College cuts that hurt

With enrollment in the U\NC system projected to grow by almost 50 percent over the next 10 years, to nearly 300,000 students, this is no time to cut the university's faculty.

Yet that's what the 2007-09 budget proposal approved by the state House earlier this month would do.

The House eliminated positions in state government that had been vacant at least six months. That creates unique hardships for universities, which can often leave a faculty position unfilled for almost a year because of the hiring cycles created by the semester schedule.

For the UNC system, it would mean elimination of 1,088 positions -- 734 of them faculty positions. The campuses that are growing fastest would be hit hardest.

In percentage terms, the toll would be greatest at Winston-Salem State University, where enrollment is growing at roughly 15 percent a year. The House budget would eliminate 151 vacant positions there, 124 of them faculty -- the equivalent of a 13.9 percent cut in the campus budget.

In personal terms, though, the toll might be greatest at Western Carolina University, where the House budget would eliminate 31 faculty positions -- one of them held open for a faculty member deployed in Iraq.

In raw numbers, the toll would be greatest at UNC-Charlotte, where 272 positions -- 232 of them faculty -- would be eliminated. That campus recently added faculty as it stepped up to doctoral status, and it has already made offers to fill at least 30 of the new faculty positions that would be zeroed out by the House budget. The cut would eliminate 18 percent of the campus's faculty positions.

At N.C. Central University in Durham, the House budget would eliminate 108 vacant positions, the equivalent of a $5.1 million cut that campus leaders say the school cannot sustain.

Again, these cuts would come just as UNC Tomorrow, a system-wide planning effort launched by UNC President Erskine Bowles, projects growth in enrollment to almost 300,000 students system-wide by 2017.

When positions are left vacant as the university searches for the right candidates, the money does not sit idle in a convenient pot. It goes for many useful purposes, such as to hire adjunct professors and pay for extra sections of classes for growing numbers of students.

I hope that the Senate -- and the House, once the budget goes to a joint conference committee -- will agree to provide bigger raises for faculty in the UNC system.

We live in a competitive global economy where jobs increasingly require technical knowledge and a college education. Faculty are the core of a great university -- they engage and motivate students and attract research dollars.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, labs and other start-up costs for an assistant professor typically amount to $250,000 to $500,000. And on average, each faculty member attracts $185,000 a year in research dollars. So there are real economic consequences when the university loses faculty.

Yet at Chapel Hill, the average faculty salary still ranks below the 50th percentile when compared with peer institutions. The UNC Board of Governors asked the legislature for $43.9 million in additional funds in each of the next two years to raise faculty salaries at each UNC campus to the 80th percentile compared with its designated peers, as well as a 4 percent merit raise.

"This funding is critical given that the benefits package for faculty in North Carolina remains non-competitive," says Bowles. "The university is competing with public and private universities across the nation and globally."

Yet the House budget proposal provides raises of only 4.25 percent for state and university employees at the same time it gives raises of 5 percent to public-school teachers and community college faculty.

This state can -- and should -- do better. Our state's students and our economy demand it.

(Paul Fulton is chairman of the political action committee Citizens for Higher Education. He is a former president of Sara Lee Corp. and is chairman of the board of directors of Bassett Furniture Industries. He is also a former dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill and serves on the Board of Trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill.)