The Evolving Academy: Opportunities, but Also Consequences and Obligations

Three years ago, North Carolina's legislature revoked a decades-old state sales tax exemption for campus student meal plans.13 Last year, the National Labor Relations Board said it simply did not matter whether PhD candidates, master's students, or even undergraduates "are primarily students and have a primarily educational, not economic, relationship with their university"; if they are employed by their institutions they are eligible for union representation.14 The Higher Education Compliance Alliance's Compliance Matrix, through more than 250 entries, catalogs federal laws and regulations governing colleges and universities.15 On top of that, there are "thousands of pages of additional requirements in the form of sub-regulatory guidance."