Making the best with cuts: University o?cials have successfully coped with budget cuts, can even hire new faculty

University officials have shown particular finesse over the past months in dealing with budget cuts.

Last academic year, students received e-mail update after e-mail update highlighting the different ways the University was going to cope with cuts from the state.

And now, administrators’ prudence and foresight is paying off.

The University is going to hire 60 new faculty members. Twenty-nine of those hires will be in the College of Arts and Sciences.

It’s a great situation to be in, considering the economic climate of the rest of the nation.

Schools around the country have implemented hiring freezes. And some of the public universities UNC competes with — like the University of California system — are in states with worse economic situations than North Carolina’s.

Certainly, other states’ worsening economic situations are nothing to rejoice about, but it gives the University an opportunity to stay competitive.

The University will be able to get top-notch faculty without some of the competition it usually deals with. This is a product of careful and conservative planning by our administrators.

Somehow, they’ve managed to make some good come of what everyone forecast to be devastating cuts. Kudos.

Plus, it’ll give the University the chance to contribute to the recovery.

Our administrators have positioned UNC to hire recent graduates looking for professorships.

Without open positions, many of them might have given up and looked for jobs outside academics.

Now, some of them won’t have to.

So after a year of uncertainty, University administrators have provided a bright spot.

The future’s still not set in stone, but it seems like our administrators have done a fine job so far of navigating the University through some rough waters.