ECU faculty senate discusses tuition, salaries

A resolution that passed the ECU Faculty Senate last week follows the wake of a debate at UNC-Chapel Hill over tuition hikes and pay raises for professors.
“This could sound like sour grapes,” said James Joyce (Physics), in offering his resolution to “oppose any direct connection between faculty salaries and students.” The resolution passed in a unanimous vote.

Trustees at UNC were to vote, as early as this week, to raise tuition by $400 a year for in-state students and up to $3,000 for out-of-state graduate and professional students. Part of the estimated $9 million in proceeds would go to boost professor’s salaries at the UNC campus. Legislators this summer gave one-time authority to the trustees at UNC and N.C. State University to make the tuition rate changes. “It’s like tying faculty salaries to a state lottery,” Joyce said, in his remarks near the close of the Senate’s first fall meeting on Sept. 12. Earlier, Chancellor Richard Eakin, in responding to a question from Henry Ferrell (History), said it is “bad public policy” to hike tuition rates to bolster faculty salaries. Eakin said he hoped the state could be in a better position to find other resources for salary hikes at all of the universities.In other actions, the Faculty Senate added its endorsement, with one change, to a Senate committee’s study of 26 degree programs with low student turnout.

The programs were singled out by the UNC General Administration for having fewer than 15 graduates over a two-year period.
Worth Worthington (Medicine), the head of the Educational Policies and Planning Committee, presented the committee’s report that recommended continuation, consolidation or merger for all but two of the questioned programs. The committee recommended that graduate programs in Art Education and Political Science and Government be discontinued. Charles Chamberlain (Art) followed with a motion to seek continuation for the art program and said that it was the only one of its type in the state. His motion passed. Worthington said that nearly 50 percent of the justifications written on behalf of the programs did not answer the questions posed by the General Administration. He said the committee is suggesting that departments rewrite their justifications before submitting them for review in Chapel Hill.

The Senate also approved the formation of an Ad Hoc committee to define the mission of Continuing Education and endorsed a revision to the undergraduate catalog to delete the minimum age limit—16-years old— for freshmen applicants.