UNC System looks to Jones Street for help

Published March 26, 2015

by Sarah Ovaska, NC Policy Watch, March 26, 2015.

Leaders of the state’s university system descended Wednesday on the General Assembly in Raleigh, hoping to convince lawmakers to send more money their way.

“We need more money,” said John Fennebresque, a Charlotte attorney and chair of the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors, in comments he made to a group of university chancellors, campus trustees and other university officials.

The group was in Raleigh to meet with lawmakers, and ask House and Senate members for $2.59 billion for this upcoming fiscal year.

That amount would fund the 17 campus system (which includes the UNC hospital system and the N.C. School of Science and Math) at existing levels, as well as $50 million to cover enrollment growth, $8 million to shore up the struggling Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and $3 million for Elizabeth City State University. The UNC budget request also asks that any raises other state employees get this year are applied to the 70,000 employees of the UNC system.

This year’s request comes after years of cuts in state funding, including a more than $400 million drop in funding in 2011, the first year Republicans controlled the state legislature.

As a result, the public higher education system has increasingly turned to tuition and fees as funding sources, shifting much of the state’s funding burden to the 220,000 enrolled students and their families.

The state’s share of spending in the public university system has dropped by 2 percent per student since 2008, tuition has gone up in that same time period by 52 percent, according to data produced by the UNC system.

The legislature is considering a House bill this year that would offer free tuition at the community college level to high-achieving high school students, starting in 2016. The program is expected to cost $2 million in its first year, according to an Associated Press report about this bill.

One selling point pushed by backers is that students could get two years of schooling at the community college and then transfer to a school in the UNC system, a move that may save students and taxpayers money.

Also lurking in the background of this year’s budget talks is the 2016 departure of UNC President Tom Rossand the possibility that the UNC Board of Governors make embark on their own “right-sizing” endeavor this year. A top member of the board said he hoped to look at the performance of individual campuses and whether the state’s needs in higher education were being met.

The legislature has taken aim at campuses before, including last year, when a budget item that would have closed Elizabeth City State University was slipped into legislation. The proposal that would have closed the historically black college, one of five in the public university system, was eventually dropped.

Legislative leaders say they’d like to help UNC, if they can 

On Wednesday, N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore told the group that the House wants to fund the university system, but he’s not sure how much money there will be to go around with competing funding coming from the Medicaid system and K-12 education.

“We have budget challenges, no question about it,” said Moore, a Republican from Kings Mountain who served on the UNC Board of Governors when he was in his late 20s.

Similar sentiments came from state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a leading Senate Republican, who also urged the university system to be innovative and give students “something they can take out in the workforce and use.”

But Apodaca also said that if the state has additional revenues, it could go to the UNC system.

“We are committed to higher education and the universities and we will do what we can to move forward and maybe help replenish some of the things we had to take away in the past,” Apodaca said.

Apodaca also said a bill would soon be introduced in the Senate to allow university and community colleges to bill school districts for remedial classes students need when coming into the higher education system.

The desire, Apodaca said, is to make sure the state’s K-12 system is turning out graduates ready to jump into the higher levels of education.

“We’re sending a message to our schools that we want quality coming out,” Apodaca said.

June Atkinson, the state superintendent of public schools, said schools try to prepare graduating students for the next level of education, but a small portion, about 7 percent in the university system, do end up needing help.

“[W]e know that some students need extra time to be prepared for the next level,” Atkinson said in an emailed comments provided to N.C. Policy Watch. “Perhaps a better approach would be to give school districts more resources to offer a fifth year of intensive support while engaging the community college system and university system in the delivery of that support.”

Gov. Pat McCrory, who included $50 million in cuts in the suggested budget he released earlier this month, told the university system representatives Wednesday he’s been thinking about what the university’s systems needs are, as well as what’s not needed.

He suggested that the university system should be more selective in its enrollments, leaving those who are not academically ready to seek out other options.

“If we’re doing it right, we need to ensure our resources are being used for those who are ready for college at this point in time,” McCrory said.

He also said students shouldn’t come to UNC campuses to be “indoctrinated.”

“Our universities should not be used as laboratories to indoctrinate our students in either conservative or liberal philosophies,” McCrory said. “We should expose our students to the diversity of opinions which will allow our future leaders to decide for themselves.”

McCrory also used his time Wednesday morning with university system leaders to ask them to put in a good word about “NC Competes” – an economic development and financial incentive proposal from McCrory that’s met resistance in the state Senate.

Fennebresque, the board chair, said he’d think about it, but the primary focus would be on pushing the university system’s needs.

“We might keep our agenda ahead,” he said.

Education reporter Lindsay Wagner contributed to this report.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/03/26/unc-system-heads-look-to-jones-street-for-help/

March 26, 2015 at 10:06 am
Frank Burns says:

The UNC system should look within itself to find cost savings. There is no open checkbook. Not one dime more of state funds should go to the UNC system until they can demonstrate some cost savings.