Last week, my fellow columnist Benton Sawrey expressed his concerns over the effect Mary Easley’s refusal to resign is having on the university’s reputation and community.
Beneath all of the sensational media coverage, the $179,000 salary of our Executive-in-Residence stands tall as a looming beacon of greed over the rest of us employed or enrolled at N.C. State.
Perhaps Mrs. Easley does not realize the effect state and University budget cuts are having on the rest of us in the Wolfpack family.
Unlike the students here, Mrs. Easley is not looking to the University to provide a good foundation on which she can build her career.
Let’s take a look at some statistics from the University’s budget. Nearly half of the University’s operating funds come from state appropriations.
$93 million of the University’s total funding needs to be cut. Sixty percent of the University’s total budget goes towards personnel costs. As of late April, 317 job positions were eliminated. And while claims that educating the students will remain a top priority, 180 course sections will disappear from MyPack Portal.
Because fewer course sections will be offered, yet demand for the seats is still the same, classroom sizes will undoubtedly increase.
Because personnel costs are so high, state policy requires part-time workers be let go before permanent employees.
Part-time jobs will be eliminated first in personnel cuts, causing a proportionally high burden on teacher’s assistants.
TA’s are either graduate students who have been awarded a fellowship stipend or any student who has previously taken the course and is paid hourly to grade the class assignments. This latter group will be especially affected.
The poor state of the economy has also negatively impacted the amount of endowment money departments have received from donors to fund graduate fellowships.
What this all means, collectively, is learning at NCSU will now be held in large classrooms without sufficient help to grade homework and quizzes. Professors, along with all of their research and other professional duties, do not have the time to grade the term papers of 300 students. The trickle-down effect continues when instead of having smaller assignments to reinforce course material before
a test or exam, a student’s final grade is comprised of a few, heavily weighted, multiple-choice, bubble sheet tests that are graded by a machine.
In order to ensure every student enrolled at NCSU receives the best possible education, reducing the amount of individual feedback students receive from instructors should not be considered as an option. As both a full-time student and a part-time employee of the University, I am outraged at Mrs. Easley’s lack of compassion for those of us who are here to learn and/or work 40 hours a week to pay the bills.
As of June 30th, I will no longer be employed by the University as per my department’s efforts to adhere to the new budget restrictions. I will also probably be faced with classrooms the size of cinemas where the professor doesn’t know my name.
Mrs. Easley, my job is being eliminated and the future of my academic career as well as those of 31,000 others at NCSU is being jeopardized. While you told WRAL last year that “what people have to understand” is that you “bring something unique to N.C. State”, you should understand that many of us are giving up jobs and possibly the quality of our education in order to help the University meet its budget requirements. Do your part, too.
