Erskine Bowles is up to something. Bowles, president of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system, has made numerous overtures in the media and in speeches of a looming policy decision or event.
Bowles began making hints about an announcement at a recent dinner of Greensboro business leaders. He told the Greensboro Partnership, as reported by the Business Journal, that only 18 out of 100 eighth graders in N.C. will graduate from college. “We’re in a crisis, and we better start treating it like one ÉThat was fine in our day when there were low-skill, moderate-paying jobs, but those jobs are gone, and like it or not, they are never, ever coming back.”
The clues don’t stop there. WUNC-FM, UNC-Chapel Hill’s public radio station, ran a special series Jan. 29 to Feb. 2 titled “Considering College.” It just so happens that the series conclusion came on the eve of N.C. State’s two-day Emerging Issues Forum titled “Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina.” The forum gave Bowles the pulpit to announce his 18-month listening tour. Bowles plans to canvas the state with a caravan of faculty, administrators and state civic leaders to learn how the university can better serve the citizens of the state over the next 20 years.
Bowles told the News and Observer, “We’ve got to see if we can refocus our university to meet the needs of North Carolina over the next 20 to 30 years so that we can be competitive in this new, knowledge-based, global economy. We must make sure that our students get the skills and the education they need to compete with the world’s best and brightest, wherever they may be.”
The UNC Board of Governors meets today and tomorrow. Most major news events, like the announcement of a new chancellor, take place on Friday. Instead of just announcing a “blue-ribbon panel of experts” to recommend long-range planning goals, I am optimistic that instead, Bowles will allude to something broader.
Perhaps we will learn that all students in the entire UNC system will benefit from a comprehensive need-based financial aid program similar to the Carolina Covenant or Pack Promise. Both programs offer low income students a college education debt-free. That is a bold initiative. Think about the reaction Bowles would get from a policy decision of that magnitude.
That may be too bold — even for Bowles. But I believe that greater access to affordable higher education opportunities is the ultimate solution for whatever long-term problems Bowles and other higher education “experts” foresee.
Tuesday, Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke said that the economic gap between the rich and the poor and the resulting education differences are “the single greatest source of long-term increase in inequality.”
Whatever happens, if anything, I hope it is not just political grandstanding. Could Bowles be setting himself up for a possible run for governor or a U.S. Senate seat? Politicos often use “listening tours” to make themselves known to the voters. Bowles obviously has a penchant for political candidacy.
At the Emerging Issues Forum, Bowles quipped let’s “get off our duffs and do something.” If that’s the case, please don’t waste our time with a song and dance pony show when the answer is staring us in the face — it also happens to be etched in North Carolina’s Constitution — “free of expense.”
E-mail your Bowles prediction to Andrew at viewpoint@technicianonline.com.
