Due to state budget cuts, UNC System administrators eradicated over 3,000 positions from their schools, leaving faculty and students at a disadvantage.
On July 1, the UNC system cut over 3,000 positions, including 488 full-time employees and thousands of graduate positions, adjunct professors and lecturers. While State and all the UNC schools felt the loss, the most affected universities include N.C . Central, with 350 students unable to enroll in a required section of math, and UNC Greensboro, who cut 975 course sections, equating to about 40,000 student seats.
Students at other affected schools may not have had their class schedules affected this semester, but they are noticing changes nonetheless.
Liz Hawryluk, a sophomore in comparative international politics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, collaborated with fellow students to voice an opinion on the changes resulting from the budget cut.
“Financial aid has been effectively demolished. I came into UNC with a full ride, through grants and scholarships, with the Covenant Scholars program,” Hawryluk said. “This year, UNC was going to charge me $7,000 in loans. Only through contacting the right person was I able to set up a work-study job and obtain further grants.”
Furthermore, she added that printing costs on campus have doubled, the libraries close earlier, the number of TAs has dropped and course selections have decreased, leaving larger classes and less of a selection for graduating seniors.
At N.C. State, students will notice that their emergency technological concerns will no longer be tended to at any hour; the cuts have forced the computer help desk to follow regular business hours. In addition, graduate students can no longer trust they’ll find job security in their alma mater, as almost 100 graduate positions were cut.
Undergraduate students might notice that lecture courses have fewer TAs, equating to longer waits for returned work and larger recitation sessions. In addition, fewer graduate students means that popular courses, such as statistics, might not be offering as many sections per semester, as professors often rely on graduate students to teach extra sections.
Joni Worthington, vice president for communication for the UNC System, released the minutes and power point presentation made during the meeting regarding the budget cuts. This information has since been made public on the UNC website.
Among the several areas affected by these cuts, a popular area of demolition is financial aid that is not need-based. In the presentation provided by Worthington, the first few slides show cuts in state funding for student incentive grants, future teachers scholarships and tuition wavers.
As far as the damage at State goes, 457 part-time academic positions were cut, though Worthington’s report does specify that.
“The Center for Turfgrass Environmental Research and Education at NCSU shall have no reduction in state funds,” Worthington said.
In addition, Worthington’s presentation listed the areas of impact within academics.
“Reduce faculty positions; increase class sizes and reduce number of class sections; reduce/eliminate tutoring and advising; reduce operating hours for computer labs; reduce library acquisitions and library hours; reduce/eliminate support for graduate teaching and research assistantship,” according to the presentation.
While public information is helpful for obtaining quantitative answers, Worthington seemed hesitant to offer any information regarding the backlash and emotions surrounding such an abrupt policy change.
“The [UNC system] president and the Board of Governors considered six factors, including diseconomies of scale; whether a campus/entity had authority to charge tuition, percentage of students eligible for federal Pell Grants, student retention and degree productivity relative to peer institutions, and the availability of other funding source,” Worthington said. “The campuses had the flexibility to decide how best to implement their share of the cuts locally.”
When pressed for more than a diplomatic answer and asked whether she foresees more cuts in the near future, Worthington offered the following:
“Whether or not the University and other parts of state government are assigned additional cuts depends on how quickly the state economy improves. It’s just too early to speculate,” she said.
As the UNC System students and faculty scramble to adjust to these harsh cuts, it appears that, as Worthington said, only time will tell if more are to come.
