In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, my colleague Jane Shaw writes about the contrast between Texas’s and North Carolina’s approaches to higher-ed reform.

Jane recently attended a higher-ed summit in Texas where some very interesting ideas for change — especially teaching incentives — were discussed. Evidently, Governor Perry is serious about getting more educational bang for the buck in the Lone Star State.

In North Carolina, last year the UNC system engaged in a big public-relations stunt called the UNC Tomorrow initiative, which produced a long-winded report crammed with grandiose ideas on how the university system could and should do more for the state. Sadly, it ignored central educational shortcomings that plague UNC (and all other state university systems) such as the fact that many graduates have very weak language and reading skills.