University of North Carolina system campus leaders are entangled in regulations that waste time and money, and they should be free from such worries, system President Margaret Spellings said Friday.
Spellings statement came after the UNC Board of Governors’ unanimous vote to adopt a “strategic plan” that seeks to improve the university’s efficiency, student access, and affordability, among other things.
“Together the strategic plan and this regulatory agenda really are asking, ‘What are our aspirations, what are our goals, and how are we going to measure against them?” Spellings told Carolina Journal.
Spellings said she has asked UNC administrators to suggest rules that should be tossed. She pointed to a legislative pay raise last year that required 188 separate amendments across the system.
“It just costs a lot of money to do simple things like that. Let’s get out of the weeds and start [allowing] our very capable campus leaders to run [their schools], and hold them accountable at the end of the day for whether or not they’re delivering against our stated goals,” she said.
UNC’s plan — commissioned last year by Spellings — isn’t perfect, said board Chairman Lou Bissette. But the university is headed in the right direction, he said.
UNC must clear roadblocks to improve student access, according to the university’s official outline. One goal pushes for a 13 percent enrollment increase for low-income students by the 2021-22 school year. Also included are solutions for low completion rates, and ideas about how to ease student transitions from high school or community college to a UNC school.
System administrators will scrutinize academics and programs to make sure students are graduating with “all useful learning needed to be responsible citizens, productive members of the workforce, and lifelong learners in a global environment.”
The university will limit yearly increases for in-state tuition rates, keeping education affordable for families whose earnings match the state’s median income.
Financial accountability and transparency — goals also included in the plan — should be a top priority for the university, said BOG member Scott Lampe, chairman of the board’s budget and finance committee.
There’s no standard for how each school collects and presents budget data, which is a major problem, he told the board.
“All of this data exists, but it exists in little pockets everywhere, Lampe said.
“I don’t want the committee or the folks at home to think there’s some hiding of information that’s going on here. The problem is that we’re trying to operate a billion dollar budget with an antiquated…reporting system. It’s just that simple.”
The university is working to fix the problem, Lampe said. “Arguably, we need to be pushing harder on this.”
It may be a tough path forward, Spellings and Bissette told media members after the meeting. Both attributed challenges to the differing missions and visions of UNC’s 16 schools.
“I’ve been on the board for … years, and we’ve talked [a lot] about being able to measure results,” Bissette said. “So I’m extremely pleased. It was a long process. President Spellings began this, and I think our board enthusiastically embraced it. We’ll have to see how it works. It’s got to be taken to each campus.”
“I’m thrilled to have [such] support for these five themes, and for the major goals of our system,” Spellings said. “That’s actually the easy part. The hard part will be putting this in motion and getting the work done, because they’re audacious goals, and appropriate goals.”