The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is in crisis, according to professors and students who squared off in a debate this week over a plan to increase student tuition. The tuition increases would be used to boost faculty salaries. The debate was sponsored by UNC-CH’s Dialectic and Philanthropic societies.
Students, state legislators and private donors may soon be asked to help raise faculty salaries at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, despite evidence that UNC-CH’s faculty salaries there are among the highest in the nation.
The Pope Center’s study of faculty salaries study has come under criticism from the Economics Dept. at UNC-Chapel Hill. Department Chair David K. Guilkey criticized the study in a recent letter to The News & Observer of Raleigh. Guilkey also announced that his department would release its own rankings of faculty compensation on October 15 on its website (http://www.unc.edu/depts/econ).
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “high priority” projects and “emergency” needs apparently mean two different things. Even as buildings “crumble” and outdated labs go unrenovated — those things deemed “emergency” needs for UNC-CH under a $3 billion bond proposal to the General Assembly last July — UNC-CH announced last week that it will use $28.6 million in unrestricted grants (a gift from 1949 UNC-CH graduate David B. Clayton) to fund “high priority” projects. These projects differ drastically from the school’s “emergency” needs as outlined under the $3 billion bond proposal. And, in fact, none of the grant money will be used to fund such “emergency” needs.
The General Assembly’s failure to approve the University of North Carolina’s multi-billion-dollar capital-spending proposal has led many people to believe that N.C. State’s Centennial Campus won’t be able to rapidly expand. But evidence suggests that the steady growth of the campus will likely continue.
Courses on bizarre themes are being offered at some of America’s most prestigious schools and North Carolina institutions are not immune, according to a recent report by U.S. News and World Report.
In 1990, Congress enacted the Student-Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act, requiring all institutions of higher education that receive federal education funds to report campus crimes and provide this information to students and staff.
NSF grant money is wasted according to recent finds.
For most young adults, reaching the age of 21 is the final step into adulthood. At that age, they are allowed to purchase alcohol, having already been granted the privileges of working, driving, voting, smoking and enlisting in the military. Legislation before the U.S. Senate would add another “privilege” to reaching the age of 21: being able to receive a credit card.
North Carolina is one of 39 states likely to face a shortfall in higher education spending in the next several years, according to a new report by Harold A. Hovey, a state budget and tax expert with the California-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
The Senate, on June 13, rejected a House bill that would have allowed N.C. citizens to vote on a $1.2 billion bond package for UNC system schools through a statewide referendum. The Senate had passed it’s own version of the bill, which would allow the state to issue $3 billion in state bonds and the UNC Board of Governers to issue an unlimited amount of “special obligation bonds” without a voter referendum. A conference committee has been appointed to work out a compromise bill.
Proponents of the University of North Carolina’s huge spending program — to be financed with bonds that don’t require voter approval — have been pulling out all the stops. In a General Assembly committee hearing on the legislation, UNC President Molly Broad said that it should be approved because the late UNC Chancellor Michael Hooker wanted it. That was within hours of his death.
