The Quad: What Did You Learn in College?

You Oughta Know

While general education has long sparked disagreements on campuses, a broader debate has emerged in recent years about what students should take away from their college education as the public questions the value of a degree. Such discussions have also gained momentum in conservative politics.

Among the critics of current general-education requirements is Jenna Robinson, the president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative higher education policy institute based in North Carolina. The Martin Center and two other conservative advocacy groups drafted model legislation that was recently adapted into a law in Utah. The model legislation encourages states to create independent centers to set graduation requirements for all public universities with a focus on subjects like Western civilization and U.S. history.

The UNC System is already altering requirements related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a Republican-sponsored bill impacting general education is making its way through the legislature. Robinson spoke with The Assembly about the changes she hopes North Carolina’s public universities will adopt.

You can read the full Q&A here. Here is one extra exchange just for Quad readers.

Why did the authors of the model legislation feel it was important to have a separate center dedicated to developing general education curriculum, instead of faculty and universities?

The way that general education is determined at a university is a compromise process from all the different departments. People are looking out for their department first, rather than looking at general education first. When you’re focused on what is good for your department, the incentive is to get as many courses recognized from your department as part of general education as possible, and so that way you end up with 2,000-plus options in general education, which is what it is at UNC-Chapel Hill right now. That’s what it is at a lot of universities—more than 2,000 options for general education.

We wanted to change the incentive structure so that people were really focused on what makes a good general education, rather than what is good for my home department. And I think that the only way to do that is to take people out of those departments and put them in a place where they’re focusing on general education and care about general education.

–Erin Gretzinger

---

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.

Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here to get The Assembly’s weekly higher education newsletter.

---

Cracking the Carolina Blue Code

In October 2023, UNC-Chapel Hill paid the elite law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom $15,000 in court reporting fees, according to invoices obtained by The Quad via records request. That August, the school paid $7,500, then another $15,000 in December. The charges continued throughout 2024.

Court reporting fees are typically paid for transcription work, but Skadden’s invoices had no details about the court cases being transcribed. It was one of many mysteries in the documents, which included more than $600,000 in charges for a project referred to only as the “Carolina Blue matter.” The Athletic reported that the “Carolina Blue matter” was about athletic conference realignment, but the details remained sparse. 

Newly public records show the court reporting fees were payments to Wasserman Media Group, a high-powered global talent agency and consulting firm. The company represented the ACC in its last media rights negotiation with ESPN. 

North Carolina lawyer David McKenzie, who has made a habit of suing UNC-CH over public records issues (including on behalf of The Assembly), obtained the records in response to another lawsuit accusing the school of skirting public records laws by obscuring the details of its payments. 

The new records show court reporting fees with Wasserman listed as the vendor. UNC-CH declined to comment about what services Wasserman provided or the invoices for court reporting fees. A university spokesperson said that “the University engaged Skadden to provide advice and counsel on legal issues related to the business of college athletics.”

The rest of the records from Skadden are heavily redacted, but Mckenzie filed another brief this week requesting the full, unredacted records. He also included our story on UNC-CH’s athletic finances as part of his argument. The case is pending.

–Matt Hartman

Reach our team with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.

---

Math Class: Budget Season

Math Class is meant to be our recurring feature with charts and graphs. But this time we have a special edition breaking down the higher ed provisions in the state Senate’s budget bill, which was released earlier this week.

Here’s what caught our eye:

NCInnovation in trouble? Two years ago, the General Assembly put $500 million into an endowment for NCInnovation, a nonprofit aiming to commercialize university research. It was and is controversial, but had the backing of the state’s most powerful politicos, including Senate leader Phil Berger.

This budget proposal, as our colleagues at The Caucus wrote, removes that funding, with $400 million going to the new Duke University/UNC-Chapel Hill children’s hospital. Some NCInnovation critics are excited about the change, even though it would still get $25 million a year for the next four years. From the researchers’ perspective, a new funding model could be disconcerting as the Trump administration is cutting federal support.

Who’s in charge of UNC-CH’s School of Civic Life and Leadership? The budget would revise the legislation that created SCiLL to specify that the school’s dean is appointed by the chancellor, with Board of Trustees oversight, and that neither “shall delegate the responsibility to another party.”

In other words, the provost, who typically leads faculty hiring, wouldn’t get a say. This proposed change comes just weeks after provost Chris Clemens announced he was leaving the job after weighing in on a fight over SCiLL hiring.

The proposal also would revise the school’s goals, rooting them more explicitly in the study of American political traditions—something Dean Jed Atkins has already been doing. And it ups the hiring requirements: SCiLL had originally been obligated to hire at least 10 faculty from outside UNC-CH, but no more than 20. Now, if the bill passes, it “shall employ at least 20.”

The school also would get $16 million over the next two years, even though the UNC System only asked for $9.8 million for SCiLL.

The UNC System got most, but not all, of its priorities. Those include an additional $7 million and change for building reserves, $60 million for a new performance funding plan, and about $21 million of the $22.5 million requested for the NC Promise program, which caps in-state tuition at $500 a semester for participating schools. But it only got about $93 million of the $113 million it wanted to reflect enrollment growth in 2024. 

The system also requested $500 million in renovation and repair funding. The bill includes $600 million with the provision that $100 million of it must go to North Carolina Central University.

Cuts could be coming to the UNC System. The budget instructs the Board of Governors to find $20 million in cuts to academic programs to “reduce costs and generate better outcomes for students” by the end of the 2026-27 fiscal year. The UNC System would also have to reduce funding for centers and institutes by $33.7 million a year for each of the next two years. There are also a series of smaller cuts, including $12 million from eliminating vacant non-faculty positions, $9.5 million from eliminating various grant programs collectively referred to as UNC Campus Scholarships, and $7 million from reducing nonresident graduate tuition waivers.

There’s a lot more in there, including a plan to double the tax rate on sports betting operators and distribute money to UNC-CH and N.C. State. There are also lots of provisions related to community colleges. We’ll keep digging in as the budget goes through the legislative process.

–Matt Hartman

Reach our team with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.

---

Assigned Reading

Pink Slips: Layoffs are coming at Duke. Executive Vice President Daniel Ennis gave the bad news at a university-wide meeting earlier this week but didn’t give any further details. The Duke Chronicle reported that he promised it would happen in the “most humane and fair way possible” and in a “contained timeline.”

‘Unwavering Dedication’: Frank Brown, the first Black full professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, died in March at the age of 89. The Daily Tar Heel recounts the legacy that Brown, a former dean of the School of Education, left at the institution. 

Voided Visas: Since the last edition of The Quad, Inside Higher Ed reported that over 800 more student visas have been revoked nationwide, bringing the total to more than 1,300 visas. The UNC System tally has gone up, too. It’s now in the “low 30s,” a spokesperson said. UNC-Wilmington has joined the list, telling The Assembly that one student had a visa revoked.

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