Ross, other NC leaders talk higher education

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — A fist bump between Tom Ross and Scott Ralls on Wednesday epitomized the working relationship between the UNC system and North Carolina’s community colleges, as well as the friendship between the two departing higher education leaders.

The presidents of the UNC system and North Carolina Community College System, respectively, discussed a wide array of higher education issues in the state during a panel discussion hosted by the Harvard Club of the Research Triangle and Higher Education Works.

They were joined on the panel by two North Carolina legislators — Sen. Josh Stein, D-Wake, and Sen. Jeff Tarte, R-Mecklenburg.

“Higher education nationally is facing a lot of different challenges. Some of those are narratives that have built up and come out of the recession, such as whether higher education has value anymore,” Ross said. “Some is the shifting of the funding of higher education more toward funding by individuals and their families as opposed to states.”

Ralls said the state’s community college system is the most comprehensive in the country and has a smaller enrollment decline than any other community college system in the Southeast.

“Forty percent of all the wage earners in our state have been a student at one of our 58 colleges sometime in the last 10 years,” he said.

Ross and Ralls also boasted the strong relationship between the two systems. Ralls said the state is unique in that university leaders have helped develop the community college system.

“In North Carolina, it was university leaders who were part of the development, and I think that’s influenced our system in that regard.” Ralls said.

Tarte spoke about the “student swirl” concept, or the link between community colleges and four-year universities. He said students will drop out later on not because they are doing poorly, but because they run out of money. The link between the community colleges and universities helps these students stay in school.

Stein said to attract new businesses to the state, accessibility to higher education will continue to be imperative. But he said the state is not doing well in ensuring that students are able to attain higher education, given cost increases.

One way to do so, he said, is to encourage students to attend community college for two years for an associate’s degree before transitioning into universities.

“It is so much more accessible to people’s daily lives to get a start in a community college, so let’s have more people go to community college, get that hook in their mouth for the desire to have a higher education degree,” Stein said.

Ross said one of his major concerns is the increasing difficulty of recruiting and retaining UNC-system faculty members. At UNC-CH, he said the number of faculty accepting other offers has increased.

“Universities are, at their core, made up of really strong faculty, and our faculty have received minimal compensation over the last seven years,” Ross said.

A recent proposal would have required UNC-system professors to teach eight courses a year to receive their full salaries.

“The bill that was introduced sort of lumps everybody together, and I think we all know that there are different faculty that have different roles to play,” said Ross in an interview. “People are investing (in faculty) in other states and so there’s a chance for them to go somewhere else where they can maybe do better.”

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