I was going to write about the tone-deaf decisions by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to raise chancellors’ pay by between 8 and 19 percent. But Jenna Robinson, president of the Pope Center, has done it already in a hard-hitting column for Civitas Review. (Chancellors head the 16 university campuses of the UNC system.)
The nature of the increases shows that the board isn’t responding to a particular need or demand. They’re just blindly following higher education “consultants” over the fiscal cliff. Are we expected to believe that 12 of the 16 university chancellors are currently entertaining other, competitive offers? (Highly unlikely.) Or that they’ve all suddenly exceeded expectations on performance? (We know they haven’t. Graduation rates are still abysmally low.)
And, Jenna says, “It’s no wonder that the Board addressed these increases behind closed doors.” Faculty pay in the UNC system has gone up less than 2.5 percent over the past seven years.