RALEIGH -- On the surface, North Carolina's elected leaders are plowing forward to get a state budget approved in the coming days. But under the guise of a budget debate, what's really taking place in mid-2011 is de-facto policymaking that will have broad implications for decades and generations to come.
With a gaping budget shortfall, there are no simple solutions. That said, now is not the time to further plunder our state's university system.
Proposed cuts of 12 percent in the Senate budget and 15.5 percent in the House budget would be devastating to a public university system that has already raised tuition 39 percent in the past three years. Such reductions increase the likelihood that university administrators would have to resort to Draconian measures to save programs and schools.
Each university across the state has a backpack brimming with vivid and valid examples of the devastation that double-digit cuts in appropriations would create. Consider the case of East Carolina University.
Here in the Triangle, we don't hear much about Eastern North Carolina. From some perspectives, our state's eastern boundary is not the Atlantic Ocean, as Rand McNally would suggest, but rather Interstate 95. Yet this often-overlooked region is composed of 41 counties, including some of the state's poorest. And if you want to see the direct role a state university has in the quality of a region's life, venture eastward sometime.
East Carolina University is the economic engine that drives the eastern half of the state. A recent economic analysis conservatively estimated the university's total annual impact in the 41-county region at $1.83 billion. Statewide, the impact translates to $3.3 billion and 17,500 jobs.
The university is the educational, medical and cultural hub of the region. But even from the purely practical economic perspective, the university is a modest investment that pays outstanding returns.
In 2009, state appropriations to East Carolina totaled $242 million. So, generating $3.3 billion in statewide impact represents a return of $13.64 for each dollar invested by the state of North Carolina. Few Fortune 500 businesses can claim that kind of return on investment.
The region's economic prosperity is tied, very directly, to the vitality of the university and its success in fulfilling the mission established a century ago: to serve the people of Eastern North Carolina and prepare future generations of leaders.
Other institutions and regions face similar issues from the lingering effects of the recession. As our state leaders move forward with this difficult task, may they do so with a full understanding of what hangs in the balance.
Mike Hughes is a member of the East Carolina University Board of Visitors.
