Save our education: Governor, General Assembly must recognize value of faculty to UNC and avoid overly burdensome cuts

Enough is enough. The UNC system can’t take any more financial hits to its academics.

Gov. Bev Perdue’s recent budget proposal has another $100 million of cuts for the UNC system on top of the $162.5 million cut from the 2009-10 budget and $52 million in the 2010-11 budget.

We get it. Education is expensive. The state tax revenue is shrinking. Cuts have to be made.

And legislators have voiced concern about this year’s tax revenue, suspecting it might be lower than predicted. Don’t bank on the picture getting brighter unless North Carolina discovers a few unknown revenue streams.

But we expect legislators to make creative cuts that don’t hurt UNC schools’ academics when they reconvene in May to write their budget.

UNC-system President Erskine Bowles is claiming that Perdue’s cuts would go too deep. For example, Bowles said UNC-system schools would have to cut faculty jobs — about 600 from the system.

Those figures may or may not be scare tactics. But Bowles has a point.

Cutting faculty jobs will harm the UNC system. That course of action needs to be completely off the table.

The fact is that the UNC system is still growing — Perdue even allocated $5.6 million in her budget to enrollment growth. They’re expecting UNC’s numbers to increase. And if the number of faculty doesn’t at least stay stable, it will irreparably harm students’ education.

Yes, faculty can always be rehired when the state gets its hands on more money. But students can’t be re-educated, and they’re only in college once.

Legislators can feel free to cut administrative salaries and positions, construction budgets, luxury services — basically anything but academics and the faculty that have given the UNC system such a wonderful name.

Recessions hurt. But they’re opportunities to get leaner. There’s still a lot of fat to be cut from the UNC system, but faculty are the vital organs. They need to be left alone.