On a rainy Monday evening this month, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte was prepared for a full house.
The university’s Harris Alumni Center was set to play host to one of four “input sessions” intended to give faculty members, students, and the public a chance to weigh in on the search for a new president of the UNC system. About 60 chairs had been set up in one room, including 16 seats reserved for members of the university system’s Board of Governors. If those seats filled up, space had been made for scores more attendees in another room. Between the two rooms stood a table full of cookies, coffee urns, and bottled water.
But many of the chairs stayed empty.
Only about 40 people arrived for the meeting, where they were joined by nine board members. After all, it was June 1: School had been out for more than two weeks, and the campus was mostly empty.
The search for a new leader comes at a pivotal moment for public higher education in North Carolina. Although the university system has long been regarded as a state treasure, it has come under increasing criticism from lawmakers in Raleigh and a network of libertarian groups funded by a North Carolina businessman, Art Pope.
But for some students and faculty members, the timing of the input sessions raised questions about how much input the board really wants. Critics took the date of the meeting as the latest sign that the board cares less about the opinions of students and staff members than it does about the views of the conservative lawmakers who control the General Assembly and the governor’s mansion.
“They have done very little to dispel that notion,” said Vincent Cahill, a junior at the Charlotte campus with a triple major — chemistry, economics, and political science — who also serves as chief of staff for the university system’s Association of Student Governments.
Like many students, professors, and higher-education boosters, Mr. Cahill was especially dissatisfied with the board decision that prompted the public meetings: the January ouster of the system president, Thomas W. Ross, who took office in 2011.
In an interview before the input session, the board’s chairman, John C. Fennebresque, said charges that board members were being swayed by elected officials “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
But the reasons for Mr. Ross’s departure remain vague. At the input session, Mr. Fennebresque reiterated his recent statements that the board is seeking someone with a vision for higher education in the state who can lead the system forward.
William A. Sederburg, interim chancellor at the Wilmington campus, said he believes a majority of the board supports public higher education. But uncertainty about the board’s motivation will linger until it makes clear what it wants in a new leader, he said, and why Mr. Ross was dismissed.
A Treasured System
Public higher education has long held a special place in the Tar Heel State.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the system’s flagship, was the first state-chartered college to admit students. And North Carolina’s Constitution requires that the General Assembly “provide that the benefits of the University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the state free of expense.”
In more recent decades, the Research Triangle, anchored by North Carolina State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the private Duke University, has become the gold standard for how higher education can drive high-tech economic development. The flagship campus consistently ranks near the top among all universities in the amount of sponsored research that it attracts, and many of the system’s 17 campuses are also major employers in their regions.
Lawmakers, too, have jealously guarded the system. Nonresident enrollment is capped at 18 percent for each campus.
While the state’s appropriations for higher education per full-time student declined by more than 20 percent from 2008 to 2014, they remain far above the average nationally. Tuition, meanwhile, is far less than the national average.
But there is a sense that support for the university system began to erode after the 2012 elections, when Republicans won control of both the General Assembly and the governor’s mansion.
Among the first episodes to raise the ire of higher-education advocates was Gov. Pat McCrory’s criticism of the liberal arts. He said the state should not be subsidizing degree programs that don’t lead directly to jobs.
Lawmakers this year took up a bill that would have required full-time faculty members to teach four courses a semester — a measure that would have made it difficult to recruit new tenure-track faculty members, especially top-notch researchers. The bill was eventually watered down to a legislative study of the issue, then died.
Members of the UNC Board of Governors, all of whom are appointed by state legislators, have heightened the concerns of faculty members and students by capping the amount of tuition that can be used for financial aid, closing three academic centers associated with progressive causes, and, most recently, cutting more than a dozen academic programs across the system.
At a fraught moment for the system, board members need to be transparent about their goals and the direction they want to set for the system, Mr. Sederburg said. “Do they want a cost-cutter? Someone who is big on economic development?”
Who Is Listening?
Therence O. Pickett, a member of the board, said the feedback from all of the system’s constituents “matters a great deal to us.”
Professors have provided some of that feedback. A faculty survey on the presidential search netted more than 4,000 responses, and groups like Faculty Forward, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, are collecting petitions to advocate for more spending on instruction, keeping tuition low, and including nontenured faculty members in shared governance.
But at the input session here, which was streamed live to the web, only a handful of attendees had signed up to speak. A moderator told attendees they must keep their remarks to three minutes and reminded them that this was not a question-and-answer period: Members of the board and of the search committee were there only to listen.
In fact, turnout was light at all four of the input sessions. John Steen, a visiting professor of English at East Carolina University, said he did not attend a session held in late May on his campus because he was ill. But some of his colleagues, he said, may have avoided the meeting for a different reason: They didn’t feel that their opinions would really be considered by the board.
So what do students and faculty members want in their next leader? In many cases, the answer seemed to be “someone like Mr. Ross.”
Penny Stevens, vice chair of the staff council at the Charlotte campus, said the next system president should be willing to work with staff members in the same way that Mr. Ross did.
Mr. Cahill, the student, also praised the ousted president. He said the system’s next president should be able to negotiate with political leaders in Raleigh.
Martha Cary Eppes, an associate professor of geography at the Charlotte campus, said it’s critical that the next president can communicate the value of a college degree to the state’s citizens, legislators, and even the Board of Governors.
After those three spoke, two other people rose to share their thoughts. Then the meeting ended, little more than 30 minutes after it began.
But the mood of caution and concern remained. “We’re in a real moment of crisis,” said Altha J. Cravey, an associate professor of geography at Chapel Hill, in a telephone interview.
And the person who was best suited to lead the system through this crisis, she said, was Mr. Ross. The former president was well respected in the state, she said, and wasn’t afraid to counter both lawmakers and the board.
Firing him, Ms. Cravey said, “made our system look really bad.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
Correction (6/11/2015, 9:20 a.m.): This article originally misnamed a campus in North Carolina. It is East Carolina University, not Eastern Carolina University. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
