RALEIGH — The beginning of 2015 has been consequential for the University of North Carolina system. In January, the Board of Governors forced president Thomas Ross to resign from his position (he’ll leave in early 2016), and in February the board garnered national attention after voting to close three centers — including the controversial John Edwards-founded Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill.

As momentous as those events have been, the state budget battle that will take place over the next few months likely will have a bigger impact on the day-to-day operations of the system’s 16 public universities. In early March, Gov. Pat McCrory began the process with the release of his 2015-17 budget proposal, which the General Assembly will debate and amend this summer.

For UNC, the governor recommends a cut of roughly $26 million (or 0.98 percent) in 2015-16 and $14 million (or 0.55 percent) in 2016-17, based on the university system’s current $2.65 billion state appropriations. Although the end result would be a net budget reduction, the recommendations for the next two years also include a few big-ticket expenditures, including:

• $42.5 million for programs aimed at boosting private sector growth. McCrory wants to connect entrepreneurs to the university system and turn research into commercial innovations that help to create jobs in the state.

• $130 million to fund projected enrollment growth. The UNC system says it expects a 3.2 percent increase in full-time equivalent students over the next two years.

• $16 million for East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine, which for years has struggled financially. For example, its accreditor requires Brody to have a 90-day cash reserve of $40 million but the school recently reported only $32 million on hand.

When state budget director Lee Roberts presented the budget in March, he said that the state has a “moral obligation” to use tax dollars efficiently. A couple of provisions in the proposed budget are intended to enhance efficiencies:

• The state currently subsidizes universities’ private fundraising efforts. The proposal would cap the amount spent on such activities at $1 million per year for each university. Roberts said that would affect 12 of the 17 campuses and save the state $18 million.

• The proposal also calls on the UNC Board of Governors to find $49 million in cuts to the system by getting rid of some administrative positions and “adjusting faculty workloads, eliminating redundant and low enrollment programs, restructuring research activities, and using alternative funding sources.”

Responding to the budget proposal, Ross said that he is “disappointed” by the potential funding reductions and that “North Carolina must continue to maintain and invest in our strong public university system.”

Evidence suggests that recent reductions in administrative costs — a focus of the McCrory administration’s efforts — have not harmed educational outcomes at UNC campuses.

In the wake of the Great Recession, budget cuts prompted officials to eliminate more than 500 vacant faculty positions and reduce the number of administrators. Yet graduation rates, one metric of educational success, have increased at almost all system schools. And across the system, universities continue to offer more than 1,000 undergraduate degree programs, 700 master’s programs, and 200 doctoral programs.

Some of those degree programs, however, are in niche fields that have attracted few students (or have not helped graduates land jobs in their fields of study) and may be wasting resources. University officials who want to find ways to absorb potential cuts may find program consolidation and elimination beneficial.

The governor says his budget proposal would encourage university officials to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars. The university system and its political allies will not cede turf without a fight, however, so the trajectory of the governor’s spending plans could be altered dramatically.

Jesse Saffron is a writer and editor for the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.