Increasing tuition, linking enrollment to student retention on the table
By Amanda Vuke
RALEIGH — Is the University of North Carolina system really going to shut down one of its 16 campuses? Outgoing UNC President Erskine Bowles raised the possibility at his final Board of Governors meeting in November.
His statement not only drew headlines, it may also have focused policymakers on some of the unpleasant alternatives the General Assembly will face as it considers ways to cut the $2.7 billion university system budget.
Joni Worthington, a UNC system spokeswoman for Bowles, said the outgoing president’s “comment about closing a campus was simply a comment, not a proposal. [It is] something that would only have to be considered if cuts needed to be made in the 20- to 30-percent [range].”
Bowles, in fact, asked campuses to come up with proposals for cuts of between 5 percent and 10 percent. The hope, Worthington said, was that if the UNC institutions suggested cuts on their own, the 2011 General Assembly might provide the flexibility to implement them.
“There is no cookie-cutter approach” across the campuses, though, as each school has a different mission and different capstone programs, she said. It’s up to each school to determine “what programs are central to their mission and [then they must] be strategic about their cuts to do the least long-term damage.”
To be sure, Gov. Bev Perdue will have much to say about her priorities when she releases her budget in the coming year. But the General Assembly has the final say on spending, and the newly elected Republican majority has provided scant details to far.
Sen. Richard Stevens, R-Wake, who currently serves on both the Appropriations Committee for Higher Education and the Higher Education Committee, said that the General Assembly has made “no decisions yet concerning the budget. Everything is on the table, [but] it is very premature to be talking about any specifics right now.”
