Refusing to Cut

Today's N&O ran the story below about state agency's not offering cuts. UNC is not playing the game this way. The requested 10% will be identified, but so will some new budget requests.

It is a delicate balance between letting the state know what we assess that we need to operate and to continue to serve the citizens of North Carolina and knowing that we will have to do our part to close the budget gap. Figuring out creative, long-term solutions to this issue is something we at the Faculty Assembly have been talking about for a good while now. All state agencies will have to do the same.

Of course, cutting positions will mean the need for unemployment and other forms of support of the people who lose their positions. The state is on the line either way.

Leadership, from the governor and the General Assembly, is going to have to work closely with state agencies to make it happen. Posturing is the first thing that should go. Unfortunately, it is the only way most know how to play the game.

Masthead



Published Sun, Nov 14, 2010 04:19 AM
Modified Sat, Nov 13, 2010 11:28 PM
Agencies offer little for budget
Gov. Bev Perdue's office hasn't gotten many solid suggestions from state agencies on how to fill a $3.5 billion budget hole.

The agencies were asked to cut their budgets by 5 percent, 10 percent or 15 percent by either dumping or consolidating programs and cutting management, and given an Oct.29 deadline. So far, it appears that most are ignoring the guidelines.

Perdue's budget office has gotten few suggestions for cuts. Taken together, those that have heeded the call don't come close to chopping $3.5 billion from this year's nearly $19 billion budget.

Perdue has said she would announce her plan for government consolidation after the election, offering a partial preview of her budget proposal.

The Democratic governor will be working next year with a Republican-dominated legislature looking to shake up budgeting.

"The agencies should very clearly understand the governor is looking for programs that can be eliminated," said Chrissy Pearson, Perdue's spokeswoman.

Instead, many are looking to raise revenue.

John W. Smith, the chief state courts administrator, suggested the court system could make up nearly 5 percent by increasing fees and making unspecified reductions but told Perdue's budget director the judicial branch couldn't take deeper cuts.

The Department of Insurance didn't come up with any cuts, either. Instead, the department, which lives on fees, suggested collecting more from insurers, agents, adjusters and others licensed to do business in North Carolina.

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler flat-out refused to make any suggestions, saying his department has lost 180 jobs in the past 10 years. It doesn't make sense for the department to offer ideas ahead of the government consolidations that Perdue says she will make and a budget review by lawmakers, Troxler said. "This is putting the cart before the horse," he said.

The full slate of proposals is unknown. Pearson said that state budget director Charles Perusse was not able Friday afternoon to retrieve the budget cut information agencies provided electronically. "His new system has some bugs in it," Pearson said.

The UNC system said last week that a $270 million, 10 percent budget cut would cost about 1,700 jobs that likely would include faculty members. The universities, community colleges and K-12 public schools - which spend about 60 percent of the state budget - don't have to dig as deep as the other agencies. The budget office has asked them to offer cuts up to only 10 percent.

The community college office did not respond to a request for its proposal, and the state Department of Public Instruction said its suggestions for cutting K-12 education won't be ready until Monday.

A handful of smaller agencies provided copies of their suggested cuts last week.

The state Labor Department suggested cutting vacant jobs and operating expenses to help get to the 15 percent mark, and the Secretary of State's office said it could pay salaries and benefits for about 40 workers from agency receipts rather than the state budget.

State departments aren't good at coming up with their own cuts, said Rep. Jim Crawford, a Henderson Democrat who has been a chief budget writer for years.

"Agencies have traditionally picked their programs that are the most popular and put them on the chopping block," he said. The resulting public outcry usually helps spare popular programs.

It would be better if agencies made practical suggestions, especially this year, Crawford said. "If I were the agencies, I'd really look at the programs and see what they can live without and what they can't," he said.

'Revolutionary things'

Any potential savings the departments suggest will help, Pearson said.

Changes by a Republican-dominated legislature may turn budgeting on its ear, making next year's discussions about spending different from any in recent history. Legislators may start working on their own budget before Perdue submits hers, said David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican. Traditionally, legislators use the governor's budget as a template.

Rather than relying on agency suggestions, he said, legislators are going to review the functions of every department as if they'd never received money before.

Lawmakers will ask the public their budget-cut suggestions, Lewis said, and may set up a system to reward people who come up with workable ideas.

"We're going to try to do some revolutionary things," he said.

Staff writer Alan Wolf contributed to this report.

lynn.bonner@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4821

Dire Economic Times

The Greensboro News and Record this morning ran the following piece on its editorial page. It demonstrates a gathering momentum for radical solutions to our budgetary woes. We need to be thinking proactively about possible solutions to the economic situation in which we find ourselves. Other systems are shelving campuses, closing programs, and laying off faculty. We well might not escape this kind of pain. A letter below the article is one response. Our meeting this week will represent another avenue of thinking. Creativity and boldness are the order of the day.

Brains and budgets
Tuesday, November 9, 2010 (Updated 3:01 am)
Erskine Bowles stunned some observers at his final UNC Board of Governors meeting as system president last week. He said a state university campus might have to close someday to save money.

Drastic measures must be on Bowles’ mind these days. He’s been pulling double duty as co-chairman of a federal deficit-reduction commission.

Whether trying to whittle down the national debt or balancing the state budget, every option has to be considered. UNC numbers-crunchers already are looking at the potential impacts of 5 percent, 10 percent or 15 percent funding cuts. Laying off faculty and reducing course offerings are likely results in the short term. If the financial picture gets worse, more serious actions may be required.

Closing any of the UNC system’s campuses would ignite a firestorm of protest from the affected community. But, when a study of the entire state government structure is overdue, the universities can’t be overlooked. Considering the low graduation rates at some, legitimate questions about effectiveness can be raised. In fact, Bowles also suggests that budget cuts might be tied to poor academic achievement: Graduate more students, get more money; let more students drop out, lose funding. It’s a survival-of-the-fittest approach to higher education.

Yet, there’s more to a university’s value than a four-year graduation rate. Every campus accounts for a huge economic impact. Furthermore, tough times make it harder for students — especially those from economically challenged backgrounds — to stay in school. Cutting faculty and course offerings likely will slow students’ academic progress even more. Still, the state can hardly afford to continue high subsidies for poor results. Universities must find ways to improve retention and graduation rates.

One way to cope with cuts is to share resources. That’s obvious when campuses are only minutes apart. UNCG and N.C. A&T can offer more classes to students from both campuses and reduce duplication. Greater distances can be overcome by increasing the availability of online classes. A professor in Chapel Hill can lecture to students from Cullowhee to Elizabeth City all at once. A virtual campus costs less to construct than one built with bricks and mortar. It would not offer the same campus experience that present and past generations of college students have enjoyed, but North Carolina needs to provide higher education to more students at less cost per capita.

Retreating from a commitment to higher education will leave this state far behind in the race for economic growth in a sophisticated world. The smart people who run our universities must figure out how to fill more brains for the buck.

The lousy economy won’t last forever, but it can do more damage every year. North Carolina must maintain a strong public university system while spending less money. Identifying and reducing costly weaknesses is one necessary step.



Tuesday, November 9, 2010 (Updated 3:05 am)

Every time the UNC budget takes a hit, chancellors threaten to cut faculty and eliminate classes. Erskine Bowles rightly targeted the university system’s bloated administration in the last belt-tightening. University bureaucracies and bureaucratic salaries grew exponentially from the mid-1990s when the system adopted a “business model,” changing its mission from providing a good education at reasonable cost to a focus on image and national standings.

Now is the time to return to the mission of providing good educational opportunities for North Carolinians at affordable prices. Instead of cutting faculty and services, the universities need to move to “step two” in trimming the bureaucracy: cutting administrator salaries to associate professor levels. Paying administrators at rates double or triple that of faculty is outrageous, given the differences in job requirements. Both of our local universities could hire Nobel laureates for the money they pay some of their administrators. It’s time to return some sanity to the cost structure of our state universities.

Harol Hoffman
Greensboro

Watchdogs

I am just returned from the UNC Board of Governors Meeting. All of the talk of budget and some of the dire news reports have made me think about the beginning of our economic meltdown in the US. Wall Street was making all kinds of crazed moves while there was no watchdog.

Shared governance is the only way that we assure that all the voices in a university get heard and respected. If we neglect that duty now, we may wake up with a world we no longer recognize and do not want.

I will be communicating with delegates in a long email report in the next few hours about content. But, for now, I remind us of our duty.

Faculty Productivity

The following piece appeared in this morning's WSJ. Lest you think it is not coming to North Carolina, I can assure you that the documents I sent to you this week are already about measuring our productivity. Our value to the taxpayer is not too far away as there are always legislators wanting faculty workload information and the like. We all already know that most of our jobs are not seen by the public and there is a perception that a 9 hour teaching load, for instance, means we work for 9 hours. We have to do a better job in making our work transparent and in demonstrating its value to the people whose tax dollars support us.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536322093520994.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsFifth


THE SATURDAY ESSAYOCTOBER 22, 2010.Putting a Price on Professors
A battle in Texas over whether academic value can be measured in dollars and cents..



By STEPHANIE SIMON And STEPHANIE BANCHERO
Carol Johnson took the podium of a lecture hall one recent morning to walk 79 students enrolled in an introductory biology course through diffusion, osmosis and the phospholipid bilayer of cell membranes.

A senior lecturer, Ms. Johnson has taught this class for years. Only recently, though, have administrators sought to quantify whether she is giving the taxpayers of Texas their money's worth.

View Full Image

Matt Wright-Steel for The Wall Street Journal

Chester Dunning, a history professor, has won several teaching awards. According to a report by the chancellor, he also loses money for the university, though his department is in the black overall.
.A 265-page spreadsheet, released last month by the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, amounted to a profit-and-loss statement for each faculty member, weighing annual salary against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained.

Ms. Johnson came out very much in the black; in the period analyzed—fiscal year 2009—she netted the public university $279,617. Some of her colleagues weren't nearly so profitable. Newly hired assistant professor Charles Criscione, for instance, spent much of the year setting up a lab to research parasite genetics and ended up $45,305 in the red.

The balance sheet sparked an immediate uproar from faculty, who called it misleading, simplistic and crass—not to mention, riddled with errors. But the move here comes amid a national drive, backed by some on both the left and the right, to assess more rigorously what, exactly, public universities are doing with their students—and their tax dollars.


.As budget pressures mount, legislators and governors are increasingly demanding data proving that money given to colleges is well spent. States spend about 11% of their general-fund budgets subsidizing higher education. That totaled more than $78 billion in fiscal year 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.

The movement is driven as well by dismal educational statistics. Just over half of all freshmen entering four-year public colleges will earn a degree from that institution within six years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

And among those with diplomas, just 31% could pass the most recent national prose literacy test, given in 2003; that's down from 40% a decade earlier, the department says.

"For years and years, universities got away with, 'Trust us—it'll be worth it,'" said F. King Alexander, president of California State University at Long Beach.

But no more: "Every conversation we have with these institutions now revolves around productivity," says Jason Bearce, associate commissioner for higher education in Indiana. He tells administrators it's not enough to find efficiencies in their operations; they must seek "academic efficiency" as well, graduating more students more quickly and with more demonstrable skills. The National Governors Association echoes that mantra; it just formed a commission focused on improving productivity in higher education.

View Full Image

Carol Johnson lectures at Texas A&M; she netted the university $279,617, according to the chancellor's report.
.This new emphasis has raised hackles in academia. Some professors express deep concern that the focus on serving student "customers" and delivering value to taxpayers will turn public colleges into factories. They worry that it will upend the essential nature of a university, where the Milton scholar who teaches a senior seminar to five English majors is valued as much as the engineering professor who lands a million-dollar research grant.

And they fear too much tinkering will destroy an educational system that, despite its acknowledged flaws, remains the envy of much of the world. "It's a reflection of a much more corporate model of running a university, and it's getting away from the idea of the university as public good," says John Curtis, research director for the American Association of University Professors.

Efforts to remake higher education generally fall into two categories. In some states, including Ohio and Indiana, public officials have ordered a new approach to funding, based not on how many students enroll but on what they accomplish.

Details vary, but colleges typically earn points under such a system for pushing students to take science, engineering and math; for ensuring that they complete classes that they start; for improving on-time graduation rates; and for boosting more low-income students to degrees.


.These performance metrics generally affect just a portion of an institution's public funding—but that can be significant. In Ohio, for example, state funding for one community college jumped 11% in each of the past two years because of the new formulas. Several four-year campuses, by contrast, lost about 5% a year. President Barack Obama has pushed for similar incentives on a national level but could not get a proposed $2.5 billion fund for high-achieving colleges through Congress.

A second approach to reform is driven by college administrators seeking to build credibility with the public by disclosing their school's strengths and weaknesses.

Minnesota's state college system has created an online "accountability dashboard" for each campus. Bright, gas-gauge-style graphics indicate how many students complete their degrees; how run-down (or up-to-date) facilities are; and how many graduates pass professional licensing exams.

The California State University system, using data from outside sources, posts online the median starting and mid-career salaries for graduates of each campus, as well as their average student loan debt. "Taxpayers can make a pretty good estimate of their rate of return," says Mr. Alexander, president of CSU Long Beach.

A few schools have even taken to guaranteeing their education. Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mich., pledges to retrain any of its graduates whose employers are dissatisfied with their skills or attitude.

View Full Image

Matt Wright-Steel for the Wall Street Journal

Assistant professor Charles Criscione works one-on-one with an undergraduate; he ended up $45,305 in the red.
.Concern about America's higher-education system kicked into high gear in 2006 when Margaret Spellings, education secretary for President George W. Bush, issued a biting report. She chided universities for coasting on their reputations and urged them to start measuring how much students learn—and why a degree costs so much.

The same year, a survey conducted by a coalition of corporations found that nearly 30% of employers ranked new hires with four-year college diplomas as "deficient" in written communication skills.

The reports jolted academia. Scrambling to respond, scores of public colleges agreed to post data they had previously kept private on a "College Portraits" website—including their scores on standardized tests that attempt to measure how much a school improves students' critical thinking skills between freshman and senior years. About 300 colleges now participate in the site, run by two consortiums of public colleges.

Public Higher Ed: From Jefferson to the Cold War
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Getty Images

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
.1795
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which formally opened in January 1795 with a single professor, Rev. David Ker, was the country's first public university to admit students. One of the duties of the school's early professors was to perform morning and evening prayers and examine students on the "principles of morality and religion." By the end of June, 41 students had enrolled.

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Corbis

The University of Virginia
.1819
Thomas Jefferson, along with his friend James Madison, believed that public education was vital to maintaining a strong republic. In 1789, he wrote that "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government." He founded the University of Virginia—the country's first nonsectarian university and the first to use an elective course system—in 1819.

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Corbis

President Abraham Lincoln
.1862
The Morrill Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, laid the foundation for a nationwide system of public universities. It granted each state 30,000 acres of land for every member of its congressional delegation. The land was then sold off to fund public colleges, with a particular focus on schools that specialized in agriculture, engineering and science. The act ultimately funded 69 universities.

1915
The standards for tenure, or job protection for professors, were first laid out in 1915 by the American Association of University Professors over concerns about academic freedom. (There had been several incidents in which colleges punished or fired faculty—for teaching evolution, for example.) As of 2007, 21% of U.S. faculty members were full-time and tenured, down from 37% in 1975.

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Getty Images

Scientist operating micromanipulator
.1945
In the postwar years, a flood of federal research money transformed U.S. universities and boosted their reputations internationally. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, wrote in an influential 1945 report that basic scientific research should take place in universities, relatively free from the pressures of "convention, prejudice or commercial necessity."

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Getty Images

Dr. Clark Kerr
.1958
From 1958 to 1967, Clark Kerr served as president of the University of California system, expanding its reach and inspiring other state officials to follow his model. He created a system with multiple campuses state-wide to serve a range of students, from community colleges to elite research universities. He also proposed that every student should be able to go to college, regardless of ability to pay.
.To critics, that isn't enough. They see a system in which some tenured professors teach just two or three classes a year, sometimes on obscure topics that mesh with their research but not necessarily with student needs. At the same time, more instruction is handled by part-time lecturers, who now make up at least 50% of the nation's higher-education faculty—up from 30% in 1975, according to the American Association of University Professors.

Meanwhile, tuition is soaring; undergraduate costs at public four-year universities climbed 139% between 1990 and 2010, according to the nonprofit College Board. Last school year, average tuition and fees were $7,020 at a four-year public university and $26,273 at a private institution, the College Board says.

Nowhere has the overhaul movement taken hold more firmly than in Texas. A law that took effect this fall—and which passed the legislature unanimously— requires public universities to post online the budget of each academic department, the curriculum vitae of each instructor, full descriptions and reading lists for each course and student evaluations of each faculty member. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, requ ires the information to be accessible within three clicks of the college's home page.

Supporters say the information will help students pick useful classes so that they can move more quickly toward degrees. Skeptics fear it will spark culture wars as left and right tussle over the merits of specific classes and teachers. Ideologues could "find something they don't like in a syllabus, take it out of context and paint the wrong picture," said Karan Watson, interim provost at Texas A&M.

Others are concerned that posting students' evaluations online will boost the status of professors who are entertaining—or an easy A—over those who require kids to wrestle with tough material. "I know from experience that everyone who taught statistics got a lower evaluation than those who taught courses that were a little less challenging," says John Antel, provost at the University of Houston.

Individual Texas colleges also are moving on their own reforms. Thomas Evenson, dean of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service at the University of North Texas, has ordered his faculty to spend at least four hours a day, four days a week, on campus or engaged in field research, in addition to the hours they spend teaching. The goal: to make "more of an effort" to ensure that faculty are "present, available and productive," he said. The University of Houston has doubled the pot of money set aside for teaching awards, to $400,000 a year.

But perhaps the most far-reaching initiative is the cost-benefit balance sheet at Texas A&M, the oldest public university in the state. Each faculty member is assessed on criteria including the number of classes that they teach, the tuition that they bring in and research grants that they generate.

One metric divides their salary by the number of students that they teach. The range is striking. Some nontenured lecturers earn less than $100 for each student they instruct. Other professors are teaching such small classes that their compensation works out to more than $10,000—in a few cases, more than $20,000—per student.

Mr. Criscione, the assistant professor studying parasites, came out at $23,563 per student. He says that is because he was setting up his lab and applying for grants most of that year, as is standard for new hires in the biology department, so he supervised just two students.

Faculty on the huge flagship campus, which serves 39,000 undergraduates here in east-central Texas, say some of the data on the spreadsheet are inaccurate, including inflated salaries and missing grants. They also say it's unfair to judge their productivity by class size when they often can't pick what they teach but are assigned by their department heads.

And they point out that the data do not take into account the many hours spent preparing lectures, advising students, serving on curriculum review committees or making other contributions to the college community. "A 50-minute lecture takes me two days to prepare," says Mr. Criscione. "There are 24 lectures in a semester, so you do the math."

In response to complaints, administrators recently pulled the report from a public website to review the data. University President R. Bowen Loftin sent a letter to faculty promising the data wouldn't be used to "assess the overall productivity" of individuals.

Administrators in the chancellor's office, which produced the document, declined to be interviewed. The Board of Regents also declined.

The concept of a productivity spreadsheet came from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that Gov. Rick Perry invited to a state university summit in May 2008. The group suggested several reforms with a common theme: Let taxpayers see what's going on at every public institution—and let them decide what's worth subsidizing.

Bill Peacock, a vice president at the foundation, acknowledges that this approach could mean a radical reshaping of academia, with far more emphasis on filling students with practical information and less on intellectual pursuits, especially in the liberal arts.

That's OK by him. "Taxpayers of the state of Texas," Mr. Peacock says, should decide whether "they should be spending two years paying the salary of an English professor so he can write a book of poetry simply to add to the prestige of the university or the body of literature out there."

When the choice is put that bluntly, Chester Dunning, a history professor at Texas A&M, wonders if he'd pass muster. Mr. Dunning teaches two classes a semester and has won several teaching awards. His salary of about $90,000 a year also covers the time he spends researching Russian literature and history. His most recent book argues that Alexander Pushkin's drama "Boris Godunov" was a comedy, not a tragedy.

Mr. Dunning says his scholarly work animates his teaching and inspires his students. "But if you want me to explain why a grocery clerk in Texas should pay taxes for me to write those books, I can't give you an answer," he says.

His eyes sweep his cramped office, lined with books. Then Mr. Dunning finds his answer. "We've only got 5,000 years of recorded human history," he says, "and I think we need every precious bit of it."

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

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BOG Update

The UNC Board of Governors met Thursday and today. Here are some highlights.

1. UNC Online. The board saw the proctoring system being run at ECU on a start-up basis. It prompted a discussion about online education and where we need to be going in the near future. The next UNC Online Project Task Force meeting in two weeks will include Hannah Gage and our meeting on online issues is in March. There are a number of issues we want to get out in front on. More to come.

2. Budget. Setting budget priorities is the big topic on the table now. How to handle tuition is also something that will be determined. The latter is a scheduled review. Deferred maintenance (see the recent N&O article) will likely get emphasis. Capital projects will be scaled back (as with the decision not to build the UNC Law School). We will have to follow all of these discussions carefully. We also should note that enrollment funding is likely to have some significant change (we will be looking at a new model later this month for connecting enrollment to retention and graduation) and we also need to follow the discussions on where tuition dollars will go (to campuses or to the general fund; we, of course, prefer the former).

3. Executive Compensation will be an on-going issue in P&T. A study done last year reveals that we are significantly behind most of our peers for Chancellors. But EVERYONE from President Bowles down stressed that NOTHING is to be done now in this climate and NOTHING is to be done until the Faculty and Staff get the raises that they also deserve. The issue here is how to recruit and retain the best....no matter what the category of employment.

4. We have to set new peers for each school. That process will be delayed until Tom Ross comes on board in January.

5. The big news, new VP for Finance Ernie Murphrey is retiring at the end of the year and Jeff Davies will head the search for his replacement ASAP. Ernie has a long career with our system, but needs to step away to deal with some family issues.

These highlights give you an idea of what is happening. UNC Football was on the front pages, so you can read that one on your own.

Buildings and Budgets

Another item to think about with regard to budget. The list never ends.

From today's N&O.

Masthead



Published Sun, Oct 03, 2010 03:35 AM
Modified Sun, Oct 03, 2010 03:41 AM
UNC system facilities are 'in a mess'
In N.C. State University's Gardner Hall, scientists struggle to keep their workplaces free of mold even as they study it under microscopes.

The decaying, 58-year-old, red-brick building houses several plant science departments whose faculty members routinely analyze mold and fungi. The soundtrack for these efforts is the rattly, tinny din of dozens of dust-coated air conditioner window units that run year round - a low-tech attempt to counter the mold spores that slowly but resolutely attach themselves to walls and countertops.

Faculty here will continue this battle for the foreseeable future. There isn't nearly enough money available to properly maintain Gardner Hall and hundreds of other teaching and research facilities across the UNC system.

This may sound familiar. In the past decade, the state issued bonds to raise $3.1 billion to repair university and community college buildings. Though that money was used to revamp hundreds of campus facilities, the construction program fell far short of fixing all the UNC system's infrastructure needs.

So as campus officials keep shifting money around to fix the latest busted heater or hole in a roof, Gardner Hall's scientists will continue producing 21st century science in a building unlikely to be featured in an NCSU marketing campaign anytime soon.

"We're not on any campus tours," said Margaret Daub, head of NCSU's plant biology department. "Nobody lets anyone over here."

In 2000, North Carolinians made a resounding statement about the value of public higher education, approving the bonds in an Election Day referendum. That sent the UNC system on a 10-year building campaign on a scale rarely seen in American higher education. Hundreds of buildings were gutted, renovated, or built anew - creating an influx of flashy new facilities with the latest and most expensive technology.

Total spending for the UNC system: $2.5 billion. Community colleges received $600 million . UNC spent about $1.4 billion on new construction and the balance on renovations, infrastructure, land acquisition and technology improvements.

The bond program legislation read in part, "The General Assembly finds that although the University of North Carolina is one of the state's most valuable assets, the current facilities of the university have been allowed to deteriorate due to decades of neglect and have unfortunately fallen into a state of disrepair because of inadequate attention to maintenance. It is the intent of the General Assembly to reverse this trend and to provide a mechanism to assure that the state's capital assets are adequately maintained."

But the trend wasn't reversed. Though the bond program created construction booms at public universities, it touched just a portion of the infrastructure at each campus. For those many buildings that didn't benefit from bond money, the slow, steady deterioration caused by a lack of repair money continued. In all, the $2.5 billion spent addressed less than half of the $7 billion in total needs cited in a 1999 consultant's report.

And the meter keeps running. The UNC system's backlog now tops $3 billion, according to system data.

"The problem is perpetuating itself," said Hannah Gage, chairwoman of the UNC system's Board of Governors. "As the economy has slowed, the state's ability to give us the money we need has declined. We're in a mess."

Eisenhower-era building

Poor Gardner Hall - with its chipped, stained floor tiles, poor ventilation and white cinder block walls - is NCSU's poster child for disrepair.

"It is a true Sputnik-era science building," said Kevin MacNaughton, associate vice chancellor for facilities at NCSU. "It is one we have tried mightily to keep afloat."

The higher education bond program financed 40 projects at NCSU that resulted in new or renovated facilities, but the campus still has a maintenance backlog totaling more than $439 million.

"We have the haves and have-nots on this campus," MacNaughton said. "The buildings touched by the bond program are the haves, and the ones that were not are the have-nots."

Across the state, public campuses tell similar tales. N.C. Central University in Durham received $122 million in bond funds for 23 projects; its maintenance backlog stands at $85 million. Chapel Hill, which spent more than $500 million on 50 projects, would need $645 million to adequately update its facilities, officials say.

This problem isn't unique to North Carolina. Across the nation, public universities are grappling with crumbling infrastructures and shrinking state appropriations. When budgets are tight, it has proven easy for campus leaders to put off that new roof on the science building or that new steam line for the library.

The costs swell over time until they're so daunting some campus leaders just don't want to deal with them, said Terry Ruprecht, now retired from the University of Illinois, where he spent 40 years in various facilities and energy services positions.

"Their eyes roll back in their heads when they see the total numbers," said Ruprecht, co-author of a study on the subject. "They're too big, so the easiest thing to do is just move on."

An unfulfilled pledge

It wasn't supposed to be that way in North Carolina.

In 1993, the General Assembly pledged to provide state agencies with 1.5 percent of the current replacement value of their building stock as a way of combating deterioration. That target was later raised to 3 percent.

But it proved tough to hit. In 2009, for example, the state would have had to appropriate $282 million to the UNC system to meet that goal. The actual appropriation was $25 million.

From 2000 to 2010, the state spent just one-quarter of what it hoped to on repairs and renovations for the UNC system - $558 million. It would have needed $2.1 billion to hit that target.

And, of course, times are much different now than when the $3.1 billion bond issue was approved in 2000. The economy was healthier, and the university system, under the leadership of President Molly Broad, was in growth mode. Today, the university system, while far larger in terms of students, is a leaner operation and in reduction mode because of the state's lagging economy.

"For any significant construction program, the economy has to get healthy again," said state Sen. Richard Stevens, who was the trustees chairman at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2000 when the bond program began. "You'd need another bond program, and that's not going to happen anytime soon."

The UNC system is not engaged in any broad effort to solve the maintenance issue, though it has in recent years tried to slow new construction, and it is pushing for more transfer students and online courses to alleviate stress on residence halls and classrooms.

So what's a campus to do? At UNC-Chapel Hill, trustees have convened a working group after a facilities report earlier this year showed a deferred maintenance backlog of $645 million.

In a sense, the bond program exacerbated the problem by financing so many new buildings that require upkeep.

"We built a bunch of new facilities; we really upped the ante spending $2.5 billion," said Roger Perry, a UNC-CH trustee leading that working group. There was no provision for maintaining the new buildings.

What now?

At UNC-CH and elsewhere, campus leaders kick ideas around. Some insist another bond issue is the best solution. Others wonder about a private fundraising campaign aimed specifically at repairs and renovations - a tough sell to donors who like their names on things. Another idea: a trust fund of sorts for each new building, where you shave off a percentage of the project cost strictly to be used for upkeep.

Ruprecht, the retired University of Illinois official, tried to persuade his bosses to adopt a version of that plan. It never caught hold because it meant either spending far more for a building than expected or constructing a smaller facility with the money provided.

"That requires fiscal discipline that in all of my years in higher education has never existed," Ruprecht said.

Earlier this year, Ohio State University took a bold step to hold down facility costs, requiring that for a new building to go up, another of equal size would have to come down. The goal there is to add no net academic space, said Julie Anstine, Ohio State's special assistant to the senior vice president for administration and planning.

The policy is an acknowledgement that the largely underfunded long-term costs of running a building dwarf its one-time price of construction.

"It's the operating costs, the energy and utilities and everything that comes with it," Anstine said. "It's a total shift in how we think."

While UNC campus and system officials search for solutions, the gang over at NCSU's Gardner Hall will conduct business as usual - running the heaters and the air conditioners together to combat humidity, and covering expensive lab equipment with tarps, lest a burst pipe from the floor above drip through the ceiling and ruin an experiment.

And they'll keep fighting off that mold and bacteria.

"We want the kind we study," Daub said, "not the kind that comes flying in from outside."

eric.ferreri@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4563

The Board of Governors at the Beach

The University of North Carolina at Wilmington hosted the UNC Board of Governors on Thursday and Friday of this week. The campus was lovely and welcoming. Of course, it also helps to have a gorgeous beach close by!

Now for the updates.

You have probably seen the press on UNC Football which was clearly why most of the television cameras were there. No need to report any more on that. We also heard reporting on programs that were not meeting NCAA requirements and the problems are being reduced -- which is good.

The presentation this month was on Reach-NC, the new network being developed to help put faculty research out there to the world. The Executive Committee saw the beta version presentation which was much the same this summer at our retreat. The Board seemed quite taken with the system and with how it could present us to the business world and function as a marketing tool.

Of course, the budget discussions are everywhere. While most of the real budget work will be at the next meeting in October, you are likely aware that the governor asked all state agencies to prepare for 5%, 10% and 15% cuts. The universities, however, were only asked for 5% and 10% scenarios. It is a hopeful sign that education will be a priority even in a budget crisis. But it is, of course, way too early to know.

The campuses are all doing their work now and budget priorities will be set in the next month. At the Assembly meeting next week, we will discuss if we want to have input on these priorities. The two big pieces that will concern us look to be the state health plan and retirement.

There is also considerable conversation over our licensing responsibilities for not-for-profits and how to handle this situation. That will also be a feature of next month's meeting.

Let me get you thinking on a couple of perennial issues: how to talk about tenure and what it means (not so much to faculty, but to the effective functioning of a university and thus to students), and how to talk effectively about faculty workload to people who are not insiders to the academic world and do not understand the range of faculty responsibilities and their value (again, with a focus on what our work means to students -- inside and outside of the classroom).

It is time to be creative, visionary, and problem solving.

The End of Higher Ed as We Know It

This morning's Chronicle for Higher Education reports on a panel discussion this week at the American Political Science Association about what is happening in higher education today. If, indeed, we are experiencing a fundamental shift in the nature of our work and if our jobs are undergoing a permanent shift, Cary Nelson, quoted near the end, is right. Faculty need to be out working to make our case.

My experience, however, tells me that most faculty are passive. Until they feel a direct impact on their job, few people will act to say anything about their campus priorities or to take part in the work (and it is work) of shared governance. Faculty too often make excuses. As Mr. Nelson advocates, we need to be demanding our institutions account for the funding we have. But most years we leave it to administrators and claim powerlessness.

We need to take control again. We are the ones in the classrooms everyday. We are the ones who can speak directly to students about what education is, what is happening to their education, and why priorities need to change. We have the skills to get out there and write op ed pieces, talk directly to the public, and speak to our legislators. If we believe, really believe, that we have lost the way, what is holding us back?

September 2, 2010

Public Higher Education Is 'Eroding From All Sides,' Warn Political Scientists
By David Glenn
Washington

The ideal of American public higher education may have entered a death spiral, several scholars said here Thursday during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. That crisis might ultimately harm not only universities, but also democracy itself, they warned.

"We've crossed a threshold," said Clyde W. Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. "Higher education is no longer viewed as a public good in this country. As tuition at public universities becomes more expensive, middle-class parents say, 'I'll bite the bullet and pay this for four years, but I don't want to pay for it a second time with taxes.' And families who are frozen out of the system see public universities as something for the affluent. They'd rather see the state spend money on health care."

The mid-20th century suddenly appears to have been a golden age for higher education, said Wendy Brown, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley.

"That era offered not only literacy but liberal arts to a mass public," Ms. Brown said. "But today that idea is eroding from all sides. Cultural values don't support the liberal arts. Debt-burdened families aren't demanding it. The capitalist state isn't interested in it. Universities aren't funding it."

The danger, Ms. Brown said, is that the public will give up on the idea of educating people for democratic citizenship. Instead, all of public higher education will be essentially vocational in nature, oriented entirely around the market logic of job preparation. Instead of educating whole persons, Ms. Brown warned, universities will be expected to "build human capital," a narrower and more hollow mission.

And faculty members are unlikely to resist those changes at a time when two-thirds of them are on contingent appointments instead of the more secure tenure track, said Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors. They simply do not have enough power within the institution.

During a plenary lecture earlier Thursday, Mr. Nelson, who is also a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said he believes that the era of "incremental state funding for public higher education is basically over." For the foreseeable future, he said, the traditional battles for higher state appropriations are bound to be losing ones.

"Complaining about the amount of external funding the university gets is a kind of amoral starting point," Mr. Nelson said. "The first question should be how your institution spends the money it already has."

His own campus, Mr. Nelson said, has recently seen several multimillion-dollar projects that were favorites of administrators but were not endorsed by the faculty.

"Without these boondoggles, they could pay contingent faculty more," he said. "They could hire more tenure-track faculty. If they weren't chasing these fantasy projects, there is a lot that could have been done to build the university's educational mission."

But Mr. Nelson did not take any of this as a reason to retreat. Instead, he said that faculty activists should open up a more basic debate about the purposes of education. They should fight, he said, for a tuition-free public higher-education system wholly subsidized by the federal government.

"Higher education needs to be reconceived as a public good and a human right," Mr. Nelson said. "The only battle worth fighting now is a battle over fundamentals, not crumbs."

A Weakening of Tenure

As the financial situation of most states declines with the loss of stimulus funds and fewer jobs returning, universities will have to make difficult decisions. The story pasted below shows one option being considered in Louisiana and reminds us why vigilance is important in our process of shared governance.






August 26, 2010

U. of Louisiana to Consider Weakening Tenure
By Paige ChapmanThe University of Louisiana system's Board of Supervisors plans to vote Friday on a proposal that would make it easier to dismiss tenured professors—a move that has upset faculty members throughout the system's eight campuses, as well as national faculty organizations.

"This could impact the quality of education offered in the classroom and the ability to recruit qualified people, including at both faculty and administration levels," said Jordan E. Kurland, associate general secretary for the American Association of University Professors.

System officials say the contemplated changes are driven by a tight budget. The proposals "are solely precipitated by a set of decreasing resources," said Randy Moffett, the system's president. "There are no other intentions." State financing for has been reduced by 17 percent since the 2008 fiscal year, and Mr. Moffett is anticipating another drop of approximately $95.3-million in the middle of 2011 when federal stimulus funds expire.

Still, some professors fear that three parts of the proposal could drastically reshape academic employment.

Under one of those, a "reduction" of a program could become a legitimate cause for terminating tenured faculty members. Currently, tenured positions can be cut only because of financial exigency or the complete discontinuance of a program.

Mr. Moffett said the proposed new language was added to include special circumstances left out in the currrent policy, such as the restructuring or scaling back of specific academic programs.

Lisa Abney, provost at one of the system's campuses, Northwestern State University, said such a change would provide more flexibility so the university wouldn't have to eliminate entire programs in response to budget cuts. Her institution has undergone an extensive restructuring to deal with financial constraints—including the merging of three departments and the elimination of seven different majors. Six tenured faculty members were laid off as a result.

But the language worries professors. A tenured professor at a system campus, who did not want to be named for fear of being targeted for a job cut, said the main concern is that the word "reduction" is vague. The professor said that it could be interpreted arbitrarily, especially in universities with tense faculty-administrative relations.

The professor said the proposal has already created a "poisonous atmosphere" at his institution because many colleagues are afraid to speak in opposition, fearing they could be fired if the measure is passed.

Mr. Kurland, of the AAUP, echoed faculty members' concerns about the possibility of arbitrary dismissals under the proposal. "It can be used as a device for the university to remove a person they don't want by simply removing what that person is teaching," he said. "They no longer have to show someone is no longer competent to do the work in that position."

Another proposed change that alarms professors is that tenured faculty members could be given much-shorter notice of job terminations—a minimum of only three months in the cases of program discontinuance or reduction.

Mr. Moffett said the change was proposed because the board is often unaware of what the state has determined for its budget until late June or early July. Some administrators said the change would allow them to delay personnel decisions and would prevent them from unnecessarily terminating positions that they may later discover they are able to finance.

Bette H. Maroney, president of Northwestern State's Faculty Senate, found out her position had been eliminated this year. Because she has a year to finish her term and look for a new position, she calls herself "one of the lucky ones." If the measure is passed, she said, professors who are laid off in the future, with little warning, may be adversely affected by the limited time of the hiring cycle in higher education.

The third area of concern is that appeals about tenure and employment decisions would no longer be considered by the system board, but would instead be handled internally by the individual university. Professors said removal of the additional layer could put them at the mercy of a hostile local administration.

The board will need nine votes to approve the measure. It is possible that it may not vote yes or no at its meeting in Baton Rouge on Friday, but instead vote to postpone a decision on the measure. If so, the next time the matter would be up for discussion is at its October 22 meeting.

Welcome to Our New President

Thomas Ross, President of Davidson College, will become the new President of the UNC system on January 1, 2011. He was elected today without opposition by the Board of Governors.

He spoke eloquently of the life of the mind and its value to individuals and to our culture. He believes in the transformative power of eduction. And he understands that education is the future of North Carolina.

I was also excited to hear that he stands ready to work with the Faculty Assembly cooperatively. We stand ready to engage with him.

This Week in The Chronicle

This week's piece on higher education and time for a reset from the Chronicle for Higher Education is timely. So much of what Finney advocates, the UNC system does already. Our tuition policy is but one example. But we are revisiting it now and thinking about how to meet the budgetary challenges ahead.

The Faculty Assembly is gearing up for an active year. Updates here will be regular and I urge all faculty in the system to stay up to date and active on their campuses. We will all have to be working at answers.




A Reset for Higher Education
By Joni E. Finney

Many of us have seen trouble coming for a long, long, time. Did we really believe that endowment growth, state support, and tuition dollars could or would provide an unchecked revenue stream, tempered only by short downturns in the economy, followed by fairly quick recoveries? Did we really believe that we could expand administrative structures and shortchange instruction, but still maintain quality institutions? Did we think that poor completion rates and the achievement gaps between whites and minority groups could be solved only with more money? Did we honestly believe that expensive amenities and increased financial aid for upper-middle-class and wealthy students could be sustained? Of course not.

To understand what needs to be done now—a “reset” in higher education—we need to first understand the changes pressuring our enterprise: deficits, demographics, and demand. States' structural deficits, or the gap that occurs when states fail to tax new types of economic activity, have been documented for years. A previously good economy permitted states to postpone those problems, but now, state leaders must revise their tax structures to generate more revenue. The most optimistic economic projections say the recession may end in 2013. Even then, states will be hard-pressed to return to the status quo in terms of appropriations.

IN THE RIGHT COLUMN: Charts and Graphics on Finance
BROWSE THE ALMANAC: More Statistics and State-by-State Profiles

Many in higher education lament states’ “disinvestment.” The problem is much more complex. States have been reliable partners in financing higher education. While enrollments grew, state support also grew, by 24 percent from 2005 to 2008, followed by a decline of 1.7 percent from 2008 to 2010. At the same time, the federal government spent $6.6-billion in 2009-10 under the stimulus bill for states, an amount that increases to $23-billion once federal student financial assistance (Pell grants and Work-Study) is included.

The second “D” is demographics. Southern and Southwestern states are experiencing explosive growth. Nine states will account for 70 percent of the country’s population growth by 2025. Thirty-two states face declines in their young populations, leaving them vulnerable economically at a time when many well-educated baby boomers will retire. Educating working adults and young adults—many of whom are underserved by the current educational system—requires rethinking programs and services.

The “D” for demand acknowledges that postsecondary education is necessary for membership in the middle class. Current enrollment patterns show that demand for higher education is strong, even if students must secure private loans or work full time. But research also shows that many college-qualified young people and adults are not enrolling in college, because of tuition increases and lack of available courses.

So how does higher education reset in a way that deals constructively with the three D’s? First, we must acknowledge that public-revenue limitations are likely for the foreseeable future. Second, the discussion of higher-education finance focuses disproportionately on price rather than costs. The focus on price has led many to believe that financial aid is the primary solution to college affordability. But financial-aid increases over the last two decades have not come close to solving the problem. A discussion of college costs that recognizes revenue limitations while enhancing learning productivity is necessary if we are to reset higher-education finance.

Third, a higher-education reset should provide institutional incentives for student success and rethink state investment in research based on public priorities. Redirecting public subsidies to undergraduate instruction could contain costly “mission creep” and be an important step in resetting finance policy. The federal reset might limit the number of universities receiving research money and provide incentives for improved access to college and better completion rates.

States must also take more responsibility for tuition policy. A policy that simply fills the gap between what institutions want and what they receive from the states is counterproductive to public purposes. Tuition increases can and should be moderate, gradual, and predictable. But over the last 10 years, they have been excessively steep and have disproportionately hurt poor and middle-income families, even with financial aid.

An economic reset is an opportunity to reinforce valued democratic ideals. I hope that public policy and higher education’s leaders will reset to honor valued public purposes. The country’s future depends upon it.

Joni E. Finney is director of the Institute for Research in Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor of practice in its Graduate School of Education.

The Work Ahead

July is drawing to a close and already the challenges of fall loom large. With the new legislative session convening in January, planning for the year ahead already is well underway.

Now, more than ever, faculty creativity must come to the forefront.

States like North Carolina face extraordinary budget short falls. Jobs are not coming back to the economy. Housing is not recovering as hoped. And businesses are still quite limited in their ability to start or expand.

This year, the universities with the help of the General Assembly shifted some additional burden to families in the form of tuition increases. But what now?

Those of us in the university system cannot simply think about how to protect our own. We must look comprehensively at the needs of the state and help our representatitves find solutions to the myriad of issues. And we have the expertise to engage in this process on our campuses in our faculties.

That thinking should be happening now.

But we also must remember our rights as citizens as November elections are upon us. Asking all of our candidates about their positions and their priorities, about their plans and solutions is imperative. We have to elect people who can put forward practical programs to meet our needs and make sure the leadership listens.

The time will not come again and our options will be limited if we drag our feet or refuse to assume some responsibility.

A Great Piece on Faculty Governance as a Responsibility

From today's Chronicle, something we all should read:

Serving the University: Better Mentors for Young Professors Would Help
Mark Shaver for The Chronicle
Enlarge Image Mark Shaver for The Chronicle
By Kenneth J. Sufka

I am coming to the end of my second term as chair of the Faculty Senate at the University of Mississippi after having served as a senator several times over my 17-year career. I have gained much in personal growth and in understanding the complexity of university operations. While teaching and scholarship certainly occupy the most important aspects of our professional lives, a university's operations cannot function without faculty involvement. Faculty participation in decision making in our senate and on university standing committees allows our teaching and research careers to grow and prosper in many ways.

But few professors understand the role of faculty senates, the responsibilities of university standing committees, and matters of faculty governance in making policies in a university setting. Some faculty members assume the senate at my institution is the body to handle grievances or that it sets university policy. Neither is the case at the University of Mississippi, although one or both could be at other universities. And when it comes to serving on standing committees, I have discovered that some faculty members are unclear of the committees' responsibilities and of the constituents whom they serve.

In fact, while colleges have long focused on scholarship, and they are beginning to emphasize better teaching, the third responsibility of faculty members—service—does not seem to receive similar attention. I have found that few senior faculty members are willing to commit to departmental service and, as such, pass this task off to their untenured colleagues. The same seems to be true when the senate is tasked to fill appointments to university standing committees. On my campus—and from what I've heard, on many others—we have a clear need for a more thoughtful approach to mentoring junior professors and for more encouragement of senior faculty members to serve their university in such an important form of faculty governance.

Department chairs should not protect junior faculty members from such obligations. Rather, they should organize orientation programs for junior professors that include sessions explicitly detailing how faculty governance is carried out through faculty senates and standing committees in their particular institutions. Nor should such mentoring end there. Standing-committee chairs also have the responsibility to offer some kind of orientation so that new committee members clearly understand the function of the committee and the role of each member on it. I recently encountered a situation in which six of 10 professors on a university committee voted down a policy recommendation that was endorsed by more than 80 percent of the faculty members they represent.

One major problem I confronted last year was that junior faculty members are far too inexperienced to contribute to the more challenging matters placed before the Faculty Senate by the administration. For example, most colleges in this country are experiencing serious fiscal crises, and at my university, the chancellor asked our senate to develop a faculty-endorsed framework to help the administration meet major objectives in aligning strategic plans with current revenue streams and anticipated shortfalls. Few untenured faculty members, however, have any real grasp of university budgets—and, in fact, the same could probably be said for many senior professors.

How many professors can answer questions like: What percentage of revenue is provided by the state, generated by tuition and fees, and provided by grants and contracts? What percentage of revenue goes to various expenditure categories? The senate should take certain actions to educate itself and other faculty members on such matters. At the University of Mississippi, members of the Faculty Senate now receive an annual "State of the University" address by the provost, including considerable data from the chief financial officer and other financial administrators on campus.

Most of all, I have found it helpful to have members on the senate who have some institutional memory—and thus are familiar with university missions, strategic plans, and the like. But it seems that far too few veteran faculty members are willing to take on such service to the university. Department chairs need to encourage, perhaps even arm-twist, their very best faculty members to be an integral part of such faculty governance. Once senior faculty members become involved and knowledgeable, they can in turn encourage junior faculty members and help train and guide them on governance issues.

The benefits of that approach can be significant for the individual as well as the institution: I have found that serving a university in these roles acts as a training ground of sorts for the development of many of the skills required to be an effective future leader within a university's structure. Those include communications skills and the ability to see how everything connects with everything else and the long-term impact of decisions. Indeed, department chairs, college and school deans, and vice presidents who made a commitment in their early careers to support the university in such ways have found the experience has helped them a great deal in their current positions.

We need more veteran professors to come forward today in a similar way. Effective mentoring of junior professors as they become increasingly involved in university service ensures a high-quality pool of candidates who may one day be called upon to serve their universities in leadership roles.

Kenneth J. Sufka is a professor of psychology and pharmacology at the University of Mississippi.

More Trouble Looming

Much is happening in higher education....the budget is passed, tuition increases are going through, furlough guidelines are being discussed. But the scary part is what is yet to come.

Check out this piece from today's Chronicle.
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Colleges-in-Some-States/66274/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

We know in NC that there is already a $3billion hole next year. We also know that jobs are not bouncing back and that housing is not stabalizing. Thinking about how to operate for another 5-10 years in this budget scenario is not unrealistic.

Do We Have Spare Cash?

You might be interested to read the piece from The N&O today where state teachers accuse our system of having money to spare.

It is an interesting question to ponder......and one each of us should be prepared to go to our Chancellors and ask. The budgets are public -- technically. But we all know how money gets shoveled around between categories and becomes harder to trace out. We also all know how the cuts have had an effect in our classrooms.

Politics and the need for money plays a large part in these charges. But we also should be held accountable for our use of public money (K-12 and University).

Masthead



Published Thu, Jun 17, 2010 05:45 AM
Modified Thu, Jun 17, 2010 12:02 AM
Vying for funds, educators defend their claims
Behind-the-scenes criticism of UNC-system spending burst into the open this week, with the president of the state teachers organization telling UNC President Erskine Bowles that universities had money to spare before they started cutting faculty.

The university is protecting its "questionable spending," said Sheri Strickland, president of the N.C. Association of Educators, while teachers in local public schools are losing their jobs.

The public criticism of spending for the state universities comes as legislative budget writers work out how to allocate an additional $75 million between the universities and public schools - money pulled from the proposed budgets of other state agencies to beef up education spending.

In the past year, tight budgets have heightened the competition between the teachers group and the state university system, with the NCAE claiming that Senate leaders protect the universities. NCAE stepped up its criticism of university spending this year, referring repeatedly to the $9 million in tuition breaks that legislators give UNC athletes and to a consultant's report that UNC-Chapel Hill has too many administrators.

Bowles defends system

In an e-mail message, Bowles said the system has already cut 930 jobs, including 900 administrative positions. A strong case has been made that the system went too far with administrative cuts, Bowles wrote, "but that's what we felt we must do to protect our academic core."

But the NCAE sent its members another news article about UNC salaries this week. Bowles is not firing back.

Through spokeswoman Joni Worthington, Bowles said, "I have no qualms whatsoever with K-12 fighting as hard as they can for every dollar they need to educate their students. In fact, I'm glad they are. It's important that the K-12 system be properly funded."

Advocates for local schools have been more visible overall this year, with the NCAE joining forces with the state Department of Public Instruction and school board and school administrators to highlight the consequences of budget cuts on K-12 public schools. The latest was this week, when superintendents from across the state talked of budget cuts leading to more children in classrooms and fewer foreign language and advanced courses.

Strickland said she sent Bowles a letter to respond to his comments last week that the House version of the budget would force faculty out of jobs and deny financial aid to poor students. The university system has money it can redirect, she said, including salaries from administrative jobs.

Budget writers said the additional $75 million they have to spend on education will help them get close to meeting the requirements of K-12 public schools and the university system.

lynn.bonner@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4821

BOG Meeting and Latest News

The BOG met this week in Chapel Hill. It is quite a challenging time for the University.

Naturally, talk of the budget dominated. The House budget would be particularly devastating to all of the campuses and much of the public presentation Thursday morning detailed exactly why and how. While Friday morning included better news (the House has "found" some money that can be applied to education and the Governor is backing our priorities), we cannot forget that even the Senate version of the budget means significant cuts will be taken. And furlough authority is also in that version of the budget.

But the Senate budget is looking to be the best of all possible worlds and the staff at GA is working around the clock to keep up with things and achieve the best results. If you are in communication with anyone there, you should thank them for their hard work on our behalf. It has been a uniquely challenging year and things are moving more rapidly than ever before.

Here are the conferees on the budget and you should continue to be in contact with them about your concerns for our future and the real impact the cuts are having on our campuses. http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/confcomm/confcommittee.pl?BillChamber=S&BillID=897&session=2009

But we also need to be looking to how to be in communication with President Bowles about furloughs, and offering him new kinds of budget management tools as the planning will start ASAP for the next two year cycle. As faculty, we specialize in thinking creatively and over the long haul. We need to use those talents now.

I also spent time talking with GA folks about a whole range of issues that will be on the Executive Committee Planning Retreat agenda at the end of the month.

In other news, Hannah Gage was reelected as chair of the BOG, Peter Hans will continue as the Vice Chair and Estelle "Bunny" Sanders as the Secretary. All terms are for two more years. They are an effective leadership team and should help us make the transition between Presidents far more smoothly. The Faculty Assembly has a good relationship with the BOG now and we want to continue to build on that strong foundation.

The Screening Committee is at work in the Presidential Search. We need to monitor this process as closely as possible in such a closed process. But I encourage everyone who knows people on the Screening or Interview committees to be in touch and encourage them to consider the importance of academic experience, creative thinking about the future, and a diverse pool of candidates.

UNC Budget Priorities

Here are the new UNC Budget Priorities. The conference between House and Senate begins tonight. The work should be done by 30 June.

Let me hear your discussion and questions.

The University of North Carolina
2010 Budget Conference Committee Priorities


Minimize Cuts: On TOP of the $50.6 million of University cuts already in the 2010-11 budget, the Senate assigns another $50 million of management flexibility cuts, while the House includes another $147 million. The House proposal would mean the loss of 1,700 additional jobs across the University; the Senate proposal would mean the loss of 800. We urge conferees to reduce overall University cuts to a minimum and to grant full flexibility.

Operating Reserves for New Buildings: In the current biennium, 55 buildings on 15 campuses are scheduled to come on line [UNCC bioinformatics, NCSU engineering complex III, UNC-CH science complex, UNCW school of nursing, ECU family medicine, ECSU pharmacy, etc.]. The Senate provides NO funds to operate these new buildings (maintenance, utilities, security), and the House provides only $12M (60% of the dollars required). We urge conferees to adopt the House approach and to increase the level of operating funding further if at all possible.

Need-Based Financial Aid: The Senate fully funds our request for need-based financial aid ($34.9M) with one-time dollars. The House provides only $12 million of aid. Under the House plan, some 6,000 to 8,000 North Carolina undergraduates would not receive need-based grant aid for which they are qualified. We urge conferees to fully fund the UNC Need-Based Aid Program and to use recurring dollars to the extent possible.

Salaries: The Senate maintains FY 09-10 salary restrictions through FY 10-11. The House prohibits all salary increases from any funding source, except for promotions. This provision effectively precludes the use of distinguished professorship matching funds (including those needed to sustain the Spangler initiative) and the Faculty Recruitment & Retention Fund. At a minimum, in this time of scarce state resources we should use federal and private funds to keep our best professors in our public University classrooms and doing research that benefits North Carolina. We urge conferees to adopt the Senate language and allow our campuses to use federal and private funds to attract, retain, and reward our faculty.

Furloughs: The Senate provides furlough authority to the UNC President for FY 10-11 to offset management flexibility reductions. Furloughs can be an important tool for managing budget reductions in a tough year like this. We urge conferees to adopt the Senate position.

Repairs and Renovations: Both the Senate ($70.2 million) and House ($35 million) provide R&R funding for the University. The percentage of the state pool directed to the University by the Senate more closely reflects the University’s actual share of state-supported facilities. Adequate R&R funding is critical; otherwise campuses are forced to draw on academic budgets to pay for essential repairs. We urge conferees to adopt the Senate approach.

Tuition: Both the House and Senate adopt the alternative tuition proposal put forward by the Board of Governors. While the Senate authorizes additional tuition increases of up to $750 to help offset the impact of budget cuts, the provision as written does not allow campuses to set aside some portion of this supplemental tuition increase for need-based financial aid. Conversely, a provision in the House budget requires that 50% of all campus-initiated tuition increases be set aside for need-based aid. This mandated percentage set-aside fails to acknowledge differing campus need profiles. We urge conferees to provide discretion for UNC campuses to set aside a defensible portion of all tuition increases for need-based financial aid. Current Board of Governors tuition policy requires campuses to use at least 25% of new tuition revenues for need-based aid.

Eliminate Enrollment Cap: While both the House and Senate fully fund University enrollment growth for 2010-2011, the House caps enrollment growth for 2011-12 at 1%. North Carolina has never denied access to qualified North Carolinians. We urge conferees to eliminate this provision.



Other UNC Special Provisions:
• Limit Transition Packages (Section 29.5A) – As requested by the General Assembly, the Board of Governors has dramatically reduced the pay and leave available to chancellors and other senior administrators returning to faculty positions. We urge conferees to delete this unnecessary provision.

• Amend COPS/UNCG Land (Section 30.6) – UNCG asks that $6.5 million of funds designated for its
Classroom Building be reallocated to construct a tunnel under busy Lee Street and the railroad to connect the main campus to the only area where UNCG can grow. This would provide a safer passageway for our students and other pedestrians. We urge conferees to grant this request.

• Academic Scholarship Provision (Section 9.25) – We urge conferees to preserve the tuition differential for nonresident students on full academic scholarship.

State Workers Rally

State Workers will rally in Raleigh behind the Legislative Building today. There is a brief story in the N&O this morning:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/08/520748/nc-state-workers-to-rally-at-legislative.html

You can also follow the info at SEANC:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/08/520748/nc-state-workers-to-rally-at-legislative.html

The concerns are wide-ranging, but also include the State Employees Health Plan in addition to the budget.

Bowles Response to House Budget

June 4, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

UNC President Erskine Bowles today issued the following statement on the House budget recommended for FY 2010-11:

The North Carolina House has passed a budget that would place public higher education in North Carolina on a path toward mediocrity. The University understands the tough economic environment we are in. That's why this year we agreed to take 29% of the Governor's budget reversions, even though we account for only 13% of General Fund appropriations. We know in times like this that everyone has to share the pain. But having already cut our state-supported administrative costs by 23% last year, the massive new cuts proposed by the House this week would do devastating damage to our academic budgets and the quality of education we can offer our students. If these proposed cuts remain in the state budget, another 1,700 positions will have to be eliminated across the University. Quality faculty will lose their jobs or be pirated away. Classes will be significantly larger or unavailable. As a result, retention and graduation rates will fall dramatically. And worst of all, many qualified North Carolina students won’t be able to obtain the financial aid they need—and many more will be denied admission altogether—since the House budget caps UNC enrollment growth and fails to fully fund need-based financial aid.
It takes generations to build a great university. Unfortunately, a great university can also be destroyed virtually overnight if not properly sustained. Just ask any business looking at bringing new jobs to North Carolina how important our University system is to their decision to locate in this state. If the budget conference committee is not able to undo the damage done by the House, economic opportunity for all North Carolinians will be diminished for years to come.

###

Do Universities Understand Shared Governance?

The following story from today's Chronicle got me thinking about new business models and how they avoid what traditional understandings of shared governance at universities really mean. No reflections here. Just sharing the story and hoping others will think on it, too.

U. of Chicago's Plans for Milton Friedman Institute Stir Outrage on the Faculty
By Peter Schmidt

The University of Chicago's plan to move ahead with developing a controversial institute named for Milton Friedman has prompted more than 170 of the university's faculty members to sign a petition complaining that it is becoming increasingly "corporatized" and that its president, Robert J. Zimmer, is trampling upon their shared-governance rights.

The petition, in the form of a letter that leaders of the protest say they will present to Mr. Zimmer on Tuesday, calls upon the institution's president "to reverse course" and "extricate the university from a misguided and destructive corporate model" that, it says, has led administrators there to forge ahead with various expansion plans without a faculty vote.

"You can begin by halting the development of the Friedman Institute and changing its name," the letter says.

A spokeman for the university, Jeremy Manier, said in an e-mail that the university's administration had not yet received the petition and was not ready to comment on it at any length. In a terse official statement contained in the e-mail, the administration said: "If a letter or petition is submitted, university leaders would want to consider it fully and respond thoughtfully to the whole document, through the appropriate channels."

The establishment of a Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics without a faculty vote is hardly the only action by the administration that the letter cites as objectionable. It also objects to the university's decision to allow the creation of a Confucius Institute—a language institute sponsored by the People's Republic of China—on the campus without the Faculty Senate's approval.

The letter argues that the university has risked having its reputation used to "legitimate the spread" of such institutions, which have been cropping up at colleges in the United States and other nations around the world.

Among other complaints, the letter alleges that the administrative staff has experienced "metastatic growth," that the administration has been interfering with academic matters at study-abroad programs, and that the administration has been withholding information on the budget and other matters from faculty governing bodies. It argues that the university has assumed "a business mentality, in which academic units are understood—even designed—to function as product lines and profit centers," and that power over academic matters is being shifted "to the donors whose favor the administrators court."

The letter's focus, however, is on the Friedman Institute, which the university announced last month it would be locating in a soon-to-be-renovated building that had been housing the Chicago Theological Seminary, which will move. The institute has sparked controversy ever since the university's 2008 announcement of plans to establish it in honor of Mr. Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics who spent 30 years at the university and advised the Reagan administration and foreign governments on economic policy.

The institute began sponsoring interdisciplinary academic conferences, hosting visiting scholars, and supporting research more than a year ago.

A faculty group formed to oppose the institute, the Committee for Open Research on Economy and Society, played a central role in the latest petition drive. The letter its leaders are submitting to President Zimmer characterizes Mr. Friedman as "among the most partisan, most polarizing figures in the history of this university," and says his name is associated with "his relentless championing of a free-market fundamentalism now largely discredited" and with "the services he rendered to brutally repressive regimes in Chile, China, and elsewhere."

Among the faculty members who signed the petition, the most heavily represented academic divisions are the humanities, the social sciences other than economics, and the biological sciences. Few, if any, of the signatories are from the three academic divisions that proposed the institute: the economics department, the business school, and the law school.

Limiting Access

The House budget includes a provision that would cap enrollment growth in the UNC schools. A story in today's N&O outlines the way it would happen: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/05/29/505976/state-may-cap-uncs-growth.html

The idea could have merit, although not so much for the budget saving reasons this bill anticipates. Faculty have seen a long and steady decline in student preparation for work at the university level. Limiting access to only those students who come to the process with an appropriate educational background, the willingness and the drive to work, and holding students accountable for their education would significantly improve the academic environment on our campuses. We could, in such a scenario, get away from the idea of college as an extended period of adolescence where parents and students incur significant debt while the educational focus often gets lost.

Similarly, university level education is not the right match for every student and such limitations might assist in guiding people into careers and fields more suited to their skills and temperament. Moreover, we might actually be able to think about taking away the "professionalization" of disciplines where a specific degree is an entree to a given job and work again to encourage employers to hire people who can write, think, and create instead of simply putting people in place because they hold a given credential. More flexibility in employment could give our economy a real boost by bringing innovation to the fore.

BUT.......we must be careful. Some of the best performers may not look like the ideal student at the outset of a college experience and to deny them entrance may mean they get lost to a world of possibilities. Additionally, unequal distribution of resources and opportunities means that not all students have the same shot at preparation and we do not want to perpetuate discrimination. And we must remember that North Carolina constitutionally mandates access to affordable higher education. We know an educated population is key to economic recovery and development and to cut ourselves down at this important moment may do us great long-term damage.

What we should be thinking about is how we fund so many other things at our universities that may not be as necessary to our students and their classrooms. Must we really provide all the amenities we currently offer in order to be competitive for students? Or can we pare down what we do to the most basic functions? And keep the focus on getting students into the classroom and demanding that they do the work that the people of North Carolina support?

A New Statement on The House Budget

President Erskine Bowles today released the following annoucement on the House Budget and what employees of the UNC system should note about it. See in particular the concerns with stemming the access to education in our system. Please keep these concerns in mind when you contact your legislators.

UNC President Erskine Bowles today issued the following statement on the draft 2010-11 state budget released today by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education:

The draft budget approved today by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education presents an enormous challenge for the University, and more importantly, for our students. New cuts proposed for the University exceed $175 million, significantly higher than those proposed by either the Governor ($104 million) or the Senate ($54 million). These cuts are in addition to $50.6 million of cuts already incorporated in the 2010-11 budget during the last legislative session. If this budget were adopted by the full General Assembly, these cuts -- now in excess of $225 million in a single year -- would lead to the loss of 1,700 positions across the University. Fully understanding the impacts of these reductions will take some time; in all of our previous analyses, we never imagined that reductions would reach this level.

The House budget does allow the University to retain $34.8 million of receipts generated from the tuition increases. Additionally the budget provides enrollment funding for new students of $5.6 million. In response to the Board’s request for $34.9 million for need-based financial aid, the budget provides only $12 million. Financial aid is critically important for needy students and both the Governor and the Senate had proposed to fully fund the Board’s request. In addition, the House budget contains a special provision that caps the University’s enrollment growth in 2011-12 to 1%, denying qualified students access to the knowledge and skills they need to compete for jobs.

We clearly have an enormous challenge ahead of us as we try to improve this budget, both as it advances through the House and while it is under consideration by the conferees. This level of cuts would force us to reduce the numbers of students that we can accept on our campuses. Our current students would find themselves in far larger classes and would find that courses they need for graduation are no longer offered or are only offered sporadically. In the long term, this budget would have significant adverse effects on the State’s economy and the prosperity of all North Carolinians. We must have an educated workforce to attract the jobs of the future in a knowledge-based global economy.

Budget Woes and Worries

Here we are in May waiting to see what will happen with the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The Governor has put out her budget. The Senate version passed last week. And the House is working on their take.

We have worries as the University of North Carolina about what may come and how many cuts we need to face.

But the problems are far bigger than this year.

North Carolina is now on year 2 of a two-year budget cycle. That means we are simply trying to make ends meet. The lawmakers then all get to go home and run for reelection.

But we are not doing the planning for what is looming out there. This AP story says it best:



Published Sun, May 23, 2010 11:28 AM
Modified Sun, May 23, 2010 11:28 AM
2010 NC budget debate brings 2011 into view
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Republicans complained during Senate debate last week over the chamber's $19 billion budget for next year that Democrats haven't prepared North Carolina state government for the fiscal woes facing the state in 2011.

That's when lawmakers won't have more than $1.6 billion in federal stimulus funds currently used to fill holes for increasing Medicaid costs, the public schools and universities. Temporary income and sales tax increases generating $1.3 billion annually also are set to expire. And pent-up demands from the state employee pension funds and health insurance will have to be resolved.

"This budget total ignores the $3-plus billion cliff the state is about to go over in the next fiscal year," Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said last week on the day the bill passed largely along party lines.

Democrats acknowledge the trouble ahead but argue they're cutting spending and making tough choices so the state can jump out of the blocks as the economy recovers - helping tax collections in 2011 rebound and partially fix the problem.

"I believe this is the budget that we need for this day and time," said Sen. Linda Garrou, D-Forsyth, the Senate's chief budget-writer.

But with interest groups howling about a second year of painful cuts and voters looking for someone to blame this November, Democrats are choosing political survival over instituting sweeping changes in the "short" session. Any dramatic changes will wait until next year, when they hope to still have the majority in the chambers and perhaps get a little more stimulus money from Capitol Hill.

Republicans are "absolutely right, it's going to be worse next time, and I do wish that we could do more," said Rep. Jim Crawford, D-Granville, co-chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which will offer its version in two weeks, but "we're not going to cut everybody off in an election year."

The partisan budget rhetoric is similar to discussions during last year's session. Democrats said they're closing large budget gaps in part through stimulus money and spending cuts. They also approved tax increases in 2009 that will expire in 2011 to make up the rest. Republicans countered the true gaps were much lower and didn't require higher taxes.

This year, Democrats put the gap at between $800 million and $1 billion. The Senate budget cut the spending plan already approved to start July 1 by another 3 percent. But Republicans argued the $19 billion plan actually raises spending by more than $400 million compared to what Gov. Beverly Perdue actually will spend in the year ending June 30 because she delayed spending to have enough cash to pay the state's bills.

Members of both parties agree about next year's budget gap - it will probably be $3 billion unless the economy roars back to life soon. They differ about just what they can do to prepare for it.

Crawford said there's very little the General Assembly can do beyond refusing to expand budget items that aren't part of entitlement programs like Medicaid and protect public education. Berger said freezing spending at the current year's levels would possibly save another $450 million. But Republicans presented only two amendments during last week's Senate budget debate and haven't rolled out a plan on how they would do things differently.

"It's a little bit disingenuous of them to say that we could spend at last year's levels," said Chris Fitzsimon, executive director of the liberal political watchdog group NC Policy Watch. "Would they rather lay off thousands of teachers to prepare for next year?"

Democrats don't feel the need to make rash decisions because the state retained the top credit rating of the three major bond-rating agencies - a sign of fiscal stability - which they attribute to prudent fiscal decisions in 2009.

Still, they haven't exactly been willing to make bold decisions that say would put the state's tax base on firmer footing in the years ahead.

They've punted for a decade on overhauling the tax system, which would have probably narrowed the revenue shortfall by tapping into the growing service economy. They've also declined to reduce the scope of the state's $10 billion Medicaid program by eliminating optional services other states don't provide.

Democrats appear willing to wait to until 2011 before deciding on difficult choices, said John Hood with the conservative John Locke Foundation: "It is a reasonable argument to make that the Democrats are simply waiting until next year to raise taxes and wait for a partial (federal) bailout."

But Crawford said Republican complaints are partially selfish, too - the GOP doesn't want a $3 billion problem on its hands if it wins a majority in the House or Senate. The problem will be "painful for whoever is going to have it," he said.



Now, back to me. We need to be working NOW to come up with solutions for what we will do on our campuses to meet the budget demands of the upcoming two-year cycle. We cannot simply hope for an economic miracle.

It is time to be thinking about what the universities do and how. We will need to revision what education means and how we deliver on it. If we do not take the lead, we will lose some of our most precious resources without a fight.