In a closed session last Friday, the UNC Board of Governors approved significant raises for 12 of the UNC system’s chancellors, and in the process perpetuated a dire trend in education politics — a trend that heavily favors administration over the teachers and students. A trend that is money and power-oriented, a trend that transparently aims to do very little to actually improve the state of our public education systems.
This comes on the heels of the Board of Governor’s February approval of yet another significant tuition increase, averaging 4.3 percent for in-state students and 2.9 percent of out-of-state students in the UNC system. At NC State, the tuition proposed for the 2016-17 school year is an 88 percent increase from 10 years ago — this is a similar statistic across the UNC system. Last February, it was said that most of that money is to be directed toward faculty pay raises. However, because only a one-time $750 raise was given to UNC-system faculty members, I feel like the money is, in fact, not going these pay raises. At the top of the education “food chain,” chancellors are receiving up to 19 percent pay raises.
This is unsustainable. Meanwhile there is not enough funding for the amount of needs-based aids students at our university need. The justification of these obscene raises is that the UNC system is attempting to stay competitive with the rest of the country. Chancellor Randy Woodson apparently needs to be paid $790,000 annually, from the state and from a privately funded grant, so that he won’t be lost to another university system that offers more money.
Many students and staff members in North Carolina public universities are outraged. At Appalachian State University Tuesday there was a student-led protest calling for its chancellor, Sheri Everts, to reject her $50,000 pay increase so that this unnecessary spending would potentially go back to the university, faculty and students that need it. Protestors cite Kentucky State University’s Chancellor Raymond Burse’s 2014 decision to renounce $90,000 of his salary so that his university’s lowest paid workers would earn a living wage. Those making budget decisions just don’t seem to hear the wishes of the people within the system — this is very frustrating.
What would truly make the UNC system one of the best in the nation is to become more accessible for poor students and have tuition and financial aid in line with North Carolina’s demographics. Instead, the priorities of the Board of Governors is scaring poor students away from higher education and polluting the purpose of public universities. Ideologically public universities are meant to promote equality, but they are becoming yet another host of social inequality.
The firing of the current UNC system president, Tom Ross, for the new, elected (though many suspect politically appointed,) former U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings disrupts the academic freedom of the university system in North Carolina. Spellings is controversial, and her past comments regarding the gay community goes against the policies that UNC system uses to protect its community of LGBT students. Already, I fear that the state of the political hold on education disrupts the economic, scientific and humane progress that narrow, political interests prevent.
Educators have proven time and time again, particularly in North Carolina, they are not in their profession for the money — it’s often a passion for what they consider important work. Passion fades from their eyes after a few years of being viciously underpaid, underappreciated and pawns in the game of a money-corrupted public school system.
Both faculty and student morale is low, and these changes just make it more negative. These pay raises are a slap in the face to students who are broke, in debt and even dropping out because of the rising cost of tuition. In the end, the rich are going to get richer and the poor, poorer.
These raises are obscene because they are so disproportionate to the value placed on the teaching and learning aspects of education. Education is being blackballed and money, greed and power, as no surprise, are the victor.
