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The State of Higher Education in Charlotte


cltbwimob

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  • 2 weeks later...

12 hours ago, rancenc said:

Apparently Johnson C Smith turned down a proposed office development on campus....

https://businessnc.com/johnson-c-smith-board-turned-down-50m-bofa-linked-office-project/

JCSU Board is bargaining their chips for the biggest return on their investment from the developer. Considering it's a private HBCU they want to come out in the black and then some on the land sale.

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, KJHburg said:

UNCC from 1992 before all the new buildings towards N Tryon, before light rail, before football stadium etc.  From UNC Charlotte twitter. 

top highway is Hwy 49 University City Blvd. 

Aerial view of campus in 1992.

And there was NO access from Highway 29 at that time...only Mallard Creek Church Road, 49, and access from Harris Blvd near the hospital.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Based on a poll of 1,865 incoming college students by an academic consulting firm (that I have never heard of) it appears that 25% are avoiding states due to political views. Alabama and Texas top the most avoided list. NC is currently on neither liberal or conservative to be avoided lists. 25% is a pretty huge number when demographic forces are reducing enrollments in higher ed nationwide.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3926811-one-in-four-college-applicants-avoids-entire-states-for-political-reasons/

"There but for the grace of god..."

The survey report itself: https://indd.adobe.com/view/f7cb9b98-22ad-433e-bd68-ef225093ab27

image.png.2e770b06c0613f0143f6e5541836d692.png

Edited by kermit
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Not specific to CPCC but it looks like Community Colleges are taking the bulk of the hit from the demographic decline in college age people. Sounds awfully bleak in terms of enrollments, graduation rates and work preparedness.

Guess they got too woke

https://apnews.com/article/community-college-enrollment-bb2e79222a4374f4869dc2e5359f2043

 

Edited by kermit
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 4/1/2023 at 6:28 PM, kermit said:

Based on a poll of 1,865 incoming college students by an academic consulting firm (that I have never heard of) it appears that 25% are avoiding states due to political views. Alabama and Texas top the most avoided list. NC is currently on neither liberal or conservative to be avoided lists. 25% is a pretty huge number when demographic forces are reducing enrollments in higher ed nationwide.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3926811-one-in-four-college-applicants-avoids-entire-states-for-political-reasons/

"There but for the grace of god..."

The survey report itself: https://indd.adobe.com/view/f7cb9b98-22ad-433e-bd68-ef225093ab27

image.png.2e770b06c0613f0143f6e5541836d692.png

I think this "Bill 715" ,introduced by Willis of Union County ,will pretty much solidify our position.  Education used to be such a priority in our State.  UNCC wanted to become Research 1 uni, but ain't going to happen any time soon with this bill.   Business will take note of this backwoods mentality.

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  • 2 weeks later...

UNCC has been struggling to hire talented faculty for a few years now (in my area roughly 50% of candidates offered tenure track faculty positions turn them down now as opposed to  10%ish 5-6 years ago).  In addition, the University has been struggling to maintain its leadership ranks, recent dean level and above retirements have nearly all been filled with interim folks and searches for permanent replacements have been very slow to get approved. None of these retirements were surprising or unexpected -- this was just horrible succession planning.

This  afternoon the new Provost (the Chief Academic Officer,  the 2nd in command at the University) resigned abruptly (the announcement said “effective immediately”). She only started her position in January of this year (the search lasted longer than she stayed on the job).  I can't say I know anything about her motivations to resign so it may or may not be related to the broader staffing and budgeting issues faced by the University.

It seems likely the bulk of the reason for the hiring struggles is very tight budgets (the system is aggressively paring the University’s funding in anticipation of enrollment declines, but enrollment at UNCC has remained steady). Several of the interim hires are likely explained by the system's unwillingness to pay market rates for these jobs at the moment. While tight budgets are not unusual for public higher ed, this comes at a time when the University is working hard to move into R1 status (the most research intensive classification). In order to make this shift, the University will need a bunch of money to reduce teaching loads for existing faculty (so they can be more research active) and hire new, higher-powered faculty as well (current efforts have not gone well). In the absence of the money necessary to accomplish these things  UNCC will remain a rudderless ship.

 

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There's no doubt that UNC Charlotte is feeling  a ton of pressure right now.   The current administration (not wholly wrongly) is desperate to make the university a major player in the state (athletics, research, enrollment, etc.) but the state politicians and BOG continue to push back and treat Charlotte like a 2nd tier institution.  For instance, Charlotte staff are paid using a pay scale that's a tier lower than Chapel Hill and NC State.  Additionally, moving the athletics program into that higher tier takes a lot of donor money and that doesn't seem to be coming in.   We haven't even been able to move forward with the football stadium expansion that is supposed to happen.  

I honestly don't know how much that had to do with this resignation.  Anyone think it could be working for a difficult boss???

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18 hours ago, kermit said:

UNCC has been struggling to hire talented faculty for a few years now (in my area roughly 50% of candidates offered tenure track faculty positions turn them down now as opposed to  10%ish 5-6 years ago).  In addition, the University has been struggling to maintain its leadership ranks, recent dean level and above retirements have nearly all been filled with interim folks and searches for permanent replacements have been very slow to get approved. None of these retirements were surprising or unexpected -- this was just horrible succession planning.

 

 

I'm surprised there're even still offering tenure track positions at all. Seems like there's an effort to do away with that.  

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10 minutes ago, Windsurfer said:

I'm surprised there're even still offering tenure track positions at all. Seems like there's an effort to do away with that.  

There is a movement to do that, but legislators are learning (slowly) that eliminating tenure means either increasing salaries (to compensate for less security) or relying on adjuncts who don’t do any of the administrative / service / research work necessary for the university to continue to operate (so grant funding drops and universities need to hire staffs to advise students, conduct annual reviews and handle graduate admissions)

Having said that, the UNC system basically eliminated tenure 20 years ago when it implemented a post-tenure review policy.

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5 hours ago, kermit said:

There is a movement to do that, but legislators are learning (slowly) that eliminating tenure means either increasing salaries (to compensate for less security) or relying on adjuncts who don’t do any of the administrative / service / research work necessary for the university to continue to operate (so grant funding drops and universities need to hire staffs to advise students, conduct annual reviews and handle graduate admissions)

Having said that, the UNC system basically eliminated tenure 20 years ago when it implemented a post-tenure review policy.

I guess the 'business model' doesn't necessarily work at a University.  It's been tough on my wife out there (UNCC) the past couple of years.  Morale is important.

Not sure I understand your last comment as I'm not an academic. Will ask the wife; however, she earned tenure 10 years ago, and while there doesn't seem to be any formal review policy, the pressure to publish, research AND teach is overwhelming.

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3 hours ago, Windsurfer said:

Not sure I understand your last comment as I'm not an academic. Will ask the wife; however, she earned tenure 10 years ago, and while there doesn't seem to be any formal review policy, the pressure to publish, research AND teach is overwhelming.

Nobody really has 'lifetime employment'. Once you have tenure in the UNC System everybody gets reviewed every five years to verify that you are still producing at appropriate levels. I never thought much about it, but when states like Florida and Texas started to eliminate tenure they implemented policies that look a lot like our post-tenure review system. 

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As a long time secondary education employee in NC my sense was always that tenure was not so much a job security issue as it was a free speech one. If I disagreed with the direction of school administration or published a political view in a non professional publication* it could not jeopardize my employment without extensive administrative procedures. The at-will status of employment was in the first three years of annual contracts. 

I grant that tertiary level tenure exists based on multiple categories of contributions.

*such as this site

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13 hours ago, kermit said:

Nobody really has 'lifetime employment'. Once you have tenure in the UNC System everybody gets reviewed every five years to verify that you are still producing at appropriate levels. I never thought much about it, but when states like Florida and Texas started to eliminate tenure they implemented policies that look a lot like our post-tenure review system. 

Seems to me, as an outsider, professors are harder on each other than any review might bring up. It's so competitive.  They know who doesn't serve on committees, does service work, research, etc.  The peer pressure is amazing to me.   

Just curious, does Texas and Florida allow profs to 'organize' ?

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7 minutes ago, Windsurfer said:

Seems to me, as an outsider, professors are harder on each other than any review might bring up. It's so competitive.  They know who doesn't serve on committees, does service work, research, etc.  The peer pressure is amazing to me.   

Just curious, does Texas and Florida allow profs to 'organize' ?

You are exactly right about the peer pressure.

Public sector unions appear to be prohibited in Texas, but allowed (with many restrictions) in Florida. None of the academics I know in Florida have ever discussed organizing.

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