Annual Pope Center Conference Set for Oct. 8

Ohio
University Economics professor and author Richard K. Vedder
will be the keynote speaker at the annual John W. Pope
Center Higher Education Conference, to be held Saturday,
Oct. 8, at the Hilton Hotel in Research
Triangle
Park.

This year’s conference will be centered on
the theme “Higher Education in America: Do
Students and Taxpayers Get Their Money’s Worth?”
Registration is underway for the conference. The cost is $20
per person and includes a luncheon. To register, contact
Executive Director George Leef at georgeleef@popecenter.org.
You may also register online.

“The cost of higher education continue to
rise faster than the rate of inflation, but many observer
think that quality delivered is going down just as fast,”
Leef said. “This conference is designed to explore the
important question of how much students and taxpayers are
getting for all the money they pour into the quest for
college degrees.”

Last
year, Vedder’s book Going Broke by Degree: Why
College Costs Too Much examined the rising costs
of going to college, how only a fraction of those costs goes
toward instruction, and how many colleges are failing to
educate their students. Vedder’s speech, entitled “The High
Cost and Low Productivity of Our Colleges and Universities”
will focus heavily on his research in the
book.

Since publishing
the book, Vedder has testified on the issue of college
access at a House of Representatives Committee on Education
the Workforce hearing. Much of Vedder’s work prior to
writing “Going Broke by Degree” has focused on American
labor markets, immigration, and unemployment. Besides his
professorship at Ohio University, he is also
an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.

“Professor
Richard Vedder has a long, distinguished record of economic
scholarship,” Leef said. “We are fortunate that he has
recently turned his sharp mind to the economics of higher
education. His book ‘Going Broke by Degree’ asks and answers
some tough questions about colleges and universities. What
Professor Vedder finds is that there is a great deal of room
for improvement in their productivity.”

The conference will also hold panel
discussions throughout the day featuring professors, reform
advocates and students. Indiana University Professor Murray
Sperber will open the conference with a talk on how colleges
and universities ignore undergraduate students. Sperber, who
spoke at the Pope Center‘s 2000
conference, is the author of the book Beer and
Circus.

In
the first panel discussion of the day, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor David Mulroy and former NC
State English professor Nan Miller will respectively discuss
the importance of having students read great books and the
weakness in writing instruction.

The second session will center upon taboo
subjects on college campuses. Presenters in this session
will include Duke University Professor John Staddon,
John W. Pope Center for Higher
Education Policy Senior Fellow Professor Alston Chase, and
University of North Carolina-Wilmington Professor and
Townhall.com columnist Mike Adams.

Following the luncheon and Vedder’s speech,
Melana Zyka Vickers and Gary C. Brasor will examine the
curriculum in higher education. Early this year, Vickers
authored a paper for the Pope Center which took a
critical look at Women’s Studies programs throughout the UNC
system. Brasor, associate director of the National
Association of Scholars, did a study for the Pope
Center
in 2004, looking at the core curriculum in the UNC
system.

The final
session will focus on a student’s perspective of what occurs
in higher education today. Scheduled to present in this
session is Elizabeth Beck, a recent graduate of
UNC-Charlotte, Kat Rodgers and Trey Winslett, both of whom
are students at UNC-Chapel
Hill.