Colleges and universities have become multi-billion dollar giant-squids. Their tentacles reach out, obscured by protective black ink, in hundreds of directions unseen by the public at large.

For example, the ongoing investigations into the University of North Carolina at Chapel are uncovering unknown, formerly hidden scandals on campus—as well as machinations off campus, such as the discovery of the formerly hidden UNC Fund.

That mysterious organization, which has avoided making reports to the IRS, paid out $3.1 million to hire an expensive law firm to investigate the series of misdeeds involving fake courses for scholarship athletes, illegal payments to a professor, misuse of expense accounts by a chief fundraiser and law suits brought by student counselor Mary Willingham.

Willingham has co-written Cheated, a new book exposing UNC-Chapel Hill for slandering and libeling her for daring to tell the truth about the school’s culpability for advancing academically unqualified football and basketball scholarship athletes by allowing high grades for taking phantom courses.

Coincidentally, a new Board of Governors, which oversees the 14-campus University of North Carolina system was appointed by a newly elected Republican state legislature as the Chapel Hill campus is imploding with embarrassing revelations and incompetent leadership in nearly every aspect of university governance.

The newly installed Board of Governors acted to empanel a committee to examine the 240 non-profit think tanks funded directly, or indirectly, by system member schools, including UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center On Poverty, Work and Opportunity. This quango and two others (one at East Carolina and one at North Carolina Central) were singled out for immediate closing based on their political activism and their function as a safe haven for left-wingers. The most notable was UNC law professor Gene Nichol, who served as president of the UNC Poverty group, along with the center’s previous public face—former U. S. Senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards.

Edwards, following accusations about campaign donations diverted to support an affair while his wife was dying from cancer, has returned to his successful career as a plaintiff’s attorney. Nichol, who holds a sinecure at the law school, writes outrageous left-wing editorials, published religiously by the regional daily based in nearby Raleigh. He was hired in 2006 as president of the prestigious William & Mary college, where he made an executive decision to remove a cross from the Assembly room, where it had been for decades. The sensible board of trustees removed Nichol for his blatantly anti-religious decision. Of course, he was welcomed back into the bosom of the UNC-Chapel Hill left-wing community and his high-paying job in the law school. And now that the poverty center will be closed, Nichol has publicly stated that his constituency will donate money for another, similar organization.

The actions of the new Board of Governors are promising fresh starts. Finally, the pooh-bahs of the university are answerable to the people.