The value of UNC
Published March 14, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, March 14, 2014.
UNC-Chapel Hill ranks first in the country, again, on Kiplinger’s latest list of best college values. Four other UNC campuses are among the top 30. So it’s disconcerting to see the state’s budget director, Art Pope, lecture the UNC Board of Governors about effectiveness and affordability.
“The spiraling cost of higher education, the increased costs to students and their parents, including growing personal debt, as well as the increasing demands on the state budget, cannot continue indefinitely,” Pope wrote in a Feb. 28 memo. “The University of North Carolina has a responsibility to its students and to the state to operate and improve the university in the most cost-effective and affordable manner as practicable.”
Of course it does. And it is. The UNC system awards more degrees and receives less state funding per student than it did before the recession struck six years ago. The average graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill leaves with $16,983 in debt, according to Kiplinger’s. That compares to $25,759 for Virginia Tech, $27,815 for Michigan, $31,172 for Clemson and $35,100 for Penn State. UNC-Chapel Hill is a bargain, despite steady tuition hikes to counter state budget cuts.
Pope was responding to a UNC funding request that did ask for too much — 11 percent more. It was “not realistic,” he said, and it ignored his directive to restrain growth to 2 percent. Granting it “would require the governor and General Assembly to make major reductions in other state agencies ...,” Pope didn’t explain that tax cuts, mainly benefiting corporations and individuals at upper income levels, have restricted available funds.
He even disputed the Board of Governors’ contention that it was meeting its obligation to present the university system’s needs. Statutes require the board “to submit a ‘budget,’ not ‘needs,’ ” Pope declared.
In a friendlier climate, the distinction might have been overlooked. North Carolina built a great public university system with generous outlays from the General Assembly in line with the state constitution’s mandate to provide higher education free of cost to the extent “practicable.” The children of North Carolina taxpayers were able to enjoy the benefits of higher education with heavily subsidized tuition. University leaders usually were allowed the funds they said they needed for this purpose.
Times have changed, and UNC leaders are changing with them. They know they have to raise admission standards, improve retention and graduation rates and bring in more research money from outside sources. They’ve had to raise tuition. They’ve also thinned layers of administration, although perhaps not yet enough. They have to train young people to pursue productive careers and generate information and new technologies that advance the state’s economy.
It all must be done on tighter budgets than ever before — on finding savings rather than meeting needs. At stake is the system’s place among the upper levels of public higher education in the country. If North Carolina loses that edge, it will suffer the consequences for generations.
Still, yielding to realities, UNC leaders this week revised their request substantially downward. Pope praised the effort. Maybe some compromise will ensue.
State government and its university should be partners, not adversaries. Providing top value in higher education is a sign of success, not an indication that crippling cuts should be made.
