Par for the course on UNC cuts

Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, May 28, 2015.

The University of North Carolina's Board of Governors pulled out its machete and got busy last week, slashing 46 degree programs across its 16-campus statewide network.

Locally, the University of North Carolina Wilmington got off relatively easily. It will lose its degrees in physical education and musical performance, cuts that had long been anticipated. (Student musicians at UNCW can now aspire to diplomas in general music and music education.)

Elsewhere, though, the cuts were bloody. East Carolina University lost nine degree programs, while UNC-Greensboro lost eight.

What's notable, though, is the pattern of the cuts. Music, art and theater programs took big hits, as did programs in African-American studies, women's studies and Hispanic studies. Programs to train foreign language teachers in French and German were axed at ECU, and math education and Latin were eliminated at UNC-Greensboro.

In some cases, the argument was that many of these programs had few students enrolled, so continuing to offer them wasted money. More generally, though, the Governors appear to be following the lead of Gov. Pat McCrory and his pal Art Pope – slashing back on classes that aren't directly training students for a career.

McCrory, after all, famously remarked that anyone who wants to study gender issues should do so at a private university (and, incidentally, hope their daddies can pay the tuition).

The ultimate object of this seems to be to retract the UNC system into a network of pre-professional trade schools, supporting values that the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (funded by Art Pope's family) identifies as "the morality of capitalism" and "limits on government."

That's simply wrong. "Liberal education" doesn't mean studying the collected works of Nancy Pelosi or Rachel Maddow; it refers to teaching students to think independently. That requires exposure to the fine arts, to alien points of view and to foreign cultures.

Cutting funds to train a future generation of high school foreign-language teachers is especially wrongheaded, at a time when we're told we have to compete in a "global" economy. How can we do that if we don't understand what the other person is saying?

Members of the Board of Governors are elected by members of the state legislature. If voters don't like what they're doing to our state's public universities, they need to tell their Honorables – good and loud.

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