Faculty raises welcome, but won’t stem poaching

RALEIGH (June 29, 2016) – The $22.3 billion budget for 2016-17 that state legislators are moving to approve this week offers stable funding for state universities and community colleges, but it fails yet again to make investments in faculty sufficient to keep our campuses competitive.

The budget cuts income taxes by $145 million by raising the amount of income considered exempt from taxes from $15,500 to $16,500 next year. It also puts $474 million into the state’s rainy day fund, a reserve for budgetary emergencies, building the fund to more than $1.5 billion.

While the budget offers K-12 teachers an average increase of 4.7% and raises average teacher pay above $50,000,¹ it offers a more modest mixture of a raise and bonuses to higher-education faculty and other state workers:

A 1.5% raise for all state employees;
A one-time 0.5% bonus for all state employees; and
An average bonus of roughly 0.75% to be awarded based on merit.²

The people who teach our kids are the heart of our public universities and community colleges. Yet they’ve seen just one raise from the legislature in the past seven years.

Eleven of our 16 public universities now fall below the 50^th percentile for average faculty salaries when compared with their peer institutions. Salaries at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University need increases of 6% just to reach the median.³ Stagnant salaries have fueled an increase in departures across the university system.⁴

Similarly, the average faculty salary of $47,400 at North Carolina community colleges ranks 11^th among 16 Southeastern states.⁵

The raises for faculty are long overdue and welcome. But the raises are still insufficient to make our state institutions competitive. In all likelihood, we will continue to lose ground with the faculty salaries versus peer institutions and make our universities even more vulnerable to poaching.

The budget agreement makes a variety of other changes at North Carolina’s public colleges and universities:

• Enrollment growth: Demand for higher education is not shrinking – North Carolina now exceeds 10 million people, and 65% of jobs (compared with 59% in 2010) are projected to require post-secondary education by 2020.⁶

The budget agreement includes $31 million to provide for 3,125 additional students in the university system, a 1.5% increase.⁷ It reduces funds for community colleges by $26 million to adjust for a 4.1% decline in enrollment – the equivalent of 8,578 full-time students.⁸

• Need-based aid: The Board of Governors that oversees our public universities voted in February to increase in-state tuition by an average of 4.3% in 2016-17 and 3.7% in 2017-18.⁹ But the budget compromise provides no increase in need-based financial aid for students.

When officials raise tuition without increasing student aid, they make it harder not only for low-income students and their families to go to college, but increasingly for middle-income students who do not qualify for federal Pell Grants.¹⁰

• Fixed tuition: The compromise retains a provision from SB873 that requires public universities to guarantee fixed tuition rates for four years to incoming freshmen, starting this fall.¹¹

Campuses would calculate average tuition over four years to come up with the fixed rate. But a study in Illinois found that guaranteed tuition rates actually escalated tuition faster than annual increases because of “frontloading” during a student’s initial years.¹²

• Limit student fees: The budget agreement says student fees at state universities can grow no more than 3% a year, starting in 2017-18.

• $1,000 tuition at WCU, UNCP, ECSU: Also from SB873, the budget sets tuition at Western Carolina University, UNC Pembroke and Elizabeth City State University at $500 a semester for in-state students and $2,500 for out-of-state students, starting in the fall of 2018. It authorizes as much as $40 million a year in additional state funds for those institutions to offset revenue they will lose because of the tuition cap.

• Merit scholarships at NC A&T and NC Central: Also from SB873, the budget establishes the Cheatham-White Scholarships to be awarded to 50 students each at NC A&T State University and NC Central University. The institutions will be required to match the state dollars for the merit scholarships. Students will be nominated during the 2017-18 academic year and begin receiving scholarships in the fall of 2018.¹³

• Delay NCGAP. A program legislators adopted last year ordered state universities to divert their least-qualified admitted students to community colleges in 2017-18, requiring them to earn an associate degree before transferring to the four-year school.

Officials recommended a delay to see whether efforts already underway are improving completion rates.¹⁴ The budget agreement delays implementation until the 2018-19 academic year if the universities don’t come up with other strategies to improve completion rates.¹⁵

• “Part-way home” students: Though university officials sought $21 million for new strategies to improve completion rates, the budget provides $2.3 million to help students who left college return and complete their degrees.¹⁶

• Repeal fundraising cap: The legislature voted last year to limit state dollars for private fundraising to $1 million at each state university, which would cost universities $16.4 million. Universities see a 10-to-1 return on fundraising and asked for the provision to be repealed.¹⁷

The budget agreement repeals the requirement, but requires universities to cut $16.4 million elsewhere, for a total of $62.8 million in cuts to university operations in 2016-17.¹⁸

• 50% of Repairs & Renovations: Of $81 million allocated to repairs and renovations to state buildings,¹⁹ 50% is allocated to the University system, which accounts for roughly half of state buildings. Last year universities received just 1/3 of state repair and renovation dollars.²⁰

• School of Medicine Asheville Campus: The budget provides $3 million for the UNC School of Medicine to start an Asheville campus in conjunction with the Mountain Area Health Education Center, as well as $8 million to build a facility at Biltmore Forest in Asheville.²¹

• ECU Medical School support: The legislature authorized $8 million last year in one-time funds to stabilize East Carolina’s Brody School of Medicine. The budget agreement converts $4 million of that to ongoing support.²²

• Laboratory schools: The budget compromise includes a Senate proposal requiring the Board of Governors to establish K-8 “laboratory schools” in conjunction with eight universities with teacher training programs. The aim is both to provide teacher and principal training and to improve low-performing school districts.²³

All in all, this budget does establish more stable funding for our universities and community colleges. But due to the continued impact of previous years’ tax cuts, it limits strategic investments and compensation for our faculty.

Comments

Stephen Leonard says

June 30, 2016 at 11:57 am

“Poaching” is not the most significant concern regarding the legislature’s flaccid efforts to “recognize” the contributions of faculty. Most faculty have no mercenary intentions; they stay put not because of pay, nor do they think of leaving because of pay. They have families, roots down, and deep loyalties to their students and their institutions. These transcend salaries — but they are not immune to disrespect and contempt. This raise is too little, too late, and too obvious in its implications: 1.5% is just enough to enable the legislature (and apparently the University’s leadership) to publicly brag about addressing lagging salaries, but not enough to convince faculty and staff that the public ballyhoo really marks the end of the scorn with which they have been treated. If there is anything that will convert loyal staff and faculty into self-serving mercenaries who prefer the condition of their bank balances to the well being of their students, colleagues, and the people of this State, this “raise” certainly encourages those attitudes.

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