TO THE EDITOR:
Dear Students of UNC:
In the past 25 years, I’ve moved from Chapel Hill to Durham to Montana to New Orleans to Ohio to where I now teach in Southern Utah. Starting over means meeting many, many people. As the conversation turns to where I’ve lived, the question of where I went for undergrad inevitably comes up.
“UNC Chapel Hill,” I say, trying to look modest.
“Oh! That’s a great school,” everyone says, visibly impressed. Until now.
“Oh,” I heard yesterday. “Isn’t that where they just hired that horrible president?”
Students, I live in the middle of the desert, and the news has arrived. Students, your future degrees crashed like the stock market of 1929.
Do you want a president who isn’t qualified to teach as a graduate assistant? Do you want a president who spearheaded the educational policy that made you sit for weeks on end of standardized testing? A policy that is now acknowledged as an official waste of time? Do you want a homophobe making decisions?
When I was in school, UNC in-state tuition and fees in 1988-89 was $876. Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator for inflation, $876 translates into $1,761.96 for 2015. The current rate is posted as $8,591.02. As you pay off those student loans thinking, “Gee, I’d actually be doing okay if I didn’t have this chunk of money taken out every month,” maybe you’ll wonder about that $775,000 salary. Ask yourself, who benefits? (Hint: it’s not you).
