When Gov. Pat McCrory proposed his 2013-15 budget in March, his recommended $140 million cut to the UNC System sparked a debate about the role of government in public education. Though Chancellor Randy Woodson said he won’t make a final judgment of the budget until it passes the House, N.C. State is already preparing to cut library services.
At the height of the recession, North Carolina lawmakers cut more than $400 million from the UNC System due to reduced government revenue. In 2011, the state legislature demanded that N.C. State cut its budget by 15 percent. Since then, University administrators have scaled back programs, cut faculty positions, increased class sizes and nearly frozen faculty salaries.
Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis said if he was chancellor of a UNC System school, he would find other sources of revenue to gain independence from state government.
Democrats in the N.C. House said the cuts are a threat to the state’s economy and warn the state is falling short of its constitutional obligation to keep education “as free as practicable.”
The N.C. Senate budget will cross over to the House of Representatives May 16, and Democratic representatives said they fear UNC System cuts could be deeper than those proposed by McCrory.
“[The cuts are] really even more than what they seem to be,” said Rep. Rick Glazier (D-Cumberland), who serves on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Education. “I’m hearing rumors that the Senate budget will be less than the governor’s budget. That’s a rumor we don’t know. Those cuts are significant, but they are deeply serious in the context of the last three years of cuts. The cuts we’re talking about are not really $140 million in the grand scheme — it’s really two-thirds of a billion dollars of cuts that are now accumulating on an annual basis.”
The defense for high-quality and affordable education has attracted voices from both sides of the aisle, and some Republicans have taken issue with the magnitude of the cuts proposed by McCrory.
Republican Sen. Tamara Barringer (Wake), who serves on the Education/Higher-Ed Committee, said she grew up in a poor household and attributes her socioeconomic transformation to the state’s education system.
“I would not be where I am without UNC-Chapel Hill, where I was educated both at the law school and business school,” said Barringer, now a UNC-CH professor of accounting and legal studies. “I had a great number of relatives attend N.C. State and the other member institutions. … I really do believe I am an American success story. My first home had no indoor plumbing, and today I am a state senator. It was because of affordable education.”
Barringer is not alone in the Republican supermajority of the North Carolina General Assembly. At Education Day, an April 3 event that brought chancellors and lobbyists from every UNC System institution together, Sen. Jeff Tarte (R-Mecklenburg) launched a staunch defense for the university system, calling it “unequivocally our greatest asset we have in the state.”
“How can you be against education? Education is fundamental for everyone,” Tarte said. “It’s above politics. It’s not a party issue. It’s a ‘let’s educate our kids’ issue.’”
However, despite marginal Republican outcry against budget cuts to higher education, party leaders still call these cuts minor. Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican businessman from Western N.C., is among those who support the cuts.
“Let me tell you the good news: We’re not looking at severe cuts,” Apodaca said during Education Day. “I don’t know if we have any bad news. … The cuts are going to be minor compared to what they were in the past. [Overall] we like to see business principles in place and we like to see efficiency.”
Apodaca sits on the Senate Education/Higher-Ed Committee and serves as co-chair of the Education/Higher-Ed Appropriations Committee, the same committee which will decide the severity of the cuts to the UNC System.
GOP senators Apodaca, Dan Soucek and Jerry Tillman, all co-chairs of the Education/Higher-Ed Appropriations Committee, refused to comment for this article.
The education debate has taken on new forms of argumentation, and Glazier said he fears Republican attacks on education are neither constructive nor in good taste.
“This is not a new fight, but it has taken on far more sinister and exponentially important overtones because so much more is at stake,” Glazier said. “It’s one thing when the critics of public education are criticizing it to improve it, which we’ve always had, which is good. When you have critics who are seeking to undermine public education, they have a very different mission.
“When the funding decisions have eliminated all the extras and now we’re talking about how much of the base we’re going to cut, those are very different discussions. We are facing real questions about the commitment of the state to the continued globally competitive existence of the university system.”
Apodaca and his counterparts are calling for more efficiency, and as Tillis put it, UNC-System schools need to strive for efficiency.
“I would not say university-system schools are too dependent. We’re talking about moving the needle — in regard to state funding — a single-digit percentage point [roughly 5 percent],” Tillis said. “I don’t think we’re talking much more than that.”
Many Republicans say there is still fat to cut in administrative overhead costs, but UNC System President Tom Ross argues the system cannot withstand more cuts without compromising quality of education.
According to Ross, the UNC system is currently producing 17 percent more degrees while costing the state 17 percent less per degree.
“I believe those degrees have every bit of the exact same quality that they had five years ago, if not stronger,” said Ross.
The UNC System has been streamlining operations and cutting costs for the past decade, but the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank, stands by McCrory’s budget. The foundation recommends for more cuts than McCrory’s budget overall, but its higher-education budget is identical to McCrory’s.
“We did cut kindergarten through 12 and Community College appropriations in our budget,” said Sarah Curry, the John Locke Foundation’s director of Fiscal Policy Studies. “We didn’t touch universities because of increasing tuition. But in K through 12, there are a few things we think we can go without, like trying to cut administrations or administrative waste. They can use black and white copies as opposed to color copies.”
But the ramifications of budget cuts to the university system may be more than changing color copies to black and white.
Sarah Timberlake, a graduate student in communication and member of the University Library Committee, said N.C. State Libraries is preparing for the cuts and is considering cutting student services and journal subscriptions.
“We’re preparing for a 3- to 5-percent budget cut across the University both in academic in non-academic sectors,” Timberlake said. “What this means for the library is a $570,000 to more than $930,000 cut from the current operating budget.”
Timberlake said that N.C. State Libraries is ranked second-to-last in academic journal subscriptions for a library system of its size.
“To function as a library you have to have research. … We can’t cut that too much, so our committee is talking about cutting overnight hours in the Hunt and D.H. Hill libraries,” Timberlake said. “They just can’t afford to have them operating 24-hours/five-days-a-week right now.”
Timberlake said Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Susan Nutter has her hands tied in sticking up to the General Assembly. According to Timberlake, Nutter wants to see students fight against proposed cuts.
“Susan Nutter told me opposition has to come from the students,” Timberlake said. “We as students must approach this issue with urgency. Our administration is at the mercy of the legislature. We as students must react. This movement must come from the students; while the faculty and staff want to do everything to help, it is up to us to make a move.”
In 2001, which was the last time NCSU Libraries proposed cutting hours, 500 students participated in a sit-in at the D.H. Hill Library and then marched at midnight to the chancellor’s residence to demand that the library stay open all night. That same spring, more than 5,000 students marched to the state capitol to protest a $125 million cut to the UNC System.
As a result of student protests and public outcry, NCSU Libraries did not cut any hours, and the state legislature declined to pass what would have been a significant cut to the UNC System.
We as students must approach this issue with urgency. Our administration is at the mercy of the legislature. We as students must react. This movement must come from the students; while the faculty and staff want to do everything to help, it is up to us to make a move.
-Sarah Timberlake
