The canary in the coal mine

by | May 15, 2015 | Economic Development, Economy, Editor's Blog | 10 comments

If budgets reflect priorities, it’s clear that higher education is a low one for Pat McCrory and the Republican legislature. McCrory’s budget would have cut the UNC system by $50 million. The House brought some relief and only cut it by $26 million. These cuts come after years of even deeper ones.

Outgoing UNC President Tom Ross is sounding an alarm. “It’s the best public university system in the United States. I think that’s still true. But we are teetering on the edge and we have to pay attention if we want to maintain it.” While many of us would agree, McCrory and the Republicans in the legislature quite clearly don’t.

Last year, UNC faculty didn’t get much of a raise at all while other state employees got $1,000. Ross says the “faculty doesn’t feel valued.” As if to emphasize that point, UNC-Chapel Hill announced yesterday that one of its top scholars, chemistry professor and department chair Valerie Ashby, is leaving for Duke. She may be the first of many.

All of this is happening while the GOP fights with itself about how much money to spend on job creation. Until the Republicans got control of the state, the university system was part of that equation. Companies located here because of our higher education. And our research universities spun off home grown businesses like SAS and Quintiles. The professor who left has five patents.

Those days seem to be gone. The ideologues running the Senate see the university as part of a bloated government that gets in the way of their tax cutting ways. McCrory sees the university as an extension of the community college system, training students for specific jobs instead of teaching them think.

What happened to the Republican leaders who believed in education? Where’s a voice like Phil Kirk, who believed that our kids need an education that prepares them for a 21st century labor market shaped by the technological revolution that influences everything from communications to manufacturing? Where’s the next Jim Martin, a university professor who, as governor, doubled the education budget?

For almost fifty years, Democrats and Republicans agreed that North Carolina’s future would be built on a foundation of knowledge and training provided by public schools, community colleges, and universities. Today, the Republican Party is dominated by two factions that don’t believe in the power of public education. The anti-intellectual social conservatives deny global warming, believe the earth is six thousand years old, and are more worried about the government taking their guns than preparing their kids for the future. The free market ideologues see public schools as a drain on taxpayer dollars and treat public schools more like charity institutions than economic development tools.

Faculty are the canaries in the coal mine. When our best researchers and professors start to go, the quality of our education system-and the businesses it attracts– will, too. Valerie Ashby’s departure is a warning.

10 Comments

  1. Voter

    So, they’re working on abolishing higher education in the state. Well, well, well.

  2. STEM Guy

    My recent experience is not directed at the university system but towards the higher education system in general and, more specifically, towards the community college system.

    I am a previous employee of the NCCCS. I left because I was forced to work 2 full-time positions, and I was not being paid the fair market rate for the one high-demand STEM position I was contracted to do. Recently, I re-applied for this exact classification STEM position I previously held, but at another member institution. I personally knew the people and sailed through the interview process. When the time came to discuss salary, the offer given to me was thousands less than I had made doing the exact same job a number of years ago and a substantial pay cut over my current take home.

    As much as I genuinely love and miss my home state of North Carolina, (my roots in North Carolina stretch back to the early 1700s on my Anglo side and hundreds of years further from my First Nation status) my home, sadly, does not love me back.

  3. andrewperrin

    The departure of Prof. Ashby is indeed a great loss to Carolina. I have but one correction: she is not the first of many; there have been many top scholars lost over the past several years due to poor support, both financial and moral.

  4. Amanda Ann Klein

    I’m a tenured prof in the UNC system–I’ve been here 8 years. I can’t speak for every professor in the system but I can tell you that I’ve witnessed these practices firsthand and they are destroying this university by slowly sucking the lifeblood out of its faculty. That metaphor may feel hyperbolic but trust me, it’s accurate. Indeed, it is the very metaphor employed by North Carolina’s own policy makers.
    http://judgmentalobserver.com/2015/05/06/starving-the-beast-the-unc-system-in-2015/

  5. Jim Aycock

    “He realized that these things would require revenue considerably larger than the State was then receiving….he declared all along that expenditures would be increased and that his administration would spend all the money that could be raised….”If more taxes are required,” said he, “more taxes must be levied.” That was former Gov. Charles Aycock.
    Jim Aycock, Asheville.

    • wafranklin

      Still selling that racist redneck Huh. Must run in some family.

  6. Allison Mahaley

    The religious-right agenda is to end publicly-funded liberal education that supports science and critical-thinking because that leads people away from the fundamentalist scriptures. This is a plan that has been strategized for years. They are as opposed to education as ISIS. This agenda works in perfect harmony with the tax-cutting libertarians who believe that quality education should left to private institutions for people who can afford it. This is the perfect storm and if progressives don’t organize, protest, and demand an end to the craziness, things will keep getting worse.

    • A. Reed

      I was about to write a comment, and then I read yours, which took the words right out of my mouth. Thank you for saying so, and doing it so eloquently.

      The program dates back to before the Reagan era, when secretive groups like the Rutherford Institute began working to undermine public education, beginning, naturally and critically, with the elimination of Civics education from the high school curriculum.

  7. Ted

    The blind leading the bankrupt …

  8. Someone from Main Street

    I am stunned that NCGOP is continuing to cut the UNC-system budget – especially when they have the gall to say that the “revenue surplus” indicates a “healthy economy” for the state.

    Where are the business leaders? Is THIS what they want – taxes so low that the schools are bankrupt and the public higher ed system with the oldest university in the country is gutted beyond repair? How blind are NC leaders – business and political? They have no vision whatsoever, it seems.

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