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(05/31/07 4:00am)
Just as it has for the past three years, the N.C. House voted last week to give students a vote on the UNC-system Board of Governors.
And just as it has for the past three years, the N.C. Senate sent the measure to die quietly in the Rules and Operations Committee.
"Every year, people get excited because it seems like it might be on the brink of making it," said Derek Pantiel, president of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments.
"And then it gets killed."
The ASG president already serves as an ex-officio member of the system's governing body, sitting alongside the 32 non-student members who cast votes about everything from tuition rates to athletic programs.
But the ASG - an umbrella group encompassing student officials from all 16 system campuses - has long sought more than a seat at the table. They want the president counted among the ayes or the nays.
"It holds you accountable," said Cody Grasty, ASG vice president-elect. "You can always say how you feel, but when it comes down to that public record vote, that really shows where your allegiance lies."
It is an argument students have brought time and again to the state legislature, which selects the other members of the board and has the authority to change the voting structure.
Despite winning consistent approval in the House and support from a majority of senators, the effort has invariably hit a brick wall in the form of Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, a Cumberland County Democrat who has made his opposition well-known.
It is Rand who dispatches the student vote bill to the Rules and Operations Committee, and most believe it is Rand who ensures it stays there.
"We had 36 out of 50 Senators last year," said former ASG President Zack Wynne. "That should have been more than enough to pull it out of the Rules Committee, but they weren't going to cross Tony Rand."
Stephen Moore, ASG vice president for government relations, said he is encouraged this year by the fact that Senator Kay Hagan (D-Guilford) is sponsoring the bill. As a co-chairwoman of the appropriations committee, Moore said Hagan might have enough clout to bring the bill to the floor.
"Our primary sponsor in the Senate is very vocal, and it's possible they're at least willing to have a hearing on it," Moore said.
Without any meaningful progress this year, ASG officials fear the measure could lose steam even among its longtime supporters. The margin of victory in the House has narrowed each of the last two years, and it cleared by 21 votes last week.
There is also a growing minority within the association who see the student vote as a hopeless cause, at least while Rand remains in office. They point out that the board decides most issues by consensus, and contentious votes are rare.
Lawmakers opposed to the student vote point out that students are free to voice their opinions during board debates.
"They already serve on the board in an ex-officio capacity," said Rep. Phillip Haire, a Jackson County Democrat who has consistently opposed the student vote. "They certainly have an input."
Haire said the issues confronting the university system are simply too complex and long-term for a student representative, who typically serves on the board for one year. Other members may serve up to 12 years.
He also suggested it might be time for the ASG to rethink its push for the vote.
"After this long, I think you'd step back and take a long, analytical look at it."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(05/24/07 4:00am)
Congress is wading into the turbulent debate about campus safety in the aftermath of last month's shootings at Virginia Tech and is considering possible changes to federal laws governing student privacy.
A bill to loosen disclosure restrictions for campuses dealing with at-risk students is already attracting attention in the House, and similar measures are being drafted in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the UNC-system will consider during the next few months whether to back any move to alter long-standing federal policy about the disclosure of student health records.
"In Washington, there's a lot of attention on this issue," said Kimrey Rhinehardt, UNC-system vice president for federal relations. "I think that certainly now, more than ever, the university is going to be a part of that discussion."
The April 16 shooting of 32 students at Virginia Tech by a classmate with a documented history of mental instability has prompted colleges across the country to reevaluate their security procedures.
It has also drawn national attention to the vague guidelines that govern when and how campuses can respond to threatening or self-destructive behavior by a student.
Federal law prohibits universities from contacting a student's parents unless the student presents an imminent danger to himself or others, a standard that is open to wide interpretation. In recent years, campuses have been sued for taking preemptive measures against troubled students in some instances and for failing to take preemptive action in others.
As a result, most campus administrators have welcomed the opportunity to review the existing statutes.
"I think there's enough confusion now that most institutions would tell you that it could hardly get any worse," said Becky Timmons, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education.
"Institutions may assume that scrutinizing this legislation would lend some greater clarity to the issue," she said. "There are some very legitimate reasons for the laws we have the on books, but they do create grey areas for campuses."
The UNC-system has created a task force that will explore those grey areas, along with a whole host of other safety issues. The group will represent a variety of constituencies, from chancellors and legal counsel to students and staff members.
Only after the task force has weighed in with recommendations - scheduled for sometime in September - will the system consider lobbying for any changes to federal law.
"Because the issues of privacy and disclosure are so delicate, it's going to take a lot of people thinking about this to come with the right balance," Rhinehardt said.
In announcing the safety task force earlier this month, university officials stressed the need to avoid any hasty reactions.
Noting that UNC campuses are statistically far safer than North Carolina as a whole, System President Erskine Bowles said the task force would proceed cautiously with any recommendations.
"We have to really make sure we think through these issues and don't just react," Bowles said. "We have to do things that make good common sense."
It is unclear whether the task force will finish its work in time for UNC to weigh in effectively at the federal level. It will depend on how quickly Congress moves to revisit the privacy and disclosure issues.
The state of Virginia has formed its own high-profile commission to study the shooting at Virginia Tech, and Timmons said that might prompt federal lawmakers to take a more deliberative approach.
"I think there is a little bit of a sense of proceeding slowly out of a sense of respect for the Virginia Tech situation," she said.
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(05/24/07 4:00am)
North Carolina lawmakers might soon consider an amendment to the state constitution designed to prevent the forced sale of private property for economic development.
The issue has strong bipartisan support in the state House, where more than 90 lawmakers are sponsoring an amendment, and Republicans are pushing a similar measure in the Senate.
"I hope that something can get done," said Daren Bakst, a policy analyst for the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation. "It's about getting an amendment that actually protects North Carolinians."
The vast majority of states have acted in the last two years to limit the use of eminent domain, the power that allows governments to force the sale of private property for public use.
Typically employed by state and local governments to purchase land for roadways, schools or other public projects, eminent domain became a hot-button issue after a 2005 Supreme Court ruling held that governments could take property for the purpose of economic development.
In that case, a homeowner named Susette Kelo sued the city of New London, Conn., to prevent the forced sale of her home to a private developer.
The Supreme Court's ruling in favor of New London prompted a backlash in state capitols across the country as lawmakers moved to more strictly define "public use" and limit property takings for economic development.
"When the Kelo decision came down, it really kind of shocked all of us, especially the general public," said Jennifer Zeigler, legislative affairs attorney for the Castle Coalition, a Virginia-based think tank dedicated to property rights issues.
"There's been a massive response, and 40 states have passed some kind of eminent domain reform since Kelo," she said.
North Carolina acted last year to strengthen existing state law defining the limits of eminent domain, and property rights advocates generally give the state high marks for strictly interpreting the "public use" clause of the U.S. Constitution.
But backers of an amendment to the state constitution say it is necessary to prevent lawmakers from weakening property protections in the future.
"Legislation can be changed at any time," Bakst said. "It's very easy to change, and we want to make sure this protection is guaranteed in the state constitution."
Andrew Romanet, General Counsel for the N.C. League of Municipalities, said that local governments have no problem with a strict interpretation of "public use" and that the state has a history of avoiding property seizure for the sake of economic development.
"I have not seen our legislature, with either party in power, giving away the power of eminent domain," he said.
The only concern with a constitutional amendment, he added, is that it could have unplanned effects on the legitimate use of government power.
"The law of unintended consequences could occur, no matter how well it's drafted."
Any amendment would need to clear both the House and Senate before being submitted for a public referendum during statewide elections in November 2007.
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(05/17/07 4:00am)
Sometime in the next few weeks, University officials will launch a long-awaited push into the growing market for online education.
With advertisements set to appear on well-trafficked Web sites like Monster.com and Yahoo, officials want to draw national and international attention to the degree programs and courses offered by the UNC-system's 16 campuses.
"We are going to market the hell out of this," said UNC-system President Erskine Bowles.
Since his first weeks in office, Bowles has pushed for a major effort to publicize the system's online offerings and turn them into a revenue stream. With well over a hundred degree programs already available, Bowles said it is simply good business to begin more aggressive marketing.
He has found an eager audience among the system's Board of Governors, which so far has voiced strong support for leveraging UNC's brand recognition - among the best of any university in the country - to promote and expand distance education.
"Our first focus is on serving students in North Carolina," said Alan Mabe, UNC-system vice president for academic planning. "But we're going to expand regionally and nationally."
The centerpiece of the marketing effort is a Web site designed to compile and organize every online course and degree program offered across the UNC system. A team of developers is putting the final touches on the site, called The University of North Carolina Online, and taking suggests from focus groups of students and faculty.
Aside from allowing easy navigation to each school's online offerings, the site is designed to gauge the level of demand for different programs. Based on site traffic and user searches, Mabe said university officials can determine which programs might be ripe for expansion.
"We'll talk to all of the various campuses, and some may want to expand," he said. "With as many campuses as we have, we believe that if we can show a demand out there, we can find a campus that could meet that."
Each online course or degree program will still be administered by individual campuses, who will determine costs for out-of-state students, and it will be up to campus departments to decide how to handle any increase in applicants.
Experts in online education say it's unclear how much unmet demand there might be in the national market. A host of public and private institutions have sought to expand their online offerings in recent years, and not all have been successful.
"The market is increasingly saturated," said Janet Poley, president of the American Distance Education Consortium. "Almost everybody is playing in this game."
Still, Poley said state universities generally have a strong core market of in-state users, since people tend to prefer nearby institutions even for online courses.
Bowles and his staff have described the system's online offerings as a way to increase graduation and retention rates by providing greater flexibility for existing students, but the aim of the new advertisements is clearly to draw broader attention.
"All of our online degrees come from a university your employer has actually heard of," says one of the new online advertisements.
"I like it," Poley laughed.
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(05/17/07 4:00am)
RALEIGH - With weeks of negotiations still to come, university officials already are expressing deep frustration with the state budget approved last week by the N.C. House.
Citing a number of decisions they claim could have a "devastating impact" on the UNC system, university supporters are hoping the state Senate will make key revisions as the next step in the budget process gets underway.
"It's a four-step dance," said UNC-system President Erskine Bowles. "We're on step two."
Both in public comments and in private discussions, Bowles and his staff have characterized this legislative session as particularly difficult for the university system.
Though there are some high points - full funding of financial aid, for instance - many of the UNC system's top priorities were left out of the House budget.
"Our priorities going in were faculty salaries and research funding," said Kevin FitzGerald, legislative lobbyist for UNC-Chapel Hill. "We didn't do too well there."
Lawmakers and lobbyists alike noted a heightened degree of uncertainty during the first round of this year's budget drafting. The power structure in the state House was thrown into turmoil by the February resignation of longtime speaker Jim Black, who pleaded guilty to charges of public corruption and obstruction of justice.
"It's always tougher to communicate, particularly long-term needs, when you've got a whole new leadership team in place," said Brent Barringer, a member of the UNC-system Board of Governors. "There's always a learning curve that comes into play, and I think we're doing as well as we can under those new circumstances."
Among the most pressing concerns for university officials is an amendment that would eliminate funding for any faculty position that remains unfilled for more than six months. Campus administrators have come to rely on those lapsed salaries to pay for everything from teaching assistants to heating bills.
"It was a mad stampede, and they obviously did not know what they were doing," said UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser, referring to House members who voted for the provision. "This would be a devastating hit. None of those dollars were going unused."
Though Moeser and other campus administrators were present when the amendment was introduced, they said the House took up the matter so suddenly that there was little time to react and make a counterargument. The sense of frustration was palpable among university officials who described the provision.
"The amendment came up late in the appropriations committee meeting; they had been there all day, a lot of the members were tired," said Rob Nelson, UNC-system vice president for finance. "There was some discussion, but there was not a lot of debate."
Other state agencies have since joined in calling for the amendment to be reversed, and senators have promised to revisit the issue in greater detail.
Bowles is also hoping the Senate will reconsider funding for competitive faculty salaries. The House voted for a baseline salary increase of 4.25 percent for all state employees, but university officials had asked for millions more to help bring faculty pay closer in line with competing universities.
The need to raise salary levels is often cited by chancellors when they request tuition hikes, and Bowles said the extra funding would have taken pressure off of tuition.
"I'm disappointed I didn't do a better job of convincing the House," Bowles said last week. "But we've been trying."
With nearly $95 million in reductions written into the House budget, and key university priorities unfunded, system officials will certainly keep trying now that the debate has moved to the Senate.
"I think we'll be looking at everything in the House budget," said Senator A.B. Swindell, the Nash County Democrat who chairs the education appropriations committee.
"The process is just starting."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
Drafting the Budget
A budget draft is submitted by the Governor's office.
The House and Senate alternate each year to decide which chamber creates the next draft. The House had first priority this year.
The Senate will make revisions then both chambers negotiate to resolve discrepancies.
Lawmakers hope to complete the process by July 1st, but that deadline is rarely met.
(04/27/07 4:00am)
For years, the UNC system has studied and discussed the problem of spiraling textbook costs, occasionally issuing recommendations and promising further review. But even the formation of a high-level textbook committee resulted in few concrete changes.
(04/26/07 4:00am)
A long-awaited increase in health insurance options for state employees is winning praise from university officials, but shortcomings persist.
The State Health Plan introduced three new coverage options this past summer in an effort to address widespread complaints, and officials said 70 percent of active state employees have switched to one of the new plans.
"That's a rather significant number," said Dan Soper, chief operating officer for the State Health Plan. "We knew that it was going to be a rather popular choice."
For state employees - which include all UNC-system faculty and staff - it is the first time in recent memory there has been any choice at all.
Up until this past summer, North Carolina offered only one comprehensive health plan, and university officials had long cited its high out-of-pocket cost and lackluster benefits as a major obstacle in recruiting and retaining faculty.
The discontent had grown so strong that UNC-system officials began exploring last year the idea of breaking away from the State Health Plan and creating their own benefit package. For now, despite continued misgivings about the level of benefits, the new state choices seem to have quieted calls for an independent university plan.
"It's on the back burner," said Dennis Daley, chairman of the UNC-system faculty assembly benefits and welfare committee. "I think the changes in the state plans have been very well received."
The choices available now include the original comprehensive plan and three different Preferred Provider Options, all offered through BlueCross and BlueShield of North Carolina.
Among the most sought-after improvements included in the new plans are increased choices for family coverage. The comprehensive plan offers family coverage for $480.14 per month, while one of the new PPO plans charges $371.82.
All of the new plans also include separate rates for adding spousal coverage, something the comprehensive plan lacks.
"You can customize them a little bit based on your family circumstances," said David Perry, interim associate vice chancellor for human resources at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Soper said more than 30,000 people have been added to the State Health Plan since the new options were introduced, and he attributed much of that growth to increases in family coverage. The drop-in cost might have led low-income employees to extend coverage to spouses or children for the first time.
"We know that a good many employees added dependents who otherwise had not been enrolled in the plan," he said.
But even with the overwhelming shift toward the new plans, university officials still have serious concerns about competitiveness. Poor benefits are considered a strong contributor to faculty turnover.
"It's a big problem, and I don't see any immediate indication that it's going to change anytime soon," Perry said. "Fixing it is going to be a very expensive proposition."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(04/16/07 4:00am)
DURHAM - Cole Jones, a two-term student body president at East Carolina University, cruised to an easy victory in Saturday's election for the presidency of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments.
(03/30/07 4:00am)
Cole Jones, widely acknowledged as the front-runner to become the next president of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments, is facing questions about recent criminal charges relating to a child-custody dispute.
(03/22/07 4:00am)
University officials don't like talking about the political influence enjoyed by UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University.
The well-heeled political action committees that back the state's flagship schools take plenty of criticism, but almost never from officials of the UNC system.
But last week, during a meeting of the system Board of Governors, board member Charles Norwood came out and said what many have long suspected.
"There are individual people on this board who are very concerned about it," Norwood said of the PAC's influence in the state legislature.
"It has been discussed individually, on a one-on-one basis, among board members, and I think it's time to have an open discussion about it."
That kind of public dialogue would mark a first among board members, who mostly have avoided any direct criticism of the powerful lobbying groups.
The flagship schools' PACs - nominally independent from the universities but dominated by university trustees and prominent alumni - occasionally have staked out positions publicly at odds with the BOG, but even then board members have been reluctant to speak out.
"This board hasn't always agreed with the position that those two PACs have taken," said BOG Chairman Jim Phillips, speaking during last week's meeting. "It's a very unpleasant situation to be in."
Those comments followed a presentation by three student members of Common Cause North Carolina, a nonprofit group that has been strongly critical of the legislative clout exercised by UNC-CH and N.C. State.
All three students hailed from smaller schools within the UNC system, and they argued that the two wealthy PACs undermine the interests of the other 14 campuses.
"We do not want this kind of action to cause a dispersion or a separation of the schools within the UNC system," said Kenneth Graham, a senior at Fayetteville State University.
Graham said he would like to see the BOG work to curb PAC activity, but board members made clear they have no authority to govern independent lobbying.
Concerns about campus equity form the core of most criticism directed at the PACs.
Citizens for Higher Education, which counts the majority of UNC-CH trustees as contributors, is ranked among the most powerful lobbying groups in the state. It distributes hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to state lawmakers every year.
The resulting political influence has long caused discomfort among the system's smaller campuses. And, as Norwood acknowledged last week, among some BOG members, as well.
That discomfort is largely the result of a broader issue, said Ferrel Guillory, director of the UNC Program on Public Life.
"Since the creation of the 16-campus system, there has been kind of an undercurrent of tension over how a state runs a unified system and still maintains the status of flagship universities," he said. "The PACs are criticized for providing a great public university with political support that a lot of public universities wish they had."
Even critics of the PACs acknowledge that the groups generally are supportive of systemwide priorities and that they act with good intentions. PAC members point out that advocacy on behalf of the flagships generally carries benefits for other campuses.
"I think the extent to which Chapel Hill and State can excel, it helps the entire system," said Paul Fulton, a UNC-CH trustee and member of Citizens for Higher Education. "All boats rise with a rising tide."
Whether the rest of the system agrees is a matter ripe for debate - if enough board members are willing to have it.
"It's an issue with some people," Norwood said. "I don't feel I'm completely by myself, let me put it that way."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(03/19/07 4:00am)
GREENVILLE - The UNC system adopted a tougher stance on textbook costs Thursday, with much of the credit going to student leaders.
The decision by the system Board of Governors to approve a comprehensive textbook policy marks a significant victory for the UNC-system Association of Student Governments.
Forcing the university to confront rising book costs has been one of the ASG's signature issues, and system officials went out of their way to praise the association's recent efforts.
"This really came out of the work that Derek and his group did," said Ginger Burks, UNC-system associate vice president for finance.
She was singling out ASG President Derek Pantiel, who has used his seat on the board to highlight student complaints about the rising cost of books.
Though textbook costs have been a part of the student agenda for years, Pantiel and his staff have pressed strongly during the past few months for a systemwide policy to require on-time adoption of new textbooks and a rental system for large introductory courses.
Through regular meetings with system officials and campus administrators, ASG officers got most of what they wanted.
The policy adopted Friday requires professors to submit book orders on time and demands that all large introductory courses have either a rental or buyback option for primary texts.
"This really is an issue that is near and dear to all students," said Jake Parton, ASG vice president for academic and student affairs, speaking to board members Thursday.
"We are extremely impressed with the action this board has taken on textbooks."
Campuses have until spring 2008 to comply with the new rules, and Parton made clear that enforcement would be a top concern.
The board's policy does not address what action might be taken if campuses fail to make changes, but system officials pledged to hold chancellors responsible for trimming book costs.
"Textbook costs are a huge portion of the cost of higher education, and we've got to drive them down," UNC-system President Erskine Bowles said.
"It's going to happen, and we're going to be leaders in driving that."
System officials emphasized that student efforts on textbooks fit neatly with Bowles' emphasis on increasing efficiency throughout the university.
Analyzing yearly book costs alongside tuition and fees - another requirement of the new policy - is part of an effort to hold down the overall price of a college education.
"This is something we can get our hands around and control pretty quickly, that hopefully will make a big difference in the end," Burks said.
Board members told Pantiel and Parton that they expect student officials to keep a close watch as the new policy takes effect and report any problems back to Bowles and his staff.
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(02/23/07 5:00am)
Already coping with deep frustration among student body presidents and a disastrous monthly meeting in January, the UNC-system Association of Student Governments was dealt another blow Thursday.
(02/16/07 5:00am)
In-state tuition and fee hikes were approved easily last Friday for all 16 UNC-system campuses, and that's exactly how university officials wanted it.
As part of the four-year plan approved in October, campuses kept their requests below 6.5 percent, and the system's Board of Governors kept its promise to swiftly approve all hikes.
"While I know that some would prefer that we have zero increases in tuition, and some would actually prefer that we have very high tuition and high financial aid, I think the plan you adopted last year is a sound one," UNC-system President Erskine Bowles told board members last week.
But the truest test of the new policy - Bowles' biggest initiative since taking office last year - will come in the months ahead.
State lawmakers soon will begin analyzing the system's budget request for the 2007-08 fiscal year, and the decisions they make will have a direct bearing on how campuses can approach tuition.
Under the formula developed by Bowles and his staff, the ceiling on resident tuition will drop if legislators increase state funding by more than 6 percent. For instance, if lawmakers increase the university budget by 9 percent, the in-state tuition cap would decline by three percentage points to 3.5 percent.
"I think the (N.C.) General Assembly will be generous to us this year," said Jeff Davies, Bowles' chief of staff. "I think that in the future we're going to see increases in tuition less than 6.5 percent."
Bowles came into office with enormous credibility, and board members gave him almost complete leeway in fashioning the system's first long-term tuition plan.
As a result, he has staked a great deal on the idea that the new policy will encourage lawmakers to treat the university budget kindly.
"It puts pressure on the legislature to give us money to hold our tuition down," Bowles told board members.
But if that additional funding doesn't come through, students are likely to see increases approaching the 6.5 mark again next year.
Fourteen of 16 campuses requested more than 5 percent this year, making clear that chancellors and trustees intend to take full advantage of the board's tacit promise of approval.
It was left to Bowles and his staff to analyze campus proposals, and the board showed a willingness to defer to the president's judgment when it came to tuition.
"I think the board has great confidence in Erskine," BOG member Ray Farris said. "I think he has great influence."
It remains to be seen whether that will prove true among legislators.
Already, President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, publicly derided the new tuition policy for constricting tuition hikes, and Gov. Mike Easley denounced it for allowing them.
But Bowles and his staff remain optimistic.
"I'm a low-tuition guy," Bowles often says. It'll be up to state lawmakers to prove him right.
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(02/12/07 5:00am)
GREENSBORO - Student opposition and an admittedly flawed process were not enough to stop UNC-Chapel Hill's out-of-state tuition hike.
On Friday the UNC-system Board of Governors approved a $1,250 increase for nonresident undergraduates, even while acknowledging that campus trustees had subverted a proper tuition debate.
The board's decision ultimately rested on the fact that the University needs the funding, and out-of-state students are able to pay.
"The process, I strongly disagree with," UNC-system President Erskine Bowles said. "But this is a need-based decision."
Increases of $250 for resident undergraduates and $500 for graduate students passed with no debate, but board members discussed the out-of-state proposal for more than twenty minutes.
Bowles told board members that he had spoken with Chancellor James Moeser and is satisfied that the added revenue from out-of-state students is needed to bolster faculty salaries. He also pointed out that UNC-CH remains the best bargain in America for nonresidents.
What Bowles could not explain - and what student leaders sought to highlight - is how University trustees arrived at the $1,250 figure. The campus tuition and fee advisory task force recommended an increase of $500, which trustees discarded in favor of their own proposal.
"The tuition task force had faculty members, it had the chancellor, and it had the student body president," said Ray Farris, the only BOG member to vote against the University's nonresident increase.
"I prefer their judgment over the trustees' judgment in this particular matter."
Everyone from Bowles and Moeser to the trustees themselves have vowed to make changes to the campus tuition process, with the goal of avoiding frustration on the part of students and faculty who saw their input overruled this year.
But the underlying equation - a University with ongoing financial needs and below-market rate tuition - is likely to drive nonresident increases for years to come. University officials estimate that nonresident rates could rise more than $6,000 before having an effect on the applicant pool.
"I think that what we found today is there are people of the opinion that as long as money can buy things, a tuition increase is justified," Student Body President James Allred said.
The point of having an in-depth campus tuition process is to decide how much of additional funding should come from students, as opposed to from taxpayer dollars and other sources, Allred said.
"We can open up a bottomless pit of need," he said. "That doesn't justify raising as much money as possible from students."
Along with tuition and fee hikes at UNC-CH, the BOG gave unanimous approval to increases at all 16 system schools.
This marks the first time board members have considered campus proposals since implementing a four-year tuition policy in October.
That policy includes an annual ceiling of 6.5 percent increases for resident undergraduates, with the expectation of swift approval for campus requests within that margin.
Fourteen schools requested and received increases of 5 percent or more, suggesting that campus administrators plan to take full advantage of the board's promise.
BOG chairman Jim Phillips said board members trusted Bowles to evaluate every proposal to ensure there was justification.
"The president's staff thoroughly scrubbed those requests," Phillips said. "As a result, I think the president's recommendation carried much weight."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(01/22/07 5:00am)
CHARLOTTE - Long-simmering tensions between the UNC system's historically black and predominantly white universities erupted during a weekend meeting of the system's Association of Student Governments.
(11/20/06 5:00am)
FAYETTEVILLE - Derek Pantiel has spoken for years about the importance of taking campus issues seriously.
(11/10/06 5:00am)
A book-length study of administrative efficiency seems an unlikely venue for suggesting broad policy change.
But the President's Advisory Committee on Efficiency and Effectiveness - formed earlier this year by UNC-system President Erskine Bowles - laid out a long-term vision Thursday for a more strongly centralized system.
"This study, these recommendations, bring forth a fundamental question that must be answered," said Krista Tillman, chairwoman of the committee. "Clearly today, we adopt policy as a system. But it's not at all clear today that we operate as a system."
Tillman compared the 16 UNC campuses to independent city-states, each with its own responsibilities for infrastructure, administration and student services.
To make those kind of back-office operations more efficient, the committee's report calls for gradually consolidating many of them.
For smaller campuses, that eventually could mean outsourcing some administrative functions to larger campuses or to the system's General Administration.
"The last thing in the world I want to do is create a massive bureaucratic structure here," Bowles said. "But it may be best to do some things centrally."
Tillman stressed that the committee's report deals only with administrative functions, not the university's research or academic missions.
For example, it calls for smaller campuses to consider outsourcing some of their human-resources responsibilities to larger schools.
Taken together, dozens of such proposals form a vision for a more cohesive university system, where larger campuses often would function as service providers to others.
"There may be times where it's appropriate to have central support where it adds value," said Jeff Davies, Bowles' chief of staff. "We're mostly talking about opportunities for consolidation between campuses."
It is not at all clear how much campus support there might be for the committee's suggestions. When one member of the system's Board of Governors asked how campuses might react to the proposals, the rest of the board responded with nervous laughter.
But university officials said that any significant changes are still a long way off, and campus administrators are forming working groups to more closely analyze the report's findings.
"I think everybody has come into this with a spirit of cooperation," said James Oblinger, chancellor at N.C. State University.
"There may be an opportunity for sharing, and I think those are the types of things we want to talk about."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(10/16/06 4:00am)
The UNC-system adopted Friday a detailed set of tuition guidelines likely to have a far-reaching impact on students and their parents during the next four years.
The plan, approved unanimously by the system Board of Governors, puts a 6.5 percent per year cap on in-state undergraduate tuition hikes.
Yet many student leaders, to say nothing of average students, learned of the tuition policy overhaul just days before it was approved.
That left some wondering about the health of a process meant to incorporate student opinion in university decisions.
Derek Pantiel, president of the system Association of Student Governments, summed up his frustration before last week's vote.
"This is my first tuition policy task force meeting and my last," he told a gathering of student leaders. "I wish I had been in on these meetings last year."
Representing students in system-level policy discussions is a core responsibility of the ASG, and former President Zack Wynne was involved in the earliest stages of the new tuition process.
"We rely on the student representative to the Board of Governors," said Rob Nelson, the system's vice president for finance. "They were given a place on the tuition task force."
But a combination of leadership transitions and bad timing caused the student voice in that critical debate to taper off.
System President Erskine Bowles put the tuition task force on hold shortly after taking office in January, saying he wanted time to study the issue and weigh in. In April, while the task force remained dormant, Pantiel was elected president of the ASG.
"The (tuition) discussion had dropped off long before Derek came along," Wynne said. "It just kind of stopped, and they never put any sort of timeline on it."
Pantiel and other ASG officials complained that they were given little information about the task force, which left them scrambling for a response when Bowles brought forward his plan two weeks ago. But Wynne said there simply wasn't much information to share.
"We didn't sit there and go over it because there was nothing to go over," he said, noting that Bowles essentially took control of the process when he took office.
Still, some information about the proposal was available long before Bowles officially unveiled his plan, and student leaders were told about it.
Forrest Gilliam, student body president at Appalachian State University, e-mailed the ASG's council of student body presidents in July with a basic outline of the new tuition plan.
"I only heard back from one president," Gilliam said, singling out Student Body President James Allred of UNC-Chapel Hill.
As a result, many student body presidents were unfamiliar with the plan when they met for the first time to discuss a response. That meeting took place on Oct. 6, just four days before the tuition task force reconvened to approve the proposal.
"This is partly our fault," said Cole Jones, student body president at East Carolina University. "Communication is always a problem."
Wynne, who served as student body president at UNC-Wilmington before leading the ASG, said the issue goes beyond communication. It's impossible to expect full-time students to serve as full-time policymakers, he said.
"The ASG president cannot spend every day learning the things he needs to learn, reading the things he needs to read, and traveling to every campus like he needs to," Wynne said.
"He is a student first and foremost, and until we have people who can focus full time on these things, we're not going to be able to get anywhere."
Ultimately, with little time to craft a response or raise objections, student leaders decided it would be prudent to support Bowles' policy.
"I think that this plan is a risk," Pantiel said to Bowles last week. "But I realize it is our moral responsibility to support any decision that is made on this level."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(10/13/06 4:00am)
After years of only incremental progress toward improving faculty salaries, UNC-system officials are set to lobby for decisive action from state lawmakers.
A preliminary list of system budget priorities released Thursday calls for nearly $88 million in funding over two years to make campus pay scales more competitive. The aim is to bring average salaries on every campus up to the 80th percentile of peer institutions by 2009.
"It's substantially more than we've been asking for in the past," said Rob Nelson, the system's vice president for finance. "We believe it's something we can validate, we can justify, we can demonstrate."
Even so, university officials acknowledge such a large request might be difficult to accommodate within the next two budget cycles. It comes on top of the university's regular request for merit-based pay raises, which likely will total $136 million through 2009.
"No doubt it'll be a challenge," said Andy Willis, system vice president for government relations. "But I think we've done a good job of building the case."
Faculty salaries - which account for about 70 percent of operating costs on most campuses - have long been considered a weak link for the UNC system. As compensation for top-tier professors continues to grow, North Carolina's public universities have had difficulty competing against better-financed private institutions.
The problem is particularly acute at research universities competing within an elite peer group. Prominent faculty members often are lured away by lucrative offers system campuses simply can't match.
"We've been raided periodically by other institutions that want top quality faculty and find them here," said James Oblinger, chancellor at N.C. State University. "They come and literally buy them."
Of the nearly $88 million request, university officials believe about $17.9 million would be earmarked for N.C. State, and another $20.8 million for UNC-Chapel Hill. Those high numbers reflect the distance between both schools and their national competitors in terms of buying power.
"If one looks at those peer lists and sees who is competing with whom, it's fairly straightforward," said Oblinger, whose campus counts Cornell and Purdue universities among its peers.
During the past several years, campus administrators have come to rely on campus-based tuition to bolster faculty payrolls. Many hope that addressing faculty salaries through the state budget will make that discretionary revenue less vital.
"It will take enormous pressure off of tuition," said system President Erskine Bowles.
Others see solving the salary problem as a way of freeing up revenue to focus on other issues, like the long-standing discrepancies in funding among the system's 16 campuses.
Oblinger noted that salary competitiveness is a more straightforward concept to present to lawmakers than complicated issues like funding discrepancies.
"You have to look at what political capital you want to expend and where you stand the best chance," he said. "The (N.C.) General Assembly understands competitiveness and sees salaries as a major portion of that."
Despite such understanding, both campus and system administrators said that two years might be an overly optimistic timeline for securing such a sizable increase in funding. The important thing, officials stressed, is that it remains a credible budget priority.
"We've got to just keep our eye on the ball four or five years out from now," Willis said. "Everyone is impatient and they want it now, but it's just hard to do."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.
(10/11/06 4:00am)
UNC-system officials moved a step closer Tuesday to establishing a direct link between tuition rates and state funding, giving preliminary approval for the most significant change in tuition policy since 1998.
The plan, supported by the system's tuition policy task force, will cap tuition increases for resident undergraduates at 6.5 percent each year through 2011, effectively limiting the amount of additional revenue collected from students.
UNC-system President Erskine Bowles presented the plan last week, and the Board of Governors likely will offer final approval Friday.
The result, system officials hope, will create a heightened incentive for lawmakers to come through with taxpayer dollars.
"I think the plan will put pressure on the legislature and take pressure off of students," Bowles said.
"We're asking the legislature to meet those needs instead of meeting them out of tuition."
But state funding has not expanded in recent years at the level envisioned by the new policy, and some fear that the tuition cap could put a severe strain on university revenue.
The policy anticipates an annual increase in state funding somewhere near 6 percent, based on an average of 5.8 percent since 1972. But since 1997, the state has put forward an average of just 3.3 percent.
"This policy is only going to work if the legislature joins us in this commitment," said former Gov. James Holshouser, an emeritus member of the system's Board of Governors.
"If there's a significant unmet need, we're going to be back having tuition hearings like we've done over the last decade."
Those kind of contentious hearings, where chancellors annually argued their need for more tuition revenue, are exactly what the new policy is meant to avoid.
Predictability is one of the pillars of the four-year plan, and BOG members say they are reluctant to allow any exceptions to the 6.5-percent cap, even during difficult financial circumstances.
"The exception applies in every year, and there's nothing we can do to take that away," BOG Chairman Jim Phillips Jr. said "But as we said, there's going to be a very high threshold."
To support the expectation of increased state funding, Bowles said he's planning to put forward an ambitious budget request for the university system.
Lawmakers will be asked to find $38 million for need-based financial aid, in addition to a request for extra money to raise all faculty salaries to the 80th percentile of their peers within two years.
Both of those priorities are emphasized in the new tuition policy as well, which requires that 25 percent of campus-based increases be set aside for faculty salaries and another 25 percent set aside for financial aid.
"If we get (faculty salaries) to the 80th percentile, it takes huge pressure off of tuition," Bowles said. "If we get need-based aid to where it needs to be, it takes huge pressure off of tuition."
But some student leaders already are skeptical the legislature can meet the expansive needs outlined by the university system.
During a meeting of student body presidents last weekend, many worried the new policy will financially hamstring their campuses.
"The legislature is not going to fund us at 6 percent a year," said Forrest Gilliam, student body president at Appalachian State University. "Basically, we're going to see limited funding, and they're going to start looking for places to cut."
Board members are placing a great deal of confidence in Bowles and university chancellors to make sure that doesn't happen.
But even as they voted to support the new policy, task force members said they are anxious to see how it might affect the complicated dynamics of university funding.
"Nothing is a panacea," Phillips said. "We're going to look at it over the next four years and see how it works."
Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.