For the last year, a small battle has raged in NC over a proposal for the UNC system to take over a private, Methodist-affiliated college — North Carolina Wesleyan. It was pushed by politicians from eastern North Carolina who thought that using the MORE EDUCATION IS GOOD bait would be the way to direct more state dollars to the region.
The Pope Center challenged the educational- and economic-development arguments made by the proponents, most recently here.
A study commission that was appointed to evaluate the proposal just came out with a negative report and UNC president Erskine Bowles thinks there are much better ways to spend the money ($207 million over 7 years) it would cost. That should finish the idea off, but the politicians behind it have a tremendous amount of clout. This could still be nasty.