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When the legislature's Joint Select Committee on Higher Education
Facilities visited Carolina earlier this month, Vice Chancellor Marian Moore
summed things up aptly. The good news, she told members, is that we're the
oldest public university in the nation. And the bad news is that we're the
oldest public university in the nation.
A 205-year-old institution presents capital needs of every kind -- from
the necessity to expand and build new space to the need to modernize existing
facilities, many of which date back to or before the turn of the century. The
legislative committee received that message loud and clear during its Chapel
Hill visit, part of a larger statewide tour to assess the capital needs of our
public universities and community colleges and to recommend funding
options.
I was very heartened by the immediate response to the visit: At the end,
the co-chairs, Sen. Tony Rand and Rep. George Miller, expressed their
intentions to work hard to help us and our sister institutions meet our
facility needs. They also said that they were embarrassed by the conditions
they had seen here and by the fact that the state of North Carolina -- a
pioneer in supporting public higher education -- had failed in recent years to
be a good steward of the great treasure it possesses.
Throughout the tour -- which included stops at the Medical Science
Research Building, Venable Hall and Hill Hall -- we went to great pains to
allow legislators to see for themselves the situation we face every day: the
decaying classrooms, the leaky ceilings, the lack of air conditioning, the
near-obsolete research facilities, the cramped laboratories and the other
structural deficiencies that endanger our valuable resources. And they heard
about how these problems affect teaching, learning and research.
These capital needs were put into context as legislators were told about
the major increase Carolina is experiencing in research funding -- success that
is jeopardized by a critical shortage of laboratory space; our growing number
of science majors and the lack of research and classroom space to accommodate
them; the impact of similar space constraints on recruiting and retaining
top-notch faculty; and the effect of an expected 15 percent enrollment increase
over the next decade on our facilities, infrastructure and technology
needs.
We recognize that the public universities and community colleges are not
operating in a vacuum -- we are not the only ones desperately clamoring for
precious state dollars. We know that North Carolina is facing an extraordinary
budget situation due to hurricane relief efforts, costly court settlements and
the like. But the public universities and community colleges have long been at
the heart of our state's economic success. They have made this a better place
to live, and they have improved the human condition not only in North Carolina,
but far beyond our borders. In the long run, the state stands to lose
tremendously if it fails to reinvest in higher education.
At Carolina, we have don't expect taxpayers to shoulder the entire $1.6
billion estimated to cover our capital needs. In fact, the University has
proposed a multi-pronged funding approach in which only about half of that
price tag would come from the state. The rest would come from private fund
raising, self-liquidating projects and self-financing. As Jeff Houpt, dean of
the medical school, told the committee (borrowing from a popular ad campaign),
Carolina "is not looking for a hand-out, just a helping hand."
Based on the comments during and after the tour, I believe this was a case
of a picture being worth a thousand words. Legislators saw first-hand the needs
they had been hearing and reading about. They saw what a priceless gem the
state has in Chapel Hill. And I think they realized that if the very real, very
vital needs we are experiencing go unanswered, we all stand to lose -- not only
the students, faculty, staff and others directly connected to the University,
but everyone in North Carolina who is touched each day by the long reach of
this great institution.
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