$34 milion. That’s approximately the amount that the North Carolina state government wants back from North Carolina State University from its annual appropriations.
I can’t say that it’s too smart of a move on the state’s part considering its siphoning money away from an institution that has produced 70 start-up companies, has been awarded 147 patents over the past three years and has completed research that supported the creation of 13,000 jobs.
So where does the money come from to make up the loss? As a land grant University our mission is to serve the students with undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and research programs and to serve the state of North Carolina through extension and engagement.
Cutting class sections, eliminating positions for professors and scaling back our presence in the community should be the last things touched when the University is looking for areas to cut waste.
Layoffs aren’t practical because they’d have a dramatic impact on the quality of service the University can provide to the students and to the state. But what about pay marginal pay cuts to employees?
The University employs more than 8,000 people and spends $684,157,288 on salary and benefits for its employees – about 62% of the University’s expenditures in 2008. The unnerving bit is the proportion of these employees which are classified as administrative versus those that are classified as instructors.
The University employed 6,024 people in 2008 that were classified as administrative in comparison to the 2,103 employees that were classified as instructors. Since 2005 the University has added only 300 more faculty members but 866 new administrative employees. In the same time frame, salary and benefits for employees has jumped $130,147,249.
Am I advocating cutting the University down to the bare bones?
No, most certainly not.
I’m not even advocating for the loss of anyone’s job, especially in this economy. But our school is a $1.1 billion annual enterprise that’s become bogged down in administrative and peripheral largess.
Rather than cutting sections and graduate programs, a 5 percent pay cut across the board would save jobs, save class sections, save research programs and make up the $34 million the state is asking back.
If it isn’t in the best interest of the University to cut pay for professors because they start looking for jobs elsewhere, cut pay to the disproportionately large number of administrative employees until the magic number has been achieved.
It’s better than the alternative of throwing out services to the students and the state, and it shouldn’t be too much to ask in an economic environment when a lot of our parents are not only staring even larger pay cuts in the face, but the potential for lost jobs and failed businesses altogether.
