Now that we have a new president-elect, what does the future hold for higher education?

Inside Higher Ed has a pretty good roundup of Barack Obama's views and policy proposals for American higher education. One nugget that may ring true here in North Carolina, where students and administrators alike have bemoaned the rising cost of textbooks:

 "Books are a big scam...I taught law at the University of Chicago for 10 years, and one of the biggest scams is law professors write their own textbooks and  then assign it to their students. They make a mint. It's a huge racket."

Writing anonymously in Inside Higher Ed, a professor at a liberal arts college speaks of both the exhiliration of a productive lecture and the frustration of dealing with coddled, entitled college students.

In this essay, the professor fires off more than a few shots at today's college students, who he believes are coddled too much and believe they deserve an A whether they earn it or not.

To wit:

"More of them come to campus with dreadful study habits. Too few of them read for pleasure. Too many drink and smoke excessively. They are terribly ill-prepared for four years of hard work, and most dangerously, they do not think college should be arduous.

Instead, they perceive college as an overnight recreation center in which they exercise, eat, and in between playing extracurricular sports, they carry books around. If a professor is lucky, the books are being skimmed hours before class."

 Harsh words to be sure, and a maybe a bit unfairly general. But is there some truth here? Are there plenty of students out there who regard a B as an unacceptable grade, regardless of the effort they put into the work?

Most of the phone calls Molly Maynard fielded this morning as a voting hotline operator were of the mundane variety: folks who went to the wrong polling place or didn't realize they had registered incorrectly.

But then there was that woman who had just moved to North Carolina from New York and registered to vote - or so she thought - on a website. For a fee.

"They charged her for it; she thought she was registered to vote and she couldn't," recounted Maynard, a first-year law student at UNC Chapel Hill. "They only charged her 11 dollars so it's not like they were in it for the money. They just didn't want her to vote., or at least that's what it seemed like."

It's a busy time of year for Stephen Farmer, UNC Chapel Hill's director of undergraduate admissions. He and his staff go through more than 21,000 applications each year looking for the best candidates. 

(The first deadline to apply to UNC-CH passes tonight, Nov. 3, at midnight).

It isn't easy to get into UNC-CH. The university offered admission to 34 percent of the 21,507 folks who applied for this fall's freshman class. Of those, 79.1 percent were in the top 10 percent of thier high school classes, and the average SAT score of entering freshmen was 1301.

Farmer agreed to chat us up a bit about what universities look for and what applicants should be doing to increase their chances of getting that thick envelope in the mail.

Here's what he had to say:

1. If you're a high school senior and you want to get into UNC Chapel Hill, how stressed are you right now?

What is it with all these people stealing election signs?

In Minnesota, a college professor is quite proud of himself for relieving a roadway of several McCain-Palin election signs. He writes on the blog Huffington Post of this act of civil disobedience, saying it was "one of the single-most exhilirating and empowering political acts I have ever done."

It's also a crime, he acknowledges, one that has grabbed the attention of a local sheriff. 

In a recent blog posting on the North Carolina universities ranked on a business magazine's list of the top 100 best bargains, we neglected UNC Greensboro.

We apologize. UNCG checks in at 98. Here's the full list. 

The local newspaper down in Tallahassee reports that James Ammons, the former boss here at N.C. Central University, had a heck of an inaugural bash down at Florida A & M University last week, to the tune of $288,000.

 The party, much like the $162,000 installation UNC Chapel Hill threw recently for new chancellor Holden Thorp, was paid for by private donations, not state money. Still, that's quite a party, isn't it?

 Ammons called his seven years in Durham a "detour" on his road to the presidency at his alma mater. One might remark that he left just in time, given the mess he'd be dealing with here if he had stayed in Durham. 

At N.C. State University, the school newspaper is lobbying for the return of a farmer's market to  campus.

Student government at NCSU wants to bring a once-a-week farmer's market to the Brickyard on campus to be open either Wednesdays or Fridays. 

The benefits of a campus market? NCSU student Ashley Thornton put it best in her interview with the student paper. 

"Greasy pizza versus fresh fruit? Easy choice." 

Take this for whatever it's worth: College newspapers are endorsing Barack Obama for president in overwhelming numbers.

So says Editor & Publisher, a journalism trade publication. By its count, Obama leads 63-1. The "1" is the paper at the University of Mississippi.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will speak at Duke Law School next Saturday, Nov. 8, at 9:30 a.m. during a dedication ceremony for the school's recent expansi

The school recently opened a 4,000-square-foot addition. Over the last several years, the law school has renovated all classrooms, added two new wings of offices and meeting rooms as well as a  new suite for the school's clinic. The library has been renovated as well.