The Federal Pell Grant Program, which provides need-based grants to millions of college students, is the federal government's largest education expenditure. It consumes over half the Department of Education's annual budget and in 2010-2011 cost taxpayers about $36 billion per year. Although the program started out as a way to provide college…

This paper measures the teaching loads of faculty in the University of North Carolina (UNC) system. The impetus for the paper was a statistic provided by the UNC system to the North Carolina legislature's Fiscal Research Division. It claimed that the system-wide average teaching load is 3.37 courses per professor per semester. Based on the Pope…

What responsibilities do universities have to donors, many of whom are alumni? Presumably, one responsibility is to respect their wishes when they provide gifts with specific purposes. Yet Martin Morse Wooster shows in this report that universities often neglect the wishes of contributors. "Games Universities Play: And How Donors Can Avoid Them"…

America's colleges and universities are supposed to be strongholds of classically liberal ideals, including the protection of individual rights and openness to debate and inquiry. Too often, this is not the case. Across the country, universities deny students and faculty their fundamental rights to freedom of speech and expression. The report…

Does investing taxpayer money in higher education lead to major payoffs in economic growth? State legislators and policy makers say yes. They routinely advocate massive appropriations for university education and research, even in poor economic times, on the grounds that taxpayers will be rewarded many times over. The investment of federal funds…

Universities are providing extra time on tests, quiet exam rooms, in-class note-takers, and other assistance to college students with modest learning disabilities. But these policies are shrouded in secrecy. This paper, "Accommodating College Students with Learning Disabilities: ADD, ADHD, and Dyslexia," by Melana Zyla Vickers, examines the nature…

Although the term academic freedom is tossed about almost with abandon, many people do not know exactly what it means. This paper defines academic freedom, explains to whom it applies, and places it in its historical, institutional, and legal contexts. This paper also offers guidelines for deciding when and where the protection of academic freedom…

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is highly unusual. A component of the University of North Carolina system, it is "dedicated entirely to the professional training of students possessing talents in the performing, visual and moving image arts." This paper addresses the question…

"College Bound? Make the Right Choices" is the Pope Center's latest tool for improving colleges and universities "from the bottom up" through better choices. Its purpose is to help high school students and their parents become smarter purchasers of higher education. This booklet by Jenna Ashley Robinson helps young people think through what they…

The focus of this essay is on the persistently rising costs in higher education and the role that incentives play in pushing those costs up. Data from the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics reveal that the rise in higher education cost exceeds the rise in service-sector prices and even the rise in health-care costs…

This paper is about a court case decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1971. Although attorneys recognize that the case is important to businesses, its impact on colleges and universities has been explored by only a few. As this paper will show, "Griggs v. Duke Power" may have enormously boosted the number of students in college and may have…