RALEIGH (Oct. 20, 2022) – For those who like to preach about free markets – well, the free market is working. And would-be teachers are voting with their feet: The free market works when you offer educators wages that force them to take second jobs – and when school opens with 4,400 vacant teacher positions… READ MORE
UNC System: Disinvesting in public universities
RALEIGH (October 13, 2022) – North Carolina has an ambitious goal to have 2 million people ages 25-44 with a college degree or credential by 2030. Then why do we continue to disinvest in our public universities? The state spent $2,900 less per student in the University of North Carolina System in 2020-21 than it… READ MORE
Community Colleges: What don’t we get?
RALEIGH (October 6, 2022) – North Carolina is rated the No. 1 state in the nation for business.1 Then why can’t we do a better job paying the people who train our workers? Community colleges are at the heart of training North Carolina’s workforce for several big incoming employers: Apple. Google. Boom Supersonic. VinFast. Wolfspeed… READ MORE
K-12: Symptoms of lousy pay
RALEIGH (September 29, 2022) – Imagine you’re a ninth-grade math teacher with 36 students in your class. Beyond the histrionics and hormones that rage at that age, just how much attention can you give each of those kids? Yet with thousands of empty teacher jobs across the state, such class sizes happen even in 2022… READ MORE
Early Childhood: Do what it takes
RALEIGH (September 22, 2022) – Everyone has taken a hit during the COVID pandemic. But some sectors – especially pre-school for our youngest learners – have taken a bigger hit than others. Any way you paint it, it’s not a pretty picture. Child-care workers in North Carolina made a paltry $24,600 a year in 2020…. READ MORE
NC Pre-K: Pay the folks who teach our kids
RALEIGH (September 22, 2022) – NC Pre-K is an effective, nationally recognized program launched by former Gov. Mike Easley for at-risk 4-year-olds. Yet, as researchers from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University found before the pandemic in 2018, it reached only 47% of eligible children. And 53% – nearly 33,000… READ MORE
Where We Stand: Underfunded
RALEIGH (September 15, 2022) – North Carolina is on a roll winning new – and future-oriented – business. We’ve seen big job announcements over the past year from household names like Toyota, Apple and Google. We should be proud of that. Between the Triangle and the Triad, we see an emerging corridor that will focus… READ MORE
2019: The turmoil continues
Turmoil continued through 2019 among the leadership of individual UNC campuses and the UNC System itself. A new state budget for 2019-21 still hasn’t been adopted; raises for K-12 teachers and higher education faculty are still on hold. And the fate of a statue continued to divert energy from the university’s more noble pursuits. Yet… READ MORE
Flat state support for NC’s public universities
RALEIGH – As it has since 2011-12, state investment in North Carolina’s public university students remained flat last year – and still almost $2,200 a student less than before the Great Recession. State support for the University of North Carolina System shrank from about $12,600 per student before the recession to about $10,400 in 2017-18… READ MORE
Community Colleges: When graduates make as much as instructors…
RALEIGH – Community colleges are critically important to North Carolina’s workforce. At a time when 67 percent of jobs in North Carolina are projected to require education beyond high school by 2020,1 community colleges offer a more-affordable path to a degree, job-specific training and training for the trades. And North Carolinians love their community colleges… READ MORE