bad ones. It started over 100 years ago in the Progressive era, when the education schools first emerged as a body of experts who focused on "teaching" as a science; many of those experts were socialists who were open about their intentions to change the nation. The report reveals the extent of that politicization using two approaches. One is historical and operates at the theoretical level, showing how education schools were ideological from the start and became more so over time. The second is empirical. Education school syllabi were obtained from three leading schools of education: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Recommended and assigned reading selections were quantified to discover the most popular authors. [This report was funded by the Thomas W. Smith Foundation.]

A trigger warning is an early notification of any subject matter which might be considered traumatizing for the audience. It has been particularly common in university lectures and reading lists, and is either issued verbally prior to lectures or presentations, or is part of the syllabus. Trigger warnings have been enormously controversial. According to some estimates, around 51% of academics use trigger warnings. Some universities have begun to require that faculty use trigger warnings before they present potentially sensitive material. Trigger warnings do not seem to help, but rather increase students' anxieties. They also lead to what many psychologists have warned, to a culture of "safetyism" and coddling of the mind. In sum, "Trigger Warning" policies, though well meaning, have failed in study after study, have proven to be largely ineffective and in some cases harmful, and come with a host of negative externalities. This report recommends that universities take steps to limit the use of trigger warnings.

Freedom of association is a fundamental right guaranteed by the first amendment. This encompasses the right of individuals to voluntarily join and leave groups, as well as the right of individuals to form groups to pursue common interests. This right makes it possible for people with diverse opinions to live peacefully in pluralistic communities and to come together with others who share their values, practices, culture, and beliefs. It protects students' rights to hold beliefs that may diverge from the school or the majority of students. It also means that people are free to associate and organize with others for a common cause. Protecting freedom of association on campuses ensures that students and student organizations can thrive. In this document, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (Martin Center) recommends steps that legislatures, university boards, and faculty governing committees can take to protect freedom of association on campus. Model university policies, recommendations for policymakers, and links to model legislation and further reading are also included.

Academia's primary mission is the discovery, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge in a free, neutral, and unbiased manner. The expression of dissenting opinions is crucial to this mission and to achieve a well-examined understanding of the world. Thus, "Institutional Neutrality" is a guiding principle that states institutions of higher education "cannot take collective action on the issues of the day." To take such actions will endanger the university's mission, since it will inhibit the expression of dissenting opinions. In this document, the Martin Center recommends steps colleges, universities, and policymakers can take in adopting policies to establish and maintain institutional neutrality.

This report examines the speech and assembly protections for students and faculty members at North Carolina's universities, both public and private. It is a follow-up to the 2010 report, "Do North Carolina Students Have Freedom of Speech? A Review of Campus Speech Codes." In the eight years since the publication of that report, North Carolina colleges and universities have made remarkable progress in their protection of First Amendment rights on campus. This report is a collaborative project of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). It uses FIRE's speech code rating system to evaluate policies and regulations affecting students' and professors' free speech rights at North Carolina universities. [For "Do North Carolina Students Have Freedom of Speech? A Review of Campus Speech Codes," see ED535446.]

In 2017, the North Carolina legislature passed House Bill 527 (now State Law 2017-196) in order to foster free, open inquiry in the state's colleges and universities. One of the provisions ordered the University of North Carolina system Board of Governors to produce an annual report on two major categories of intellectual freedom: free speech and institutional neutrality. This report is due on September 1. The free speech provisions of the law protect students exercising their First Amendment rights and require institutions to punish anyone who infringes upon these rights. This is fundamental to the purpose of a university, permitting the free exchange of ideas that is a prerequisite for the search for truth. The law protects students and guest speakers alike from being disrupted or silenced. It also states that higher education institutions should aspire to "institutional neutrality," which means they "may not take action, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day in such a way as to require students, faculty, or administrators to publicly express a given view of a social policy." Institutional neutrality, in other words, is integral to developing a campus culture that does not demand students follow a particular set of ideas. The end of the 2017-2018 academic year marks the first year of implementation of S.L. 2017-196 and provides an opportunity to review how it has affected the UNC system. In light of this opportunity, the Martin Center has conducted a review of UNC campuses to measure how well free speech and institutional neutrality have been protected.

For nearly 50 years, the cost of higher education has risen faster than the pace of inflation, with federal student aid contributing to increasing tuition. In 1987, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett penned a "New York Times" article, "Our Greedy Colleges," in which he wrote, "If anything, increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increase." This paper synthesizes empirical findings from 25 articles published in peer-reviewed journals or by respected economic research institutions since 1987. The studies focus on empirical evidence for Bennett's theory. Of the 25 studies, a majority found some effect of federal subsidies on the price of higher education in at least one segment of the higher education market. This paper makes policy recommendations to help slow the growth of university tuition and fees, including: (1) Eliminate Graduate and Parent PLUS loans (the types most likely to drive tuition increases); (2) Focus on Pell Grants instead of loans; (3) Change the student aid eligibility formula; (4) End subsidies for federal student loans; and (5) Cap the growth of tuition and fees at public colleges and universities.