Opinion: Instruction, not administration, is our mission

Administrative bloat is a topic on which conservatives and liberals seemingly agree. All parties seem to agree cutting salaries and costs at the administrative level is worthwhile. We admire and commend this cost control. After all, the North Carolina Constitution dictates that the benefits of the system “as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.”

Yet moral and ethical responsibility for choices cannot be cloaked by the trends seen among one’s peers. If everyone in your group of friends decides to rob two people and you rob one person, this does not make you half as guilty, nor does it excuse your behavior for being on the tail end.

This paper, on behalf of students and taxpayers, urges all involved in UNC administration to do even better.

Cut administration to the bone.

We question the ability of campus administrations, with clear-eyed clarity of purpose, to police their own administrative efficiency. We therefore ask President Margaret Spellings, as overseer of the whole UNC system, to bring her prior experience to bear here.

As a Texas native, she can look to the attempts of the University of Texas and Texas A&M to rein in these costs. She could ask fellow Bush administration veteran, former Governor of Indiana and current President of Purdue Mitch Daniels what he is doing to prune excessive administrative growth.

And with her history as Secretary of Education, she has no shortage of models and contacts in her Rolodex from whom to solicit ideas.

Spellings and her team should perform an exhaustive study, building on that of Bain & Company in 2011, looking for administrative redundancies and efficiencies that can be translated into a combination of savings for students and taxpayers, and better quality and higher quantity of instruction.

We acknowledge the real need for administration and non-instructional staff at UNC. Staff that help gather and administer research grants and philanthropic donations bring in more money than they cost. Compliance with federal regulations, ensuring the vast flow of federal dollars through our halls, requires diligent oversight. Information Technology Services serves as a relatively new infrastructure vital to all of our work.

Students also need to consider that every demand they make for support staff, whether in mental health, diversity, information technology or security, is possibly one less quality instructor who can be hired and experienced by students. Students, if they are here to be taught, must take a hard look at their priorities, too.

The UNC system codifies its priorities in its mission statement: “Teaching and learning constitute the primary service that the University renders to society. Teaching, or instruction, is the primary responsibility of each of the constituent institutions.” All else — research, public service, social supports, athletics and recreation — are secondary. Affordable education, not the administration of it, is UNC’s core mission.

In bringing in fresh eyes to the system, we urge Spellings to accomplish this.