News
Winston-Salem/Forsyth Schools facing dire $46M budget gap
NC audit finds WS/FCS faces $46M deficit, tied to COVID fund misuse, excess staffing despite enrollment drop, and broad financial mismanagement.
Opinion
Job needs propel college reforms
I’ve long been bullish on North Carolina’s community colleges. In the past, I’ve praised the system’s cost-effectiveness, its capacity to serve nontraditional students, and the impressive labor-market returns for associate degrees and certificates in such fields as industrial technology, home repair, computer sciences, and health care. Today, I’ll offer you three pieces of good news...
Opinion
Rhetoric, Reality, and DPI Cuts
The facts belie the overheated rhetoric from defenders of the education bureaucracy.
News
Study: UNC Teaching Load Data Not Very Reliable
RALEIGH — Faculty salaries are roughly half of the University of North Carolina system’s budget. Even slight adjustments could mean savings well into the tens of millions of dollars. Using official data taken directly from university registrars’ websites, the Pope Center’s Jay Schalin found that the UNC estimates of faculty teaching loads were inflated by roughly one course per professor per semester.
Opinion
To Pay More, Employ Fewer
North Carolina governments have long been above average in staffing levels and at or below average in employee compensation.
News
Job Reports Have Something for Everyone
RALEIGH — The reports can measure disparate aspects of the labor market, and some groups count jobs differently than others, equating vacant and unfilled positions with layoffs, for example.
News
Community College Changes Affect High-schoolers
RALEIGH — The budget recently enacted by the General Assembly has reduced access to longstanding programs allowing many high school students to begin college work early.
Opinion
Journalism and the bottom line
Some parents in Naples, Fla., are upset that their kids in journalism classes are being graded in part on how many ads they sell for the school newspaper.
News
State-Funded Center Serves Few
RALEIGH — The North Carolina Center for Applied Textile Technology, a state-owned higher-education institution that since 1996 has received more than $1.2 million annually in aid from the state, was audited recently for the first time. Carolina Journal obtained copies of the center’s class rosters for school year 2002-03, which showed a large number of courses and few students. Some students said they weren’t in classes that the center claimed they attended. One was an elderly woman from Belmont who said she was a patient in a hospital at the time.
