The Facts: The Board of Governors approved to increase tuition for in- and out-of-state tuition across the UNC system. The chancellor’s salary has remained $420,000 through past budget cuts.
Our Opinion: It is unacceptable that upper-level administrators, including the chancellor, have not initiated pay cuts for themselves to preserve different facets of budget cuts.
Our tuition has officially been increased at least 6.2 percent for in-state undergraduate students and 3.5 percent for in-state graduate students, not to mention the increased tuition for 13 other specialized degrees. Next semester is going to be financially tougher for most students and decision crunch time is coming as students consider if they can continue to go to school. However, this isn’t the case for upper-level administrators, whose salaries remain the same — and this isn’t fair.
If there are departments getting cut and consolidated and professors and staff close to losing jobs, there is room to cut salaries of upper-level administrators who are dictating the cuts. The chancellor makes $420,000 a year, a figure that has remained unchanged, even through the past budget cuts. There is room to cut his and other administrators’ salaries to keep positions and departmental funding. These administrators need to maintain the integrity of their departments, so there is no reason to sacrifice them to maintain current salaries.
The increase in tuition is threatening the accessibility of a public education, yet administrators who have been with the University many years continue to make an exorbitant amount off of struggling students. Some of these students are helped by state grants and scholarships, but their support is getting closer to being cut. Upper-level administrators should take a pay cut and have it go to help need-based scholarships to make up for the possibility of these students losing their help from the state.
Many colleges rely heavily on research to maintain their reputation in the industry and continue to produce quality students and professors. Many of these programs have cut projects and researcher positions to make up for past cuts, and further cuts threaten the integrity of the programs. There is no reason portions of administrators’ salaries cannot go to fund research and projects. It can even be an application process to get funding from the pools, much like other grants and funding.
The University should have the satisfaction of knowing that administrators are looking at their own salaries and budgets as they ask the departments under them to change their budgets and make cuts. Looking at salaries across the board, it is obvious there is room to save and offset some costs by decreasing upper-level administrators’ salaries. It won’t solve all the problems, but it will help save some cuts to other, more pressing areas for students and in departmental budgets.
