While all of you are welcoming students back to campus, we here at The Quad have to say a couple of goodbyes.

This week is the last in Lucas Lin’s internship with us. He’ll head back to Duke University, where he will kinda sorta become our competitor as Duke Chronicle’s managing editor. You’ve had a chance to read his terrific written work, but if you’re like me and have resisted the allure of TikTok, you probably didn’t know that he was also churning out a series of very fun videos for The Assembly, too. Good luck, Lucas! (Except when you’re competing against us for scoops.)

Sadly, Erin will also be leaving The Assembly at the end of the month. She’ll be heading back to her native Wisconsin, and while Emily and I are very excited for our friend, we’re also bereft. Her stories—about UNC Greensboro cuts, troubles at Saint Augustine’s and St. Andrews, and community college plans—speak for themselves, but she’s also been a fantastic colleague behind the scenes.

It will be very hard to replace Erin, but we’re going to do our best. If you know someone who would like to apply, please send them our way.

— Matt Hartman

📚 Today’s Syllabus

1. UNC-Chapel Hill’s star turn
2. Updates from Saint Augustine’s and Guilford
3. NC Central’s virtual patients and other reading

The Summer UNC-CH Turned Pretty

When Gabriella Neyman received the email in her university inbox, she screamed. 

“‘We’re filming the third season of an Amazon Prime show typically filmed in Wilmington,’” she said it read. “And from that sentence alone, I knew what this show was,” she told me.

The 30-year-old media relations manager guessed correctly: The Summer I Turned Pretty wanted to film portions of its final season at UNC-Chapel Hill. Jenny Han, a UNC-CH alumna and the author of the original book trilogy, oversees the hit romance-drama series that chronicles a heated love triangle between two brothers and their childhood friend.

When Emily agreed to let me find the higher-ed angle on The Summer I Turned Pretty at UNC-Chapel Hill, let’s just say my reaction was similar to Gabriella’s. The resulting story is perhaps the best cross-over episode of my life!

(P.S. Gabriella and I are both Team Conrad—the only correct answer, which has also been fact-checked and verified by my informal poll of other Assembly staff members who watch the show. A rare newsroom-wide endorsement!)

— Erin Gretzinger

Read More at The Assembly

Thanks for reading The Quad, a higher education newsletter written by Matt Hartman and Erin Gretzinger and edited by Emily Stephenson. Reach us with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.

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Give Them Some Credit

After losing its accreditation in July, Saint Augustine’s University had a victory last week thanks to a court injunction that paused the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges’ decision to revoke its accreditation. The school will remain accredited as long as the case is pending.

While the Raleigh HBCU still has a long road ahead of it, the injunction bought SAU time to potentially pursue accreditation with another agency. School officials have said they hope to work with the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools—a common switch for institutions that have lost their status with SACSCOC and other large regional accreditors. For example, Bennett College, an all-female HBCU in Greensboro, transferred to TRACS after a court halted SACSCOC’s determination.

The stall-tactic benefits of a lawsuit may be real, but few institutions that have lost accreditation have gotten it back by winning in court, said Kevin Kinser, a Pennsylvania State University professor of education policy who studies accreditation.

Kinser told The Quad that many schools that lose accreditation don’t have the financial resources to execute a successful legal challenge. Accreditation agencies are also “extremely wary” of being sued, he said, so they follow precise procedures and keep rigorous documentation of the process to demonstrate fairness and objectivity in their decisions.

“It is quite unusual for an institution to keep its accreditation after a final decision has been made by the accreditor and appeals have been exhausted,” Kinser wrote in an email.

SAU acknowledged the risks in its legal filings. “It is not an overstatement to say that, if SACSCOC’s decision is permitted to stand, loss of accreditation will likely result in the demise and dissolution of SAU,” the complaint stated.

Things are a little rosier at Guilford College. 

The board of trustees is happy enough with the progress made by Jean Parvin Bordewich, who had been serving as acting president since January, that they appointed her to a two-year term.

“She’s displayed such a positive aura facing a lot of challenges,” said Dan Mosca, chair of Guilford’s Board of Trustees. “Others have seen that and are drawn to her. They want to help the college succeed.”

Bordewich has been integral to Guilford’s recent fundraising success, which saw the school bring in more than $6 million. She’s also largely kept the support of the community while drastically reducing the budget, unlike her predecessors.

But Guilford isn’t out of the woods yet. Declining enrollment means its improvements aren’t yet enough, and more work is needed to balance the budget ahead of a December meeting with SACSCOC where the school’s accreditation will either be restored or revoked.

— Erin Gretzinger and Matt Hartman

Assigned Reading

Smell This: One of the hard parts about training nurses is finding ways to practice without harming patients. N.C. Central has a new solution: a VR training room complete with haptic feedback and even artificial smells that mimic real-life hospital scenarios like burning rubber or gastrointestinal bleed. Our INDY colleague Justin Laidlaw has the full story.

What’s the Use? Duke scholar Lauren Ginsburg has a new article in the journal Pasts Imperfect pushing back against the idea that humanities majors are useless and a drag on university finances. Armed with data, she argues that humanities departments underwrite the much more costly sciences and that humanities majors have better long-term employment outcomes.

Online in Person: The UNC System is making a big, if troubled, play to capture online education with Project Kitty Hawk, but that hasn’t dissuaded Western Governors University from targeting North Carolina for growth. Triangle Business Journal reports that the Utah-based company is opening a new 300-person office in Raleigh to serve as a hub for the East Coast.

Let us know what’s on your radar at highered@theassemblync.com.

Matt Hartman is a higher education reporter for The Assembly and co-anchor of our weekly higher education newsletter, The Quad. He was previously a longtime freelance journalist and spent nearly a decade working in higher ed communications before joining The Assembly in 2024.