CHAPEL HILL – Randy Ramsey doesn’t shy away from discussing the challenges facing the University of North Carolina System.
“There are a lot of challenges facing the System,” the Chair of the UNC Board of Governors says in the accompanying video. “But at the same time, those challenges become real opportunities if we look at it in the right way.”
In an interview recorded before the coronavirus shutdown, Ramsey lists several of those challenges:
- At least $1.5 billion in needed repairs and renovations to university buildings – an estimate Ramsey thinks is low.
- Competitive faculty salaries, “which we currently are not able to provide.”
- Delivery of education in the future – a disruptive force only compounded by the coronavirus and the sudden shift of 50,000 classes online.1
- The rural-urban divide – a gap in health care and technology only accentuated by the coronavirus crisis and the absence of rural broadband access.2
- A projected decline in the traditional college-age population, and the need to recruit more non-traditional students, such as the 800,000 members of the military in North Carolina.
Interim UNC System President Bill Roper announced recently that the System has pared its budget request to state legislators for 2020-21 by $185 million. The proposal also postpones almost all of $632 million in capital projects to which legislators gave tentative approval last year.3
But the challenges Ramsey lists have not gone away during the coronavirus shutdown – if anything, and especially with online learning, they have become more urgent.
From classrooms to health clinics, Ramsey sees economic power in the UNC System.
“The University is so much more than just an opportunity to educate our people. I think that certainly is our mission. But the economic engine that we have – the ability lift up rural population, poor population – is really quite amazing,” he says.
“If we as a university really think carefully about what we can do to be more nimble, to support industry, we could see a lot more non-traditional students become part of our system.”
1 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2020/04/50000-classes-online/.
2 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2020/04/wifi-community/.
3https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article242081141.html.
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