An early look at Gov. Beverly Perdue's budget proposal, which rolls out today, suggests she wants to protect higher education to some extent.

As Michael Biesecker reports over at our Under the Dome blog, the governor doesn't include university workers in a series of proposed job eliminations.

She proposes modest increases to the UNC system for enrollment increases but concedes a tuition hike of some level is likely necessary.

She has also proposed a new N.C. Career and College Promise, that would provide two years of tuition-free college credit to state high school students who keep high grades and maintain other standards.

Duke has a new dean for arts & sciences.

The university announced today that Laurie L. Patton, a professor of religions at Emory University, will become the next dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences.

She starts in July.

Patton will oversee the university's core academic units offering courses and degrees in arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

Patton, the current director of Emory's Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, is praised as an accomplished scholar with a love of teaching.

“She is a natural community builder who values the best of traditional education while having a sharp eye to the future," said Duke President Richard Brodhead in a news release. "She will bring energy, wisdom and vision to this crucial appointment.”

Patton received a bachelor's degree from Harvard and a doctorate from the University of Chicago. She has written or edited eight books on South Asian history, culture and religion. From 2000 to 2007, she chaired Emory's religion department.

Patton will succeed Alvin L. Crumbliss, a chemistry professor and former dean of natural sciences who was appointed Arts and Sciences dean in May 2010 upon the departure of former dean George McLendon to become the provost of Rice University.

 The nursing school at UNC-Chapel Hill is cutting enrollment 25 percent to save money.

That means the school will admit 152 students next year, down from 208.

The enrollment reduction starts with students admitted for the summer semester that starts in May.

The move is a reaction to ongoing budget pressures, including a 5 percent permanent cut instituted by the university in January and additional cuts expected to reach as high as 15 percent.

The move is a rare, tangible example of how the ongoing budget pressures are restricting access to public higher education in North Carolina. UNC system campuses generally try not to restrict access to their programs.

“We are committed to offering high-quality, rigorous and safe programs for entry into nursing practice at the baccalaureate and advanced practice levels,” said School of Nursing Dean Kristen M. Swanson. “The budget challenges have left us little alternative but to reduce the number of students we enroll.”

The enrollment reductions must be implemented now because postponing them until January 2012 would not allow adequate savings to meet budget requirements, according to a news release. The school continues to explore additional means to absorb the anticipated budget cuts.

School of Nursing students have two options for preparation to enter into practice as a registered nurse (RN): the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) six-semester program or the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) four-semester program for applicants with a baccalaureate or higher degree in another field of study. Together, the BSN and ABSN programs have been graduating approximately 200 new nurses each year.

The projected need for nurses continues to grow because of health-care reform, the health-care needs of the aging Baby Boomer generation and an aging nursing workforce.

“Given the nursing shortage it is truly unfortunate to find ourselves reducing enrollments to the levels we realized 10 years ago,” Swanson said. “However, we cannot sacrifice the quality or safety of nursing education, so our difficult choice was to reduce the number of students.”

If you're a college student - and definitely if you're the parent of a college student - you know what the FAFSA is.

And more than likely, you say it through clenched teeth, with a scowl and a furrowed brow.

The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the gateway through which the nation's college students get federal and state aid for college.

And it's no picnic. It's not a particularly long application, but it's detailed and murky and you have to do it every year.

The state offers some help, in the form of FAFSA Day, which is held this Saturday across the state.

Read on.

My bad.

I wrote this story last week about the UNC system's decision to eliminate 60 low-performing degree programs across the state.

I didn't list them all. That's a lot of real estate in a newspaper.

Thankfully, a few readers pointed me to the existence of something called the Internet, a newfangled gizmo that is apparently a useful way to disseminate information.

So here goes:

There's a pdf attached to this blog post. Click it open and you'll find the entire list of program cuts. The list starts on page 5.

Documents:

My bad.

I wrote this story last week about the UNC system's decision to eliminate 60 low-performing degree programs across the state.

I didn't list them all. That's a lot of real estate in a newspaper.

Thankfully, a few readers pointed me to the existence of something called the Internet, a newfangled gizmo that is apparently a useful way to disseminate information.

So here goes:

There's a pdf attached to this blog post. Click it open and you'll find the entire list of program cuts. The list starts on page 5.

Documents:

General rule of thumb: If you're planning to protest a big decision by a governing body, get there while that body is actually meeting.

This morning, a small collection of students primarily from UNC-Chapel Hill gathered at 10 a.m. at The Pit toting protest signs. They then marched resolutely down South Road to the Spangler Center, where the UNC system's Board of Governors meets.

Problem: They were late. The board did in fact meet Friday, and approved tuition hikes averaging 6.8 percent for public university students. But the meeting began at 9 and was done before 10 a.m., well before the protesters arrived.

Kinda blunts the power of the message, doesn't it?

The small group arrived around 10:20 a.m., chanting "No Cuts, No Fees, Education Should be Free," a noble sentiment, if unlikely.

A change in law last summer led UNC-Chapel Hill to inadvertently admit too many out-of-state students.

The result, a $158,000 reduction to its budget.

That's how the UNC system rule on out-of-state freshmen works. No more than 18 percent of a public university's freshman class can come from outside North Carolina. If a campus exceeds that ceiling two years running, it gets sanctioned.

Carolina missed twice, thus the fine, as explained here.

But the twist in the story is that it only exceeded the cap after a group of out-of-state athletes headed to the university who up until last summer would have been counted as in-staters had a change in status thanks to a legislative decision.

Fun's over.

UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp has now apologized for his tweet earlier today about Krzyzewskiville. Sheesh. And this Chancellor/President feud was just showing some promise.

Sheesh.

His latest:

"Sorry about the tent/Kville Tweet. Both U's have great students. I shouldn't have gotten carried away by our rivalry in basketball."

Well, I suppose that was fun while it lasted.

Thorp's apology came just after I used my journalistic cunning to pry this response out of Duke President Richard Brodhead:

"Hey Holden, someone hacked your Twitter account to talk trash. May the best team win. From the land of TRUE Blue, Dick."

Some context: Thorp's comments came during a digital town hall discussion on innovation.

Okay. Everyone get back to work.

It's on, now.

As you may recall, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp stirred the pot something fierce this morning, calling out Duke University and its Krzyzewskiville tent city in the tweet you see below.

Subtle, huh?

Now, Duke President Richard Brodhead isn't on Twitter. But he's also apparently reluctant to let Thorp's gameday taunt stand unaddressed.

So here's his response, which just arrived in my in-box.

"Hey Holden, someone hacked your Twitter account to talk trash. May the best team win. From the land of TRUE Blue, Dick. "