Cuts cost the UNC-system faculty and limit course offerings

UNC-system schools are losing more than just funding. They’re losing faculty members.

Administrators across the 16 campuses are submitting plans this week for implementing the 15.6 percent, or $414 million, cut in state funding.

The latest round of cuts adds to the loss of more than $600 million in state funding in the last four years. Most of those cuts were targeted at administrative positions — but those are now cut to the bone, forcing administrators to look to the academic side for cutting costs.

Administrators predicted the elimination of 2,000 positions — mostly from the academic side — earlier this year when discussing the impact of a 10 percent cut. The revised number based on the final 15.6 percent cut is yet to be determined.

Faculty retention poses a challenge as budget cuts continue to take a toll on universities, said N.C. State University Chancellor Randy Woodson.

“We’ve got a lot of outstanding faculty on our campuses that are into their fourth year without raises and are looking at the budgetary stability of our system and wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to be at a different university,” he said.

Other administrators also said they expect faculty attrition, especially since the system-wide fund for faculty recruitment and retention is unusable for the 2011-2012 academic year.

“That’s going to make it very difficult to counteroffer when other universities come recruiting our faculty away,” said David Perrin, provost and executive vice chancellor at UNC-Greensboro.

“Unfortunately, when you don’t have increases for faculty for this number of years, the only way they can increase their salary is to
move.”

This is the third consecutive year without state pay raises for UNC-system employees.

Charlie Perusse, vice president for finance for the UNC system, echoed administrators’ concerns.

“It’s a concern because it’s important to provide a quality education and provide quality support services,” Perusse said.

Woodson said NCSU has already lost more than 100 faculty positions, and it may lose as many as 150 total.

“We’re going to have some challenges in terms of offering sufficient sections of courses in order to keep students on track toward their career goals,” he said.

NCSU is offering 172 fewer course sections than last fall, Holly Swart, associate registrar at the university, said in an email.
Administrators throughout the system are noticing a trend of larger class sizes and fewer sections.

“I think what you’ll find throughout the system is — in one way or another — class sizes getting bigger, fewer classes being offered, and pretty much every office having to trim their operational budgets,” said Jon Young, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Fayetteville State University.

FSU has eliminated nine administrative positions, almost 60 faculty positions and at least 64 class sections, he said.

“You can imagine sort of the impact on class availability,” he said.
Young, a former professor at FSU, said he is teaching a freshman class to help meet the shortfall in course availability.

UNC-G, which has an undergraduate enrollment almost three times the size of FSU’s, is eliminating 203 positions — 157 faculty and 46 staff — and 975 class sections, Perrin said.

“I think that it will have to negatively impact students’ progress toward graduation, he said.

“It’s going to be a difficult year for every campus in the system.”

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