Margaret Spellings, who will assume the presidency of the University of North Carolina system in March, will begin with a report from the Boston Consulting Group. The management consultants are known for their dedication to privatization and profit. They were advisors in the project that led to the elimination of public schools and teachers’ unions inNew Orleans. Spellings served as their education advisor after her stint as Secretary of Education in the administration of George W. Bush. In that administration, she was one of the architects of No Child Left Behind.
Although Spellings lacks any scholarly credentials (she received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Houston), she should be an effective fundraiser among wealthy conservative benefactors. Since ideological donors often give with strings attached, UNC faculty will have to be wary.
The faculty is not at all pleased. They know what is coming down the pike: NCLB at UNC, data-driven management, corporate reform, cost-cutting, job training. Will academic freedom be respected? Stay tuned.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually Spellings was the hard-line, no compromise Secretary of Education in the second Bush term. She was open to no compromises to make NCLB more effective — unfortunate !!
Al Oertwig, Former St. Paul School Board Member/Chair
Past Steering Committee Member, Council of Urban Boards of Education (2000 to 2006).
Here’s a link to an op-ed piece in the Raleigh News and Observer:
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article54177810.html
As a graduate of the UNC-CH School of Education, this makes me ill.
On the other hand, when I read this oped, I have the impression that Spellings could do what Jesse Helms couldn’t.
Are the UNC profs sufficiently alarmed by all this? Or just a few profs are making the noise against Spellings?
At my university, the Huron consulting firm was hired for the same reason. Even after two years, we haven’t been able to find out how much money has been spent on them.
I taught in Chapel Hill for two years 25 years ago. It was still Jesse Helms’ reign. But he couldn’t really do anything against the UNC system. Here is a quote about those times
“For most people who live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, there is nowhere else in the state they can see themselves living. That’s because many people in Chapel Hill see the rest of the state the way the ancient Athenians saw their city, as an island of intelligence and culture in a sea of stupidity. (Sort of the way New Yorkers see the rest of the country). It was Jesse Helms who opposed the creation of the North Carolina Zoo by suggesting they just put a fence around Chapel Hill and referred to UNC as the “University of Negroes and Communists”. ”
Now that UNC, Chapel Hill has been consistently rated among the top 5 public colleges in the country, they should have no problem ousting the new chancellor.
Also, this whole Boston Consulting Group remaking of the UNC system is being paid for by an anonymous donor. Yet another example of private big business interests buying control of the public sector of education.
Remember all those vocal citizens worried about what Margaret Spellings would do to University of North Carolina university system? All the protests, and arrests of those disrupting the public meeting where this was decided upon and announced?
This latest news should put them at ease … NOT!
I mean, why bother consulting with, or even informing the taxpaying citizens of North Carolina how — with no accountability or transparency whatsoever — you’re about to revamp and alter the UNC system that their taxes pay for?
Just get an anonymous donor totally unaccountable to those same taxpayers to choose and pay a controversial business group to help do it — the same group (BSG, Boston Consulting Group,) mind you, that among other things, privatized the entire New Orleans public schools system against the will of — and without ever informing — those taxpaying citizens there prior to or during that privatization!
Oh? Are you similarly afraid of the intentions and goals of some anonymous individual or entity who’s funding all this?
Don’t worry, Spellings says, you’ll be happy with what they’re going to do.
Just sit back and trust us:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article53812025.html
“CHAPEL HILL — A $1.1 million, privately funded study by a management consulting firm will analyze the UNC system’s administrative operation before UNC President-elect Margaret Spellings arrives in North Carolina.
“Boston Consulting Group was hired in December through the UNC Foundation, with money from an anonymous donor. Work got under way in earnest this week, as consultants began interviews with more than 100 people, including UNC Board of Governors members, chancellors, financial officers, faculty leaders, student leaders and legislators.
…
“Spellings, who was U.S. education secretary from 2005 to 2009, said she had worked with Boston Consulting Group before, when the firm conducted an analysis of the U.S. Department of Education.
“Later, after Hurricane Katrina, the BSG firm helped to reinvent the New Orleans schools, which transformed into the Recovery School District, made up entirely of charter schools.”
The interesting thing is that profs at this point would still have the power to turn things around. Especially now, that UNC is truly one of the top (and on some lists, the top) public university in the US, students would feel very protective about their school, and would help to turn things around.
So the question is, do the profs and students organize themselves, or the articles, the FB page we have seen are just from a few alert individuals.
Contrary to what people think, profs don’t like to organize, don’t like to do things jointly, and like to wait till the last minute—or passed that. They just feel secure about their positions. The battle for the tenure system and academic freedom happened two generations ago, and profs nowadays take them for granted, not realizing, these achievements need to be defended all the time .
The reason for letting the tenure system completely erode in this country—which is signified by the fact that only about 20% of univ profs are tenured—is mostly the profs fault. Whenever admins introduce a new policy (mostly by withholding money to create an excuse), profs comfort each other by saying “It’ll pass; this is just another stupidity from the current admins.”.
What profs refuse to realize is that, unlike them, admins, politicians are extremely patient, not stupid at all, and their method is exactly to introduce change slowly, “strategically”, piece-by-piece.
Instead of sitting back, dealing only with research, every little change needs to be fought, because they are part of the big, strategic change. In this case, detenurization and standardization is the goal, so that privatization, after eliminating the main weapon of the opposition, could go ahead with full force, unopposed.
Usually students initiate significant movements, strikes. NC, unfortunately, is a right to work state.
“Anonymous donor,” hah! I would be the farm it was that plutocrat Art Pope that’s behind all this.