The UNC system’s five-year strategic plan places a vital emphasis on increasing students’ ability to access advising and fulfill requirements while cutting costs.
UNC-system President Tom Ross spoke about the plan at a lecture held at UNC-CH on Friday. He believes that decreasing the average number of hours-to-degree attempted by undergraduates is a plausible way to save time and money.
Many students begin their first semester oblivious to requirements and may have no alternative but to pursue excessive credit hours to fulfill them. Additionally, some change majors and must suddenly fulfill new requirements halfway through their undergraduate career.
The strategic plan should be praised for addressing these problems through a focus on improving academic advising. Ross is enthusiastic about creating a degree-completer software program that would allow students to easily view which courses they should be taking to pursue a certain path.
This is a much-needed step, considering some system schools currently have no online tracking system.
The plan also calls for creating general education courses online and making online classes free for students enrolled full time. This would further increase a student’s ability to fulfill requirements, especially for nontraditional students.
As long as quality is maintained in online classrooms, the UNC system should push forward with these plans. A recent award praising the system’s online proctoring setup is proof that its online practices have maintained integrity thus far.
Through these goals, a reduction of average attempted hours from 138.5 to 134 across the system would result in a cost avoidance of $58 million. Implementing these strategies is an easy way to combat budget cuts while increasing efficiency.
