Month: February 2023

A Look at the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees’ Authority

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(Spoiler Alert: It Doesn’t Include Creating New Academic Programs)

Last week I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal expressing consternation that the UNC-Chapel Hill’s accrediting agency plans to ask for more information about University plans—launched by its Board of Trustees–to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership.  According to the WSJ, questions from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges constitute a political power play that also boosts the cause of faculty members “angry that the trustees created the school without their assent.” Both fair points, perhaps, but there followed a conclusion that gave me pause.

The WSJ wrote:

”But the North Carolina state constitution delegates responsibility for universities to the Legislature, which “shall provide for the selection of trustees . . . in whom shall be vested all the privileges, rights, franchises and endowments heretofore granted or conferred upon the trustees of these institutions. In other words, the UNC trustees are doing their duty under the law to protect the best interests of higher education in the state.”

The editorial’s authors can be forgiven for assuming, like most people probably do, that UNC-Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees (BOT) holds wide-ranging governance powers, entitling it to take steps like directing University administrators to create a new school. But the BOT’s role in the University is actually more advisory than executive, making its recent directive a cause for concern regardless of one’s opinion on the merits of the proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership.

It’s true that the North Carolina Constitution includes the provision cited by the WSJ. But not long after the current NC Constitution was adopted in 1971, the General Assembly reorganized and expanded the University of North Carolina to comprise what is now a 16-institution system. The powers of the trustees of what had been known as the “Consolidated University” were now vested in the newly created UNC Board of Governors. Thereafter the BOG had pretty much all governance powers over the UNC system and its constituent institutions. (I sometimes wish that weren’t the case, but it is.)

At the same time, the General Assembly mandated separate boards of trustees at each of the UNC institutions, and gave those boards limited, mostly advisory powers. Each is authorized to:

“. . . promote the sound development of the institution within the functions prescribed for it, helping it to serve the State in a way that will complement the activities of the other institutions and aiding it to perform at a high level of excellence in every area of endeavor. Each board shall serve as advisor to the Board of Governors on matters pertaining to the institution and shall also serve as advisor to the chancellor concerning the management and development of the institution. The powers and duties of each board of trustees, not inconsistent with other provisions of this Article, shall be defined and delegated by the Board of Governors.“

NC General Statutes Sec. 116-33.

So, the “privileges” and “rights” ascribed by the WSJ to the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees have long since been held by the Board of Governors. A few other statutes confer some additional responsibilities on the boards of trustees, such as the power to establish a campus law enforcement agency. But for the most part they possess only those powers that the BOG has delegated to them.

Over the fifty years since the modern University of North Carolina’s creation, the BOG has conferred a wide array of responsibilities on the boards of trustees, such as the adoption of tenure policies and procedures, hearing and deciding a variety of faculty, staff or student appeals from administrative decisions; appointing chancellor search committees, overseeing endowments, and approving matters such as who will receive  honorary degrees, the annual budget, head coach and athletic director contracts, appointment and compensation for certain non-faculty employees, certain types of capital projects, campus master plans, the acquisition or disposition of real property, and new campus building architects, sites and designs. 

Not a trivial set of responsibilities, but they do not include the authority to instruct an institution to create a new academic program.

And given the central importance of a university’s academic programs, it’s not surprising that the BOG has set out expectations about how new programs shall be proposed and approved. Fundamentally, those expectations are rooted in an understanding that each campus should determine what academic programs will work best for its students and community, subject to alignment with UNC System values and priorities. Each constituent institution must establish and follow a clearly defined process for the review and approval of proposals on its campus to plan or establish new degree programs, and UNC-Chapel Hill has done so. As to the BOT’s role, UNC-Chapel Hill’s policy provides only that, upon reviewing and approving such a proposal, the Chancellor is required to “update the Board of Trustees as appropriate” before forwarding it to the UNC System for review. 

Some may argue that the general mandate to the BOT to “promote the sound development of the institution” is all the authority the Board needs to propose a new School at Carolina. A lawyerly response would be that specific statutory and regulatory provisions take precedence over more general provisions, and as explained above, the specific regulations concerning creation of new academic programs clearly don’t give the BOT the power to mandate such a step. Another way of saying it is that if the General Assembly or the BOG thought the BOTs should be involved in formulating and proposing plans for new schools within the UNC campuses, they could have provided for it in setting out a detailed framework for such decisions—and they did not.

Why does any of this matter?

First, it matters because in requesting “that the administration of UNC-CH accelerate its development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership,” the BOT has strayed from its statutorily authorized role, as further defined by the Board of Governors, and that’s rarely a good thing.

Also, honest recognition that the BOT has exceeded its authority in this situation may in turn make the on-campus protests more understandable—and, one hopes, stem the editorial eye-rolling that has met complaints that the BOT has ignored shared governance and disrespected the faculty’s historic and legitimate role in curriculum development. 

Finally, it matters because the “sound development” of the University, and especially of its academic programs, can’t happen without study, preparation, and deliberation, principally by those who will be charged with ensuring that such programs succeed. Chancellor Guskiewicz has pledged to run the proposal for a School of Civic Life and Leadership through the University’s normal channels, with input from faculty and the kind of detailed budgetary planning required for such an initiative. But one wonders whether that review will be so overshadowed by political crossfire and misgivings over the way the BOT has jump-started this matter that the new School, if it goes forward, will be too tainted to succeed.

It didn’t need to happen like this. At their best, the UNC System boards of trustees understand and respect their proper role in university governance. They engage in meaningful, two-sided conversations with the campuses they are pledged to support and to represent to the wider university and to the State. They do their best to learn and appreciate their institutions, so that any criticism they make is grounded in fact and insight. They listen as much as they instruct. That approach seems to have been discarded by the UNC-Chapel Hill BOT in favor of quick and decisive action. By failing to stay within its lane the BOT may have ensured that its effort to bring a conservative perspective to campus life is doomed to failure.

David M. Parker, BA 1980; JD, 1984

Other News:

On Friday, February 17, 2023 the UNC-CH Faculty Council met to address the “bucket of chaos” created by UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees as described above.  During the meeting the council passed two resolutions. One of the resolutions made clear that the previously approved “IDEAS in Action Curriculum” is different from the proposed new school and should not be used to confuse the public or justify the recent governance overreach. The second resolution directly addressed the recent overreach actions and made clear the faculty’s role in creating new schools.   Follow this link to watch a video of the meeting and/or read the resolutions.

The faculty resolutions were covered in the News &Observer in a piece entitled; A standoff: UNC-CH faculty pushes back against trustees on conservative program | Opinion.  In this opinion piece, Ned Barnett points out that; “Much of what the board says it’s trying to promote – exposing students to different political views and teaching the skills of civil and constructive debate – are already at the center of a recently adopted academic program, IDEAS in Action.”

The N&O piece also highlighted a blog post from Dr. Art Padilla.  In this post, Dr. Padilla summarizes problems with the BOT’s actions as follows:

“Here’s the real problem: A nebulously defined conservative school, sponsored by a rotating lay board, with untenured teaching or adjunct professors residing at the bottom of the professorial pyramid and providing instruction in no discernible majors or disciplines, with uncertain job prospects for any graduates, and with anemic mainstream faculty support, could possibly be successful and could outlast the board members who promote it. But that’s not the way to bet. There must be better solutions.”

UNC Faculty Council Addresses “Bucket of Chaos”

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On Friday, February 17, 2023 the UNC-CH Faculty Council met to address the “bucket of chaos” created by yet another incidence of trustee (BOT) governance overreach. In its most recent overreach actions, the BOT failed to consult, or even inform, the faculty, chancellor, students or staff–normally charged with making such decisions– about a proposed new degree granting “School of Civic Life and Leadership”. Instead of working with the faculty and staff, the BOT paid a PR agency $50,000 to mount a national campaign to sell the proposed school on right wing media with the promise that the school will inject more right wing viewpoints onto campus. Below is a video of the entire Faculty Council meeting.

During the meeting the council passed two resolutions. One of the resolutions made clear that the previously approved “IDEAS in Action Curriculum” is different from the proposed new school and should not be used to confuse the public or justify the recent governance overreach. Here is the full text of that resolution:

“Resolution 2023-1. On Supporting the Implementation of the IDEAS in Action Curriculum

The Faculty Council resolves:

The College of Arts and Sciences should be fully supported in implementing the IDEAs in Action
curriculum. We maintain that implementing the IDEAs in Action curriculum and establishing the
proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership are conceptually separate undertakings that should not be
entangled. The Faculty Council supports the adequate provision of resources to the College for the
purpose of implementing all aspects of the IDEAs in Action curriculum.”

Submitted by Professor Harry L. Watson (History)

.

The second resolution directly addressed the recent overreach actions and made clear the faculty’s role in creating new schools.

“Resolution 2023-2. On Disapproving the Creation of a New School at UNC-Chapel Hill

The Faculty Council finds:

1. On January 26, 2023, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees adopted a resolution requesting the administration of UNC-CH to accelerate its development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership with a goal of a minimum of 20 faculty members and degree opportunities for undergraduate students. During the Board’s meeting, the resolution was described as an outgrowth of a budget request for $3 million to implement the existing requirements of the IDEAs in Action curriculum.

2. On February 5, 2023, the Faculty Executive Committee received a copy of an undated budget
memo requesting $5 million in recurring funds to create a new School of Civic Life and
Leadership within the College of Arts and Sciences. The initial funding would be used to support
“development of the school, hiring of leadership, faculty, programming, staff, and expansion of
the curricular work of the existing Program for Public Discourse.” The budget requirements of
the proposed new School were projected to grow to $12.6 million by the 2026-27 fiscal year.

3. Section 2-6 of The Faculty Code of University Government empowers the Faculty Council “to
determine the educational policies of the University and the rules and regulations under which
administrators and faculty will conduct the educational activities of the University” and “to
prescribe the requirements for admissions, programs of study, and the award of academic degrees
by the University in the context of the basic educational policies of the University and the special
competencies of the faculties of particular colleges and schools.”

4. The faculty has not been consulted about the creation of a new degree-granting school at UNC-
Chapel Hill. Until the Board of Trustees’ public adoption of its January 26 resolution, faculty
leaders were unaware that any such school had been proposed.

Based on these findings, the Faculty Council resolves:

The creation of a new degree-granting school on the UNC-CH campus is a matter for which faculty are
responsible. The proposal for a new School of Civic Life and Leadership did not originate with the
faculty, was not communicated to the faculty in advance, and has not been studied by the faculty. Faculty
members’ questions about the vision for the new program–such as the sequencing of coursework, the
scholarship that supports the discipline, any overlap with existing courses or programs, and the utility of
the program to our graduates—have gone unanswered.


Moreover, the Faculty Council anticipates that the proposed school will consume badly needed resources
for the University’s existing programs and facilities.

For these reasons, the Faculty Council recommends no further action on this new school until such a time as a proposal from the faculty towards this school is developed and then properly discussed.”

Submitted by Professor Harry L. Watson (History)

UNC Chapel Hill trustees misfire…

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UNC Chapel Hill “Board of Trustees Vice Chairperson John Preyer communicated with the Wall Street Journal editorial team about the School for Civic Life and Leadership as early as Jan. 24, according to emails obtained by The Daily Tar Heel.” This was two days prior to the board proposing the new school at a meeting on January 26, 2023. The News & Observer (N&O) confirms that; “[i]ndeed, faculty members learned about the proposal from a Wall Street Journal editorial that appeared just hours after the board voted on Jan. 26 to accelerate development of the school”. The trustees’ PR outreach and desire for favorable coverage in right leaning media appears to have taken priority over working with the faculty in a shared governance manner, or even informing the chancellor of their intended proposal for a new school.  The Daily Tarheel reports that; “[t]he decision to speed up the development of the proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership was brought to Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz just 20 minutes before the Jan. 26 Board of Trustees meeting…”. 

Further, it has been revealed that trustees are using university funds to pay a PR firm to make their egregious actions more palatable to the public. The N&O says the name of the PR agency hired by the trustees is Eckel & Vaughn, a Raleigh firm. The contract is for $50,000. The article goes on to quote trustee Preyer as saying the board hired the PR agency to counter commentary from The Coalition for Carolina — a privately funded organization.  Preyer did not explain why the battery of PR talent already retained by the university was not sufficient, or why the initial PR efforts were concentrated in right leaning media. Both Coalition for Carolina co-chairs Roger Perry and Dr. Mimi Chapman provided commentary in the N&O coverage.

The blindsided faculty continues to be baffled and disturbed by the recent governance overreach actions.  The commentary below first appeared in NC Policy Watch on February 13, 2023.  The Coalition for Carolina has been granted permission to republish it in entirety.

Commentary: UNC Chapel Hill trustees misfire with rushed and ill-conceived plan to launch conservative school

Two weeks ago, the UNC Board of Trustees arrived in Chapel Hill hellbent on launching yet another salvo in the campus Culture Wars. They surprised everyone with a resolution calling for the creation of a new “School of Civic Life and Leadership.” Comprised “of a minimum of 20 dedicated faculty,” this proposed school would help develop student “skills in public discourse” in the service of “promoting democracy and serving to benefit society.”

Though camouflaged in reasonable language, the true intent of the resolution was revealed soon after its passage. Aided by a public relations firm, the BOT launched a media campaign to score cheap political points with conservative pundits. The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. A day later, Board of Trustee Chair David Boliek appeared on Fox News assuring viewers, “this is all about balance.” “We have no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views on our campus.” “The same really can’t be said about right-of-center views, so this is an effort to try to remedy that.”

From there, the Board of Trustees rode out of Chapel Hill on a wave of praise from conservative commentators who have long convinced themselves that they are victims of intellectual persecution on college campuses. Fox News called their actions “a rare win for free speech.” The Wall Street Journal praised them for “trying to revive the academic ideal of a campus as a haven for inquiry and debate.” The Pope Foundation-funded Martin Center hailed the resolution for “leading the way on free expression, viewpoint diversity, and academic freedom.” The conservative-leaning “National Association of Scholars” called the move “a stark contrast to the authoritarian radical monoculture that has claimed most of higher education.”

But there was just one glitch: the BOT apparently never told anyone who actually works at or attends the university.

Bypassing or ignoring traditions of university governance

Faculty had questions. It is a university’s faculty, after all, who teach the classes, design the curriculum, and conduct the research that makes them nationally-renowned scholars in their respective fields. Faculty began to ask for clarification, wondering why the trustees didn’t share their grand plans with the people who teach at the university.

The Chancellor and Provost, both insisting they were also surprised by the announcement, played along in support of the Board, asserting that such a school was good for democracy and that it actually originated from earlier faculty conversations. Striking a different tone from previous reports in conservative media, they insisted that faculty would lead the effort to create the curriculum for the new school.

But that’s not how the Board of Trustees initially presented the program to their conservative constituents, the only ones they seem to think matter. As Trustee John Preyer told The Wall Street Journal, the new school would eliminate “political constraints on what can be taught in university classes.” Preyer has yet to offer any specific examples to back that well-trod myth about college courses, leading to further confusion about the goals of the new school.

A few days after the announcement, tempers flared at a meeting between faculty leaders and the Chancellor and Provost. Some of the faculty spoke with a tone that led another trustee to conclude, “the Faculty Executive Committee’s discussion clearly demonstrates why we need this school.”

There are several issues at play here. One is the longstanding tradition of shared governance at American research universities. Another is the blatant overreach by a Board of Trustees that is unqualified to dictate the curriculum at a major public university. It should go without saying that the members of the Board of Trustees are not college educators. They are stewards of a faculty that includes people with decades of research and teaching experience. But the trustees seem not to care about expertise, only their perceptions of political affiliation. And their stated intention of sidestepping “left-of-center” faculty and to create curriculum designed to favor Republicans reveals just how ignorant they are of the practical workings of the university they are entrusted to oversee.

Duplicating and undermining existing departments

Conservatives have long dreamed of a greater presence on UNC’s campus, and it is certainly within the BOT’s power to use private money to build a Conservative clubhouse that might offer s safe space to debate hot-button political issues. Many in the UNC community would certainly be upset over such a nakedly political imposition, but such a center would probably just end up becoming a relatively benign venue for right-leaning lectures and social gatherings. But the trustees want something else. They want to use public money and the resources of the university to alter the curriculum in service of their political whims.

Faculty in this proposed new school would teach in fields that already exist at UNC—History, Political Science, School of Government, Philosophy, etc., effectively duplicating portions of several departments. Budget estimates for this school reach as high as $12.65 million per year by the 2026-27 academic year.

Meanwhile, Hamilton Hall, the building that houses UNC’s Departments of History and Political Science, ranked #11 and #12 in the country, is falling apart. Both elevators are routinely inoperable and there is lead in the water fountains. Some faculty have even been asked to consider giving up their office phones to save money on the bill. And numerous faculty positions remain unfilled. It is especially galling for the Board of Trustees to shirk its existing stewardship responsibilities while demanding tens of millions of dollars to recreate the excellent departments that the university already has.

Furthermore, there have been calls from conservative quarters to freeze out existing faculty from the formation of this new school, meaning that historians won’t be vetted by historians and philosophers won’t be vetted by philosophers. Who is going to uphold academic standards if the university’s own world-class faculty aren’t involved? The BOT insists that it will no longer act as a rubber stamp, but they’re not qualified to make such judgements about curriculum. They don’t tell football coach Mack Brown which base defense to run for the same reason they don’t tell English professors which books to teach. There is a great irony in paying people to be experts in something and then disregarding that very expertise.

Altering and twisting the backstory

Now, the BOT is trying to rewrite the narrative they initially crafted about their own school. In a recent op-ed, Boliek and Preyer insisted that the idea came directly from the curriculum created by faculty, admonishing “those obsessing over process and prerogatives.” The need for the school, they further argued, is demonstrated by a survey conducted early in 2022 that gauged student responses to “free expression and constructive dialogue” on campus. “Those who maintain,” they castigated, “that the university already provides an environment of collegial debate and tolerance of varying viewpoints ignore recent research showing that more than half of Carolina’s conservative students and one in five centrist students censor themselves.”

But the Trustees’ interpretation of the survey is just as flawed as their curricular ideas. The vast majority of students didn’t care enough to bother filling it out, leading to a response rate of only 11% at UNC-Chapel Hill and 7.5% across the UNC System. If such a crisis really existed, surely the response rates would have been much higher. As it is, the survey results boil down to just a few hundred students, many of whom were freshman at the time.

Even allowing for a skewed and unrepresentative sample, the survey offered no evidence that UNC’s existing faculty or course offerings contributed negatively to this so-called problem. Students marked race, policing, and guns as the most difficult topics to discuss. These are challenging issues for nearly every American to examine, and there is no reason to believe that a new wave of professors would better teach these topics simply because they identify as conservative. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite: 89% of conservative respondents to survey agreed that “Professor[s] encouraged participation from liberals and conservatives alike.” The students also overwhelming reported that professors do not push political views in class. And the proposed faculty for the new school would be fixed term, not tenured, meaning that they wouldn’t have the same protections of academic freedom.

Ironically, Boliek and Preyer have simultaneously revealed their shortcomings as critical thinkers, institutional stewards, and campus leaders. They seem to misunderstand the very survey they themselves cite as evidence of need. On the basis of that misunderstanding, they propose a budgetary boondoggle, earmarking tens of millions of dollars to essentially duplicate departments that are already underfunded. And they propose all of this not as a last resort, but as a first strike, given that the BOT has never undertaken any other action to help improve campus climate in ways that might foster productive dialogue.

Sowing confusion and anger

Since passing their resolution, the BOT has done nothing but sow confusion and anger. A few have continued to launch potshots at faculty through the media while refusing to answer any questions directly from faculty. And now, UNC is left with another media circus and even possible questions about accreditation. Perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this is the trustees’ abject failure to demonstrate the very type of civil discourse they say is needed on campus. Why the need for secrecy? Why the media blitz? Why are the trustees attacking professors in conservative media? Why not answer questions from the very people who will be tasked with building this school?

It still remains unclear exactly what the trustees are calling for or who they expect to complete their bidding. At worst, it’s a naked power grab that will further impose a political ideology over the campus and curtail academic freedom. At best, it’s a policy whose design will create an inefficient redundancy by duplicating existing departments, thus weakening them all and making UNC worse at what it already does best.

I know the trustees profess to love the university. But it’s hard for anyone to take this seriously so long as the trustees themselves fail to articulate a consistent and clear vision for their new school, while using the great university that already exists as a political prop in the culture wars.

William Sturkey is a professor of history who specializes in the history of race in the American South at UNC Chapel Hill.

Here We Go Again With Governance Overreach

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The UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees (BOT) and the UNC Board of Governors (BOG) have again made headlines for governing actions that run counter to the decades long success of shared governance which has made Carolina a great university.

Shared governance is the practice of involving all stakeholders in the decision-making process at a public university. It creates a democratic process where faculty, staff, students, and administrators have a voice and can express their views on issues that affect the university. Shared governance at public universities is crucial for the success and sustainability of these institutions and is a fundamental aspect of higher education. It is important that shared governance be preserved to:

  • Ensure that the university community is involved in shaping the direction of the institution.
  • Promote transparency and accountability.
  • Maintain a culture of open communication that fosters trust among the university community.
  • Guide better, informed decision-making with different perspectives taken into consideration.
  • Help maintain the academic freedom and autonomy of the university so that the university remains focused on its mission of advancing knowledge and promoting the public good.

When shared governance is destroyed by governance overreach it can restrict academic freedom and autonomy, leading to a lack of creativity and innovation in teaching and research. This can result in a decrease in the quality of education and research, and can negatively impact the reputation of the university.

The most recent action to violate the principles of shared governance is a BOT proposal to create an entire new school.  The proposed “School of Civic Life and Leadership” was proposed and voted on without any input or knowledge from the faculty, chancellor, students or staff normally charged with making such decisions.  Not only that, but the process for making the proposal included a public relations roll-out featuring an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, glowing coverage in other conservative publications, and BOT Chair Boliek immediately appearing on Fox News to suggest that the move may be politically inspired by saying;

“We … have no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views on our campus, like many campuses across the nation. But the same really can’t be said about right-of-center views. So, this is an effort to really remedy that with the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which will provide equal opportunity for both views to be taught at the university.”

Such a move has been received at Carolina with confusion and concern. To his credit; Chancellor Guskiewicz has responded with a restrained, but firm reminder of the proper process for creating a new school;

                                                                                                                                                                                                        “I appreciate the encouragement of our Board to build on the work we have done and I share the ideal that our students are served by learning to listen, engage, and seek different perspectives that contribute to robust public discourse.

Any proposed degree program or school will be developed and led by our faculty, deans, and provost. Our faculty are the marketplace of ideas and they will build the curriculum and determine who will teach it, just as they determined the capacities laid out in our new IDEAs in Action Curriculum. I will be working with our faculty to study the feasibility of such a school and the ways we can most effectively accomplish our goal of promoting democracy in our world today.”

Other responses have not been so restrained and have clearly pointed out the egregious nature of governance overreach by the BOT. Below are a few of those responses:

In an Op-ed for the News & Observer, professor Buck Goldstein writes:

“To say the UNC community was surprised is an understatement. Neither the faculty, administration or even the UNC System office had heard of this plan to create a new school out of whole cloth. The trustees’ actions tear up longstanding, well codified principles of university governance and replace civil discourse with secrecy and confrontation. Their tactics make the proposal, in its current form, radioactive at best and possibly dead on arrival.”

The Daily Tarheel reports:

 “When UNC law professor Eric Muller first read the editorial headline, he said his eyes fell out of his head. On Jan. 26, the Faculty Executive Committee member was in a Zoom meeting when he saw a screenshot of a Wall Street Journal editorial titled ‘UNC Takes on the University Echo Chamber.’ I thought: how on Earth? How on Earth could the Wall Street Journal know this,” Muller said.”

“Mimi Chapman, chairperson of faculty, said she was “flabbergasted” in response to the exclusion of faculty input in the decision, which she said she considers to be an attack on shared University governance.”

Former chancellor Holden Thorp weighed in with a comprehensive piece on how the BOT and other governing actions even threaten science;

“Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) voted to establish an entire new school (School of Civic Life and Leadership) with 20 faculty (to include a substantial number of Republicans) and its own dean without informing the faculty or administration. Before telling anyone on campus about the decision, the board chair bragged to conservative outlets that the school would be a “remedy” to academic indoctrination.”

            …

“In his media victory lap, the UNC board chair didn’t dispute the framing of events as the imminent establishment of a conservative school. Further, he told Fox News that the new school would hire Republican professors as a solution to the imbalance of ideologies on campus. If there’s a remedy, there has to be a problem—which is apparently that liberal professors indoctrinate their students. He also said that UNC had a “world-class faculty.” Would such faculty be lousy professors who do a poor job of teaching? Will the new Republican professors be more competent and not indoctrinate students? Evidently, he thinks so—how else could the new hires ‘remedy’ the problem?”

            …

“This matters a lot for science. If politicians can paint academics as master indoctrinators around Black history and political rhetoric, then they can do the same thing with issues such as climate change, evolution, and public health topics spanning COVID-19 to gender-affirming care, abortion, and gun control.”

The second governance action that raises questions and creates confusion is a BOG proposal on “compelled speech”.  The proposed solution, for an unknown problem, prohibits asking employees or applicants to “affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action.”  (See their full proposal here in agenda item A-8 on page 19 of this PDF.) No one seems to understand what problem this proposal is trying to solve. In fact, The News and Observer (N&O) covered the meeting and quotes President Hans and general counsel Andrew Tripp as having no good reason for the change. The specific quote from the N&O reads:

“Neither Hans nor system general counsel Andrew Tripp pointed to a specific example of when a system employee had forced anyone to voice specific beliefs, affiliations or principles. There was not “one particular event” that led to the policy proposal, Hans told reporters after Thursday’s full board meeting.”

Follow this link to access the full N&O article.

Here at the Coalition for Carolina, we would like to clearly understand why politicians and the university governing members they’ve appointed in NC are doing this.  What problems are they trying to solve? What, what exactly, has moved the BOT and BOG to conclude that our university system and Carolina – having thrived on the national scene for centuries –needs these new policies right now? In a properly operating shared governance model these questions would have been addressed prior to the proposals being made public.  So far we have not able to identify any pressing issues, challenges, or problems that called for these solutions. 

With respect to the “compelled speech” proposal, the BOG indicates that they are willing to take public comments before voting on it, but the BOG page for public comments is not accepting public comments at the time of this writing.

Getting What We Paid For

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John Hood of the John Locke Foundation wrote a column saying  that investment in the UNC System is not a good does not provide a high enough ROI.  Hood is wrong and Higher Ed Works published an excellent response that lays out the case for investing in college very well.  We asked for, and were granted, permission to republish their response below.

Too Narrow a View

RALEIGH (January 25, 2022)

Some folks measure the value of higher education solely by how much its graduates make.

Most of us know there’s a lot more to it.

In a column this week, John Hood of the John Locke Foundation contends that North Carolinians don’t receive an adequate return on what he calls a “relatively large” investment in the University of North Carolina System.1

In a classic example of viewing education as a private rather than public good, Hood cites a Texas-based outfit that measures return on investment only by comparing the earnings of graduates. By its measure, the University of South Dakota ranks best in the country in lifetime returns.2

Go Coyotes!

He also cites a report from the James G. Martin Center that recommends phasing out programs in law, pharmacy, dentistry and social work at UNC-Chapel Hill and law at NC Central University, as well as fine-arts degrees and language, psychology and liberal-arts degrees at other campuses.3

Regarding such programs, even Hood acknowledges “most of the students who enter them know very well their chosen careers are unlikely to be lucrative. They have chosen those careers because they value other forms of compensation more — personal fulfillment, a calling to help others, or a desire to live and work in a particular kind of community.”

He goes on to suggest they can be reduced to two- or three-year degrees, without explaining how.4

Hood conveniently omits the state constitution’s mandate to provide North Carolinians with a college education for “as far as practicable … free of expense.”5 

And to contend that the state doesn’t see substantial return on investment from its investment in the UNC System is simply absurd.

AS UNC-CHAPEL HILL PROVOST CHRIS CLEMENS – an acknowledged conservative himself – laid out in a November column, the state gets more than its money’s worth for the $540 million a year it invests in UNC-Chapel Hill.

“The first thing our faculty and staff do is multiply the money by raising $1.16 billion more dollars in externally-funded research, an amount that places UNC in the top 10 federally-funded research universities in the US, higher than Harvard, MIT, or UCLA. Research at UNC develops new cancer therapies, supports highway safety, helps understand the effect of storm surges on the nation’s coastlines, and even discovers new exoplanets. Research money employs about 9,500 people in 90 counties of North Carolina, and generates $90 million in purchases from 6,500 businesses in 95 of our counties,” Clemens wrote.6

Not to mention that UNC grad Kizzmekia Corbett helped develop the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19.7

That’s not a bad return on investment – or service to mankind.

The university collects over $400 million in tuition from 30,000 students – some portion comes from outside the state, while the rest keeps North Carolina students at home “while providing the #1 best bargain in higher education for the student from North Carolina,” Clemens wrote.

Those students come from 98 North Carolina counties, 40% of them from rural areas.

“Eighteen percent of these students will be the first in their families to graduate from college. They will become the physicians, lawyers, artists, historians, business executives, government leaders, engineers, and teachers of tomorrow. They will emerge with a great education, a diploma from one of the top five ranked public universities, and well-prepared to be the workforce of the future that will attract new industries to North Carolina,” Clemens wrote.8

As Winston-Salem businessman Don Flow puts it, “The UNC System is the most important institution for creating economic wealth in North Carolina.”9 The UNC System granted more than 62,000 degrees last year to graduates who will help fuel North Carolina’s booming economy.10

Inventions from UNC-Chapel Hill have led to formation of at least 274 NC companies, Clemens wrote.

“These companies employ over 9,000 North Carolina citizens and generate $14 billion in annual revenue in our state. Together with UNC’s affiliated enterprise, UNC Health, itself a $4B enterprise, these companies and our campus research operations represent 2.9% of the state’s gross domestic product. The estimated tax revenue from this slice of our economy is more than the $540 million in appropriations allocated to us…

“Even though it sounds like a deal that is too good to be true, the public employees of the first and most public university in the US deliver on this promise year after year. It’s an investment the people of North Carolina can make with confidence,” Clemens concluded.11

The UNC System can always improve, of course. But please, don’t try to say there’s not enough ROI on the state’s investment.

1 https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/lets-really-reform-state-universities/. 
2 https://freopp.org/ranking-the-50-state-public-university-systems-on-prices-outcomes-3d807df8121d. 
3 https://www.jamesgmartin.center/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Student-Loan-Debt-and-Earnings-at-North-Carolina-Universities.pdf. 
4 https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/lets-really-reform-state-universities/. 
5 https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Constitution/NCConstitution.html, Article IX, Section 9.
6 https://nsjonline.com/article/2022/11/clemens-the-economic-case-for-the-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill/. 
7 https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/profile/kizzmekia-s-corbett/. 
8 https://nsjonline.com/article/2022/11/clemens-the-economic-case-for-the-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill/. 
9 https://www.higheredworks.org/2021/02/don-flow-the-case-for-nc-education-investments/. 
10 https://www.northcarolina.edu/impact/stats-data-reports/.
11 https://nsjonline.com/article/2022/11/clemens-the-economic-case-for-the-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill/.