In a memo to the UNC System’s budget proposal for the fiscal year of 2014, state budget director Art Pope called the proposal “simply not realistic.” He sent the proposal back to the UNC board of governors to rewrite it.
It’s not surprising that Pope rejected the budget proposal, given the fact that he has long been a high-profile critic of North Carolina’s higher-education system going back to his days as a legislator. I don’t intend to criticize Pope’s personal ideology and his understanding of higher education, but rather, his reasoning, which has many flaws inconsistent with the North Carolina’s higher-education policy and the state constitution.
In the memo, he warned that “the spiraling cost of higher education, the increased costs to students and their parents, including growing personal debt, as well as the increasing demands on the state budget, cannot continue indefinitely. The University of North Carolina has a responsibility to its students and to the state to operate and improve the university in the most cost effective and affordable manner as practicable.”
But this argument doesn’t stand to the truth and the law. The state of North Carolina has a constitutional requirement to provide affordable higher education to North Carolinians. Continuous reduction of the budget has caused significant increase in tuition and fees borne by students in recent years. This time, the UNC Board of Governors asked for an 11 percent increase in the budget, stressing that the insufficient funding has made it more difficult for campuses to maintain normal operation.Even an 11 percent increase from last year’s budget is still far from reaching the level that it was before the cuts started in 2008.
Nonetheless, the spotlight of the battle will be about how public universities can use taxpayers’ money efficiently and responsibly. From Pope’s perspective, public schools are less likely to use money properly because the nature of public schools means they allocate resources less efficiently. But there are numerous examples around the world indicating that public universities do better if given a well-designed institutional mechanism that plays a role of oversight. It is the General Assembly’s responsibility to oversee how the UNC System uses its money, but so far, the legislature hasn’t done its part.
One of the prominent examples of successful public universities is that of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, all colleges are funded by the government. Instead of cutting budgets of higher education during the Asian crisis in 1998, the Hong Kong government sustained the funding for the major universities and maintained higher education as a governmental responsibility. The legislature has a committee that is highly devoted to higher education and monitoring the operation of universities. In Hong Kong’s higher-education system, almost every penny of taxpayers’ money is spent as wisely as possible within the institutional mechanism.
On the other hand, without a smart institutional mechanism, even private colleges are as inferior as it gets. In mainland China, the government has strong restrictions regarding how colleges use public funds. For example, a great amount of grants are not allowed to go to faculty’s salary and can only be used to purchase equipment and other assets. If colleges can’t spend all of the money designated for equipment in a fiscal year, they have to return the money to the government. This system wastes a tremendous amount of money and generates little incentive for faculty to concentrate on research itself.
For the UNC System, less money doesn’t necessarily mean the schools automatically adapt to the reduction and use the funds effectively. A low level of funding only leads to sharp cuts in academic activities such as workshops and seminars. A more responsible legislature to oversee how the UNC System uses money and prevent any abuse of power seems to be the answer to end the battle of the budget proposal.
