UNC Chapel Hill does not anticipate a major academic restructuring – a la N.C. State University – to deal with ongoing budget cuts.

"We’re going to continually make changes," Robert Winston, chairman of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, said in a recent interview. "There will be some restructuring here and there. But nothing that will shock people and blow them away."

Last week, NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson announced a sweeping plan to eliminate some degree programs and merge departments and, potentially, entire schools.

The announcement was an indication that after four years of budget cuts, that campus could no longer get through the annual budget-cutting exercise by nipping around the periphery.

Woodson wants to rethink the entire university structure instead of gradually slicing away at every department’s budget, as it and other public universities have done for the last several years. At NCSU, budget cuts have already led to the elimination of jobs, class sections and other academic resources.

In Chapel Hill, UNC-CH's strategy is to assume cuts are coming and prepare for them as early as possible. To that end, Provost Bruce Carney pushed deans last October to start planning for cuts of 5 and 10 percent for next year, which for UNC-CH would be $26 and $52 million, respectively.

Normally, that wouldn't take place until March or April, Carney told trustees Wednesday afternoon. UNC-CH officials accelerated the exercise to allow more time to prepare for the cuts.

And UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp has already announced a five percent permanent budget cut effective July 1. That gives deans and department heads a half year to plan for the reductions.

"We’ll try to shield teaching and research and protect our ability to provide need-based financial aid," Thorp wrote in an e-mail to faculty and staff. "Admittedly, however, that will be harder to do moving forward because of the cumulative effects of the cuts we’ve taken so far."

Keep in mind: These cuts are for the next budget year. On top of that, universities have been asked to return to the state 3.5 percent of their spending for the current year, which, of course, is already half over. They must do so by March 1.

Read more about this in Thursday's News & Observer.

The UNC system spent more than $140,000 on the search that eventually narrowed its focus to a private college president just two hours away.

But UNC leaders say the money was well worth it. Searches for presidents and chancellors are intricate and logistically challenging, and paying a search consultant to assist - which eats up most of the cost - pays for itself, they say.

And believe it or not, 140K isn't much to pay for one of these searches. Many others cost far more.

Here's today's story about the search that brought Tom Ross to the UNC system. He starts work as Erskine Bowles' successor on Jan. 1.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, a cancer researcher held responsible for a security breach involving a computer service is fighting a demotion and pay cut.

Bonnie Yankaskas has spent 15 years running the Carolina Mammography Registry, a database of mammogram data used to better breast cancer screening.

Last summer, campus officials discovered a server holding much of that information had been breached. Yankaskas was blamed, her rank reduced from full to associate professor and her salary cut nearly in half.

She's not going without a fight, though. Yankaskas believes she's not responsible for the security breach and wants her job back.

Here's her story.

As you may have read in today's paper, tuition bills are headed to public university students this week, and they may be a good bit larger than many anticipate.

That's thanks to a supplemental tuition hike signed off on just last week by UNC system President Erskine Bowles. University leaders are raising tuition very reluctantly, and say it's the sole source of revenue critical to the day-to-day academic operations of the campuses.

Though parents may not see it this way, the UNC system remains a good deal when compared with other public institutions. And it is that comparison that campus officials at UNC-Chapel Hill were trumpeting this week.

Speaking to campus trustees, Carolina Provost Bruce Carney pointed out that, even with a sizable increase, tuition and fees at UNC-CH this fall will be $6,665 for undergraduate North Carolinians.

Here's how that compares with the university's public peers. This is what many of the public institutions with which Carolina most often compares itself charges for their own in-state undergraduates.

• Virginia - $10,808
• Michigan - $11,837
• UCLA - $10,781
• Texas - $8,618
• Florida - $5,020
• Wisconsin - $9,050

"We remain a very competitive deal," Carney concluded. "We're still an incredible bargain."

It's good information and an interesting look at how costly comparable institutions can be. But does it matter to students and parents?

Here's the thing: Virginia's in-state tuition rate doesn't matter to a high school senior in North Carolina because he or she would pay the out-of-state rate to go to school in Charlottesville.

That's $33,774 annually, so if a North Carolinian was choosing between Carolina and Virginia and cost was a key in the decision, Chapel Hill would probably be the winning destination.

And those public peer institutions aren't necessarily the top competitors for the students also considering Carolina, said Stephen Farmer, UNC-CH's director of undergraduate admissions.

In fact, talented North Carolinians considering UNC often also consider several private institutions in North Carolina like Duke, Davidson and Wake Forest, Farmer said. Others, like N.C. State, Virginia, Appalachian State and UNC-Wilmington, are often in the mix as well.

Farmer doesn't expect Carolina's tuition hike to have a significant impact in terms of how many applications come across his desk.

"Tuition is so low for North Carolinians, we'd have to increase increase tuition a ton to really affect a kid's decision to apply or enroll," he said.

UNC's new provost is same as the old provost.

Bruce Carney, who has served as interim provost since Bernadette Gray-Little left the post last year, has been given the position on a permanent basis.

UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp made the announcement today.

The university did a national search that netted three finalists. But none really fit, Thorp said in a letter today to the campus community.

"We prevailed upon Bruce to stay in his role," Thorp write in part. "Not only has he come to enjoy the job, but we've come to rely on him. He's done an outstanding job and appointing him allows us to continue moving forward without skipping a beat."

Carney, a physics professor, has held several top administrative posts and was most recently the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, a post vacated when Thorp himself was elevated to the chancellorship.

Here's Thorp's entire letter announcing Carney's hiring.

Dear Carolina community:

As you know, the search committee brought three excellent candidates to campus for public lectures and Q&A. But ultimately, there just wasn't a match. Rather than reopening the search, we prevailed upon Bruce to stay in his role.

When he took on the interim role, he had made it clear that he wasn't interested in the position permanently. But fortunately for us, he was willing to reconsider. Not only has he come to enjoy the job,
but we've come to rely on him. He's done an outstanding job, and appointing him allows us to continue moving forward without skipping a beat.

Please join me in congratulating Bruce.

Much has been made of late - particularly in this newspaper - about administrative bloat at the state's public universities.

UNC system President Erskine Bowles has called for a massive reduction in administrative positions across the state - to the tune of about 900 jobs, many of them filled.

But what, then, is an "administrator?" The broad use of the term is clearly bothering some folks. 

Take Alston Gardner, a trustee at UNC Chapel Hill. Gardner chairs the board's university affairs committee and this week gave a pep talk of sorts to Interim Provost Bruce Carney and to administrators, er, leaders, er, officials.

Anyhow, Gardner's point was that calling top academic officials at UNC-CH "administrators" sold them short.

"As if your job is to shuffle papers from one side of your desk to the other," Gardner said. "What you do is not 'administration.' What you do is leadership."

To give you an idea of just how vague the term "administrator" is these days, consider this: Last week, the UNC system released a list of administrative positions eliminated across the state as part of a massive budget-cutting initiative. At UNC-CH, 202 positions were eliminated. They all fall under that "administrator" umbrella. 

(You can see much of that information by clicking on the attachment below)

Here are 10 I'm picking out to illustrate how wide-ranging this categorization can be.

* Outdoor Drama program director.

*Project manager, N.C. Institute for Public Health Outreach

* Assistant dean, director of core facilities, school of medicine

* Receptionist - Renaissance Computing Institute.

* Security Guard, school of public health. 

* Associate vice chancellor, information technology.

* Facilities maintenance technician.

* Database administrator

* Development officer, Friday Center

*  Natural science educator, N.C. Botanical Garden

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