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 The University System Needs a Top to Bottom Examination
by Tom Campbell
June 18, 2009
North Carolina’s public university system has been a jewel in our state’s crown, but like many organizations it has grown significantly, adding programs, departments, and personnel that may not be true to the core mission of the university. It often happens in every sector of society.
UNC President Erskine Bowles has been saying he intends to retire when he reaches 65, which will be next summer. The most valuable service Bowles could provide the university and our state before he leaves would be to spend his remaining time conducting a top to bottom examination of our system, assessing our strengths and weaknesses while also determining our priorities in achieving our mission of best serving the students and people of our state. We are long overdue an honest accounting to the public for where we are spending our dollars and what we are getting in return. In the past anyone who questioned our universities were generally dismissed for being disloyal or grossly uninformed.
Two examples point to the need for this examination. We recently learned that our public universities now have some 275 “centers” that receive approximately 600 million dollars in annual funding from the state. Maybe some are so essential that they cannot be cut, but common sense dictates many are not essential and significant savings could be achieved; savings that could be better redirected to classrooms or in keeping tuitions low.
The revelation about compensation for administrators and professors who change jobs also needs review. Better policies and supervision are obviously needed. We want to treat people in academia well, but there is no justification for extravagant compensation systems that are dramatically out of line with other state organizations or even the private sector.
This top to bottom evaluation needs to touch all areas of our university system, asking tough questions like what is the basic mission of our university and how faithfully are we living into it? How can we improve our system of governance, both in regards to our Board of Governors as well as in the administration of the 16 campuses? How can the university work more in concert with public education and our community colleges? Why do we have five universities that are essentially segregated? Why aren’t we turning out more teachers who are better equipped to instruct our students? Are professors teaching enough? Why do we offer so many elective courses when students complain about not being able to get essential classes so as to graduate within four years? These and other questions should be asked and just as honestly answered without whitewash.
No one is better equipped to head up this examination than Bowles. Years of experience in the business world, followed by his position as chief of staff to President Clinton have given him the gravitas and the perspective needed for the task. If he would seriously undertake such an evaluation, free from the yokes of the education bureaucracy and political influence he could set our university system on a course to achieve even greater heights in the future and he would have carve his name forever in the halls of higher education for the benefit of future generations. We hope Bowles will agree to the task. |
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