Protecting our identity

The uncertainty following Chancellor Holden Thorp’s announcement that he will resign reveals a truth we can no longer ignore: the University is facing a crisis of identity.

Thorp presided over the University during a period of unprecedented budget cuts, scandals surrounding big-time athletics and economic hardship. These challenges remain.

We are at a critical juncture with shifting leadership. Students, faculty and administrators should advocate for upcoming leadership to maintain a mission of commitment to the intrinsic value of education and to service in the public good.

In recent years, a corporate mindset has emerged in colleges across the country set on limiting the purpose of public higher education to preparing students for their future careers, giving them only the technical and professional skills necessary for a job.

While that training is critical, programs and schools already exist to provide that. Adopting that approach for all of higher education narrows the mission of universities so greatly as to lose sight of their role in making students not just employable, but better thinkers and more engaged citizens.

Most students who take courses in the visual and performing arts, humanities and social sciences are not going to become professionals in those areas. But they develop skills for critical thinking and a capacity for enjoyment that will enable them to live more fulfilling, productive lives.

And without the commitment of the state’s resources to the arts at the University, the talents of Paul Green and Thomas Wolfe, two of North Carolina’s greatest writers, might never have been developed.

Dedication to the liberal arts is important because universities are both engines of economic prosperity and centers of culture.

And the value of that dual mission is not reducible to the corporate bottom line. In the case of universities, a quality education matters even in the least marketable of their academic divisions.

Another important aspect of our mission is a commitment to the public good. Throughout most of the University’s history, that was limited to the state of North Carolina. As former UNC President Edward Kidder Graham said, “We hope to make the campus coextensive with the boundaries of the state.”

Under the direction of him and other UNC leaders, the University fought the great social problems of the state, including poverty, racism and illness throughout the 20th century.

A vision of the University as just a place for professional development leaves little room for that commitment to public service.

Of course, difficulties remain. We cannot ignore the constraints of budget cuts.

Dealing with these issues remains a challenge for colleges across the country and we have to find ways to be more efficient.

But efficiency shouldn’t come at the expense of the very identity of this University.

Students, faculty and administrators should ensure our next leaders maintain a commitment to the intrinsic value of learning and to the public good as the University moves forward.