Universities get a helping hand

Dan Kane, Staff Writer When the state House approved a budget three weeks ago, it called on the state’s public universities to save $19 million by cutting 188 mid-level administrative positions. It proposed to give university professors a smaller pay raise than those for public school teachers and community college instructors. And it offered little more than seed money for several building projects at UNC campuses.

But on Wednesday, the state Senate stepped up once again for the 16-campus system when it tentatively approved its own $20 billion budget proposal. The Senate plan would erase the personnel cuts, boost faculty pay raises to the 5 percent proposed for teachers and community college instructors and commit to $1.2 billion in borrowing for new construction, with nearly all that money going to UNC campuses.

And that’s not all. The Senate plan would restore $68 million in salary money for unfilled positions that the House took to help give most state workers a 4.25 percent pay increase. Senate budget writers would give an additional $15.5 million to the new research campus in Kannapolis, $5 million toward the bioengineering program at N.C. State University’s engineering college and set up an $8 million "competitiveness fund" to encourage campus research in growing fields such as nanoscience and environmental sciences that have potential for business spinoffs. (more…)