Tom Ross, the president of the University of North Carolina system, had hoped to burn some vacation days as 2015 winds down, because he sure can’t carry them forward to next year.
The UNC Board of Governors ousted him in a spectacularly botched move early this year. His last day will be Jan. 3, and he says he’ll be working almost right up to the final hour.
Ross is a man of intelligence and integrity whose time in this crucial job was inexplicably cut short by board members who lavishly praised his performance even as they escorted him out.
Editorial Page Editor Taylor Batten talked with Ross last week about the ups and downs of his five years of service to the university he loves. Here are excerpts of that conversation.
Q: What are you most proud of from your time as president?
A: Several things. One of them is we’ve had some interesting times caused by the recession and interesting times caused by what has been a pretty historic transition on the Board of Governors and in the legislature. I’m proud of the fact we’ve led the university through those times and we’ve come out the other end with a strong university that’s well positioned moving forward. We’ve managed through cuts and recession and all those difficulties and come out without compromising quality.
Another is, I’ve been privileged to recommend to the board chancellors for 11 of our 17 institutions. As I leave we have a very strong group of chancellors.
I’m also really proud of our strategic plan that we adopted. It addresses a lot of the big issues of higher education that we identified, a lot of those when people weren’t even talking about them.
Q: When you talk about the recession and budget cuts, are you talking about legislative cuts to the budget, or other things as well?
A: We took some substantial cuts, maybe the largest cut in history the first year I was here. We were able to work with our campuses to think through ways we could be more efficient without affecting quality. We worked very hard to not affect what happens in the classroom. Five years later, we’re producing degrees today at 15 percent less cost per degree yet we’ve increased the number of degrees by 18 percent.
Q: Does that just go to show that critics were right, that more efficiency was needed at UNC?
A: I’ve never said we couldn’t be more efficient. The question is, at what point does it affect quality? You don’t want your organization to be so efficient that you have poor quality. You have to have a balance there. We would have liked to turn those resources back into the quality of the university by being sure we’re able to compensate and therefore attract and retain the best faculty and staff because at the core that’s what makes a great university. And that’s the fear I have going forward.
Q: Talk about that. Compensation is high on your list of concerns?
A: We’re competing for the best talent. We’ve been through a period in North Carolina where because of the recession, there have been very few instances of pay increases for our faculty and staff. We’re falling behind in terms of both the academic marketplace for faculty but the job marketplace for many of our staff. It’s been difficult to retain talent. Retaining talent is really important if you’re going to be good and that’s a place we are at risk moving forward.
Q: Are you saying this is a risk going forward or this is something you’ve seen a lot of already?
A: We’re seeing it already. We struggle on many of our campuses to keep our best people. We’ve lost some really strong faculty and I think the risk is going to increase if we don’t pay attention.
Q: So how do you fight that – more money from the legislature?
A: Yes. It’s making an investment in the future of the university. In the end it takes investing in people, human capital, and we haven’t had that investment in the last several years. It’s not a question of blaming people for it because it’s been a tough economic time, but now as we come out of it we have to pay attention because other states, believe me, they’re paying attention. And that’s why we’re falling behind.
Q: Do you have any regrets from your time as president?
A: It’s not any secret I wasn’t ready to leave. So I regret I’m leaving sooner than I would like and not able to accomplish more of our strategic plan and not able to see across the finish line some of the projects we’re working on.
I don’t have any regrets about coming to the university. I don’t have any regrets about the work I’ve tried to do here.
Q: Would you change anything about the way you handled the academic/athletics scandal at Chapel Hill?
A: There’s not much I could have changed in all honesty because the key to that was getting the facts. We did not have access to the facts until Deborah Crowder and Julius Nyang’oro were made available to us as witnesses. They were not available until we called in the SBI. We can’t control how long their investigation took. It took a long time. (The district attorney then) struck a deal, we knew we were going to have access to them, and we made the decision to bring in an outside independent investigator. And once we got those facts, we took whatever actions were needed to be taken. There are a lot of things that have changed at the university as a result of what we learned.
Q: What about the job was different from what you expected when you took it?
A: I wouldn’t have anticipated the need to spend as much time as we have in orientation of new board members and the turnover on the board that has caused a lot of staff time and effort to be sure they’re up to date and understand all the issues and have all the background they need to make good decisions. That has been a very big time investment.
I guess I wish I had had more opportunity to be more pro-active than we were able to be. The strategic plan was a big step forward but because of constrained resources and because of transitions and other things we weren’t able to be as constantly focused on the future as I would have liked.
Q: What would you say is the single most crucial challenge for the UNC system going forward?
A: It’s the challenge all of America is facing now in higher education. We’re not placing the value on higher education that we must if we’re going to be and remain a competitive economy and a competitive nation. We seemed to have moved to a point where higher ed is treated very much like any other expense of government and it’s not seen as part of the critical infrastructure of our society that we have to have at a higher level of excellence if we’re going to be competitive.
Q: If anything, it seems it’s going the other way. People are starting to question whether it is worth it to take on debt for a college degree.
A: That’s part of the reason we need to have the debate I referred to. We are spending 30 to 35 percent less per student today than we did 25 years ago. We need to keep investing at the same level we used to and we’re nowhere near that and it’s beginning to show.
Q: Do you worry about the conservative turn the state has taken since 2010, and what effect has that had on higher education?
A: It may be a little early yet to say. No question, the budget cuts were traumatic for the university. But I can’t say it’s a conservative turn that led to those budget cuts; we were facing a very serious budget deficit. What you have to watch is what happens going forward when there are more resources available. We’ll see how higher education stacks up as a priority. If we don’t pay attention to the university, at some point businesses will stop coming and they’ll start leaving and we’ll have fewer jobs and we’ll have a less robust North Carolina.
Q: What can you say about what happened with your ouster?
A: It came as a shock to me because I’d been told people were happy with the job I was doing and were happy with my performance. In my heart I know it wasn’t about my performance. I don’t really know what it’s about. It’s their right to make decisions about leadership. I disagree with it. I’ve made that clear. I wasn’t ready to go.
I learned (as a judge): There’s pressure all the time on the bench to do a certain thing and if you let that pressure get to you and drive you a particular direction, it will come back to haunt you. Always do what you think is right. It won’t be perfect but at least you can sleep at night and I can sleep relatively well because I’ve given it all I got.
Q: How would you assess John Fennebresque’s performance as chairman?
A: Like all of us, John had strengths and weaknesses. I obviously disagree with the way he handled my situation. But I know of no one who has more passion and love for the university than John does. He’s his own personality, just like all of us. But we get along quite well.
Q: What advice would you give Margaret Spellings?
A: It’s probably not my position to tell her what to do or how to do it. I’ve emphasized for her this is a great public university. There are some things that need to be done to make it even better but it’s not broken. It’s important to the university that I love that she be successful. It’s unfair for people to blame her for what happened to me or what they believe was an imperfect process that led to her selection. They ought to work with her and try to make her successful.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I have the privilege of staying on the faculty at the university; whether I choose to do that I don’t know. I do want to explore what else is possible. I’d love to stay in North Carolina but a lot of opportunities that might be attractive to me, it may be I have to leave the state. I just want to find something where I can make a difference. I have a lot of energy left. I’m not ready to stop working.
