UNC to its campuses: Spread the business around

This week, the UNC system’s governing board will consider adopting a “value statement” making clear some of the public university system’s strategies as it navigates these lousy economic times.

While some of it is the usual rhetoric: “Protect UNC’s commitment to teaching, research and public service” - there are a couple components that send a firm message to the system’s 17 campuses.

For one, it directs campuses to consider across-the-board cuts only as a last resort. Cutting every division of a university equally is easier, in a sense, but administrators say doing so makes little sense because not every division, department, class and function has equal value.

The catch? It requires campus leaders to look very critically and make unpopular decisions. Nobody wants to be the one to tell Professor X, who has taught at Big State University for 30 years and is wildly popular on campus, that his Center for the Study of Vanilla Ice Cream is no longer relevant.

“Consider strategic vertical cuts that would reduce or eliminate nonproductive and/or nonessential programs and centers that no longer contribute in as meaningful a way to the campus’ modern mission as they once did,” the statement reads in part.

The next line in the statement is also interesting because it speaks to the desire of UNC system officials to have campuses act more as a cohesive unit rather than as 17 separate parts.

“Where feasible and appropriate, face-to-face courses that are eliminated should be made available through high-quality on-line instruction via UNC online. campuses are encouraged to continue their commitment to be more outward-facing, collaborative and regionally engaged.”

Okay, so here’s what that line means, though it doesn’t specifically say it. If a UNC system campus has a mediocre academic program that costs a lot of money, it should be scrapped, even if it means sending students to a similar, Internet-based course offered by another university.

Yes, the UNC system wants its campuses to send its customers away if and when it makes academic and financial sense.

“You’re sending it to the UNC system,” Hannah Gage, chairwoman of the UNC system’s Board of Governors, told me this week. “It does involve a deeper degree of education from the people who guide students. And it is cross-promotion. But we are a system.”

In recent years, the UNC system has used online courses more and more heavily in dealing with an increasing demand for its services.

And campuses see the value. In 2008, enrollment in distance education courses jumped 20 percent over the previous year, and campuses continue to ratchet up their online services.

A committee of the UNC system’s board will discuss the value statement Thursday.