Daily News

Paul Fulton With enrollment in the U\NC system projected to grow by almost 50 percent over the next 10 years, to nearly 300,000 students, this is no time to cut the university’s faculty.

Yet that’s what the 2007-09 budget proposal approved by the state House earlier this month would do.

The House eliminated positions in state government that had been vacant at least six months. That creates unique hardships for universities, which can often leave a faculty position unfilled for almost a year because of the hiring cycles created by the semester schedule.

For the UNC system, it would mean elimination of 1,088 positions — 734 of them faculty positions. The campuses that are growing fastest would be hit hardest.

In percentage terms, the toll would be greatest at Winston-Salem State University, where enrollment is growing at roughly 15 percent a year. The House budget would eliminate 151 vacant positions there, 124 of them faculty — the equivalent of a 13.9 percent cut in the campus budget.

In personal terms, though, the toll might be greatest at Western Carolina University, where the House budget would eliminate 31 faculty positions — one of them held open for a faculty member deployed in Iraq. (more…)

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