UNC always seems to have the advantage.
I’m not talking about athletics, where their ability to repeatedly dominate our men’s basketball team is disheartening but not unforgivable. No, I’m referring to the world of academia and UNC’s uncanny ability to build a sterling reputation and billion-dollar-plus endowment without being pigeonholed or typecast as a particular kind of school.
Ask any 10 people at random on the street what UNC does, what it produces, what it’s good at — the responses will run the gamut. “Lawyers” will be one response. “Doctors” another. “Journalists” a third. If they’re less charitable (but no less accurate) they might also suggest “bureaucrats” or “middle managers” or “starving artists.” But the list goes on and on. Ask those same people what N.C. State produces and you’re likely to get “engineers” from all ten. One or two might say something agriculture-related if they happen to drive past the Hillsborough Street pastures on their way to work.
That public perception of NCSU, as a university only capable of “technical stuff,” isn’t surprising. We were chartered as the state’s “agricultural and mechanical” university, and that image was consciously reinforced by the administration as we climbed national academic rankings in engineering and life sciences. It’s even reflected in our Board of Trustees, all highly distinguished civic leaders but largely drawn from what could be considered NCSU’s “Old Guard” disciplines.
Even though the University’s historical focus on its “bread and butter” disciplines made practical and political sense, it has become a painfully outmoded worldview that no longer reflects our well-earned prestige, our influence among the UNC 16, or the cosmopolitan nature of the state’s university system itself. And it’s damaging to this University. We have more options than some Ivy League schools; we have disciplines whose global reputations belie their size. We have students who can go toe-to-toe with any Goat (*ahem* “Ram,” sorry) in a debate over constitutional philosophy — and then go build a computer out of toothpicks and chewing gum when they’re finished. But without knowing what we offer here in Raleigh, future leaders of this state are just as likely to go enroll up the street.
That needs to change, and the University can start by helping the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Last week James Hankins, student senator for CHASS sophomores, brought together members of the Senate and the student body for an intimate discussion on CHASS’s future. There was plenty of information disclosed and discussion that took place, but the fact that jumped above all others was a claim that CHASS was the largest college at NCSU after Engineering. It was so fundamentally against my own “We only do engineering and agriculture” perception that I scribbled it in my notepad. It had to be some kind of statistical spin. So I pulled up the University’s own enrollment data and was shocked to find confirmation in spades — that as far back as 2002, CHASS has displaced CALS as our second-largest college.
That’s a big deal, folks. It’s bad enough if Design or Textiles or Vet Medicine get overlooked by someone despite their academic standing; they’re our tiniest colleges, so the mistake can be forgiven. But when a full 15 percent of your students are in disciplines that used to be considered “UNC territory,” treating CHASS like the University’s red-headed stepchild isn’t just obtuse — it’s bad for business (read “enrollment”). Instead of watching a turf war with the College of Education or letting programs languish because of the perennial “lack of resources,” the University should be working to solidify and strengthen CHASS’s visibility and reputation. We need to continue recruiting strong students, lean on our Trustees like Justice Burley Mitchell to help build more public-private partnerships — and use CHASS as a gateway to build our influence at the General Assembly.
With the legislature distancing itself from the university system financially, the silly “us vs UNC” mindset on who can excel in what disciplines has outlived its usefulness. If we truly believe we’re a major world-class institution, it’s time we started acting like one. Giving CHASS a profile that reflects its size is a good first step.
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