Margaret Spellings names strategist to new UNC position

UNC President Margaret Spellings announced the hire of her top strategist Thursday as the UNC system’s governing board sorted through issues such as student debt, college completion and a huge demographic shift under way in North Carolina.

Andrew P. Kelly, now director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute, will be UNC’s senior vice president for strategy and policy. His appointment to the newly created position will take effect Aug. 15, and his annual salary will be $245,000.

Kelly is widely known in higher education circles in Washington, where he has been with AEI, a nonpartisan think tank that is conservative leaning and “committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise,” according to its website.

“I’ve known Andrew for over 10 years, and he is one of the most well-respected higher education policy experts in the country,” Spellings said, citing his experience in working with business, philanthropy and state university systems. “The university (system) is lucky to get him.”

Kelly is a New Jersey native who holds a history degree from Dartmouth College and a doctorate in political science from University of California, Berkeley. He is widely published in newspapers and magazines and has edited several books on higher education on topics such as financial aid reform. He was recently an informal adviser to Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign.

On Thursday, Kelly gave the board a detailed analysis of the higher education landscape in the United States and problems facing it, including climbing tuition, loan default rates, poor college readiness, lackluster graduation rates and poor productivity. He said North Carolina can be a leader in making progress on these.

“Families are anxious about the cost of college, and they’re desperate for some bold thinking on how to make college more valuable, not just more affordable, more valuable,” he told the board. “Policymakers are looking for solutions, and I’m looking forward to working with you all to come up with some of those.”

Against the array of higher education issues, North Carolina and the nation face an unprecedented demographic transformation that will make education even more crucial in the future, said James Johnson, professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

He said two major trends are colliding – the “browning” and the “graying” of the United States and North Carolina. Aging baby boomers are retiring in droves – 8,000 turn 65 every day – becoming a drain on government and health care. Meanwhile, the young population consists of a much higher percentage of poor and minority children and Hispanic and Asian immigrants.

That means unless those children are adequately educated for jobs of the future, the American economy is at huge risk, Johnson said. There is an imperative, he said, to make sure immigrants thrive in the nation, making a veiled reference to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“You build a wall and keep people out, who have you got left?” Johnson asked. “Sooner or later you realize you can’t pay the bills.”

He added, “We’ve got to be happy we’ve got every one of those kids.”

Johnson said the overall picture is made more challenging with geographic disparities. He characterized half of the counties in the state as “dying counties” that are declining in population.

The presentations Thursday were meant to set the stage as UNC system leaders craft a new strategic plan focused on five goals Spellings has outlined – access, student success, affordability and efficiency, economic impact and excellent, diverse institutions.

Spellings has attempted to pivot the governing board toward big-picture issues and away from operational decisions. Meetings will be organized around strategic themes, and board committees will do most of their routine transactional business on conference calls about a week before the board comes to Chapel Hill. She said those meetings would be properly noticed to the public and media.

UNC leaders were noncommittal about the controversial Senate Bill 873, which would dramatically lower tuition at five campuses, including four minority-serving universities.

Spellings said she and chancellors were working with lawmakers to identify ways to “strengthen” the regulation. Two changes were made to the bill this week – removal of a provision that would encourage university name changes and a change in required reduction in student fees.

“There is no doubt that we share the underlying goals of making college more affordable, making the cost to students and families more predictable and stable, and encouraging more students to pursue an education at UNC institutions that can and will welcome them,” Spellings said.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 7:43 PM with the headline "Margaret Spellings names strategist to new UNC position."