Tom Ross has been on the job for nine months as president of the UNC system, but the formal celebration of the Ross era happens Thursday in his hometown of Greensboro.
In January, Ross took the helm of the university system at an unenviable time. Talk of budget cuts consumed the new president from the minute he was handed the keys.
By summer, a battered economy and a budget crisis led lawmakers to slash state funding by $414 million for the system's campuses, an overall reduction of 15.6 percent. The cuts varied by campus, with UNC-Chapel Hill taking the biggest hit at 17.9 percent.
A recent report detailed the impact of the reductions, from larger classes to reduced course offerings to trimmed library services. The system has let go just over 3,000 employees, mostly part-time workers. Nearly 1,500 vacant jobs also were eliminated. Last year, the total UNC workforce was 47,000.
Despite the bloodletting, Ross has repeatedly said he won't whine about the cuts. It is the university system's duty to provide quality education to the sons and daughters of North Carolina, he said, no matter the economic situation.
When he takes the oath Thursday at N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University, he will give a speech that highlights his goals for the system, which has 17 campuses and 220,000 students.
The inaugural address is likely to echo the hopes and concerns expressed in a recent discussion with reporters and editors at The News & Observer. Here are some excerpts:
On financing higher education: "One of the big issues, obviously, is how, as a society, we are going to continue to finance higher education. That, I think, has been bubbling up for years as people have complained about tuition going up, and yet states have tended to be moving the other direction, away from public support. ... I think we're at a point now where, if you look around the world, you're seeing other countries investing at a high level in higher education, and in the United States, we are tending to go the opposite direction. I think it's beginning to show up in sort of where we rank in terms of the percentage of our adult population that has four-year degrees. It's beginning to show up in the performance of our students on various international standardized testing. And I don't know that it bodes well for our economic future if we don't sort of rethink where are in higher education in the United States."
On the cost of college for families: "We have to make the case for financial aid from the state and from the federal government - that they are very important. We have 60 percent of our students now on financial aid, some sort of need-based financial aid. It's students who come from poverty, but it's also students who are middle income students who, because of the total cost of going to college nowadays, struggle to make it financially. ... (We need) to pay attention to the constitution of North Carolina and to do all we can to keep tuition low. It's a balance, because part of what tuition goes towards is building academic excellence, and so if the funds aren't going to come from the state, then your choice is either to find other revenue to support excellence or to begin to erode quality. ... I think a low tuition model with adequate financial aid is the right way to continue to have access for our people."
On the impact of the cuts: "We're already beginning to see, and or at least hear anecdotal stories of, students who can't get classes in the sequence they need them in order to graduate on time. If that becomes an issue, and I think it will over time on all of our campuses, that actually ends up costing the student more money. It ends up costing the campus more money. It ends up costing the state more money because it takes somebody who might have graduated in our normal 8.6 semesters and it might stretch it out to 9.6 or 10 or whatever the case might be. In addition, you have fewer classes offered, so your class size is larger."
On whether campuses should limit enrollment: "I don't see anybody saying we need fewer people educated. I think an enrollment cap is not the right direction for a state right now. If you really want to come out of the economy strong, if you really want to be focused, it's those states that invest in their future workforce that are going to be most able to attract the businesses that are going to drive the economy in the future. I hope it's not a direction we'll go. I'm not sure that it's a panacea in terms of the budget anyway."
On cooperation among UNC campuses: "Part of the key to being efficient, I think, is going to be more system cooperation, on the academic side. ... We can use technology, we can use our regional proximity to one another to continue to offer as rich an academic program to students as we do today, but to do it in a more efficient and less costly fashion. I think in the future it's actually going to be better and easier to keep us together because we're going to need each other more than we have in the past."
On the value of higher education for individuals: "The data is if you have a four-year degree in the United States and in North Carolina, your chances of being unemployed are less than 4.5 percent right now. In North Carolina, I think it's about 4.2 or 4.3 percent. If you have less than a high school degree, it's over 17 percent. With a high school degree it's still over 12 percent. So your chances of being employed in the United States are significantly better if you have a four-year degree. That's one measure. Another measure is what your earnings are going to be. Your earnings are going to be, on average, about twice as much. You're going to earn over $1 million more in your lifetime if you have a four-year degree as opposed to a high school degree. So again, is that investment worth it? Yes."
On the value of higher education for society: "If you look at most communities, most states, many, many of the leaders of those communities in those states and their institutions are people that are college-educated. Our institutions are in the business, I think, of producing leaders for our society, and we're in the business of helping people understand about a civil society, and how and why we come together in a society. We're in the business of helping people engage in their communities and be a part of their communities, whether it's through volunteer work or through public service of one kind or another. So there's a value to the common good."
