If you're a college leader filling out a peer survey for U.S. News & World Report, make a copy.

Or two. Put one in your bottom drawer and give another to your secretary.

Just don't expect to ever get it back from the news magazine.

The peer survey is one of several components U.S. News uses in putting together its annual Best Colleges issue, a brisk seller whose pronouncements are routinely trumpeted by universities that rate well.

Essentially, college leaders get to rate their academic programs on a 1 to 5 scale. Anonymously.

None of this would have been of much public consequence had a data analyst from Clemson University not give a Seminar Heard 'Round Higher Education last month at a conference. Catherine Watt, who worked in institutional research at Clemson and thus was responsible for compiling data sent in to U.S. News for its rankings issue, offered a peek behind the process. In part, she said that leaders at her university and others generally gave low rankings to all their peer institutions in order to make theirs look better.

Yikes.

Of course, Clemson higher-ups quickly put out a statement denouncing Watt's story.

Here's where it gets more interesting.

On the News & Observer's editorial page today, some skepticism over the continual use of search firms by public universities.

UNC Chapel Hill is once again using a search firm, this time to find its next provost. Soon, we'll be reporting on N.C. State's hiring of a search firm to aid in its upcoming search for a new chancellor.

These companies aren't cheap. Or, better put, they don't seem cheap. UNC-CH is paying William Funk, a well-regarded search consultant, at least $72,800 for his services. That's a lot of money to me, and it's probably a lot of money to you, too. But university leaders routinely say it's worth the money to find the best candidate; a provost is an institution's chief academic officer, a massive job.

And, these bills are usually paid with private money, not state appropriations, so technically, the state university isn't spending state money.

So what do you think? Is it money well spent?

The Mary Easley mess has complicated life for N.C. State's fundraisers.

At least, that's what can be gleaned from some of the many letters and e-mails contained within last week's massive document dump. NCSU is releasing hundreds of pages of documents related to the controversial hiring of the state's former First Lady as a federal investigation into her husband's dealings continues.

If you want to read through these hundreds and hundreds of documents, go for it. Here's the link.

 In reading through some of this, I've been struck by the damage being done to fundraising as the details of Mrs. Easley's change in pay and job description last year emerge. Clearly, some NCSU alums are less than thrilled with their university.

In one exchange, NCSU's development chief, Nevin Kessler, writes a letter to an alum disenchanted with the university for soliciting money from him while at the same time giving Mrs. Easley her new job and a salary of $170,000. In it, Kessler explained the process by which Mrs. Easley received her expanded job duties, emphasizes NCSU's desire to remain affordable, and finishes with a pitch for the alum to change his mind about giving to the university.

"Unrestricted alumni support is what helps balance affordability and quality at N.C. State," he writes. "I hope you will agree that the university merits your financial support."

In another e-mail, we find another angry alum explaining why he's putting the checkbook away. Here's the whole letter, sent to Ann Horner, who directs NCSU's annual giving initiative.

"I received your letter asking for my 2008-2009 gift," the alum wrote. "Simply stated, if NCSU can afford to give Mary Easley an $80,000 salary increase it no longer needs my support. As a three-time NCSU graduate I have always taken great pride in The School and cannot overstate my disappointment in this matter."

"That the Chancellor of NCU would give such a rich reward to the wife of a sitting governor has lowered my respect for the chancellor and, sadly, for The School as well."

The latest news out of N.C. State University involves an e-mail account maintained by former Chancellor James Oblinger. Turns out, the chancellor had two accounts - one for general university business and the other for high-importance stuff requiring a speedy response.

Problem - many of those e-mails are missing. Nobody over at NCSU - in trying to respond to demands from federal authorities - can find the e-mails but are trying to re-create them.

The N&O's Joe Neff has the story here.

It got me to thinking about whether it was standard for campus chancellors to use two e-mail accounts, so I put some questions to Joni Worthington, the UNC system's spokesperson.

Here are the highlights:

 Is it customary for campus chancellors to use two email accounts? If
so, are they told specifically to do so? If not, do some do so? Which
ones?

 I believe that several of the campuses have a "generic" email address for the chancellor (e.g., "chancellor@....) that's posted on the website, etc., that is different from the email address that the chancellor uses in the ordinary course of business. 

There is no question that all email accounts used by a chancellor would be considered public accounts and should be treated accordingly.  There has never been a directive from General Administration advising chancellors to use a second email account, and I do not know which chancellors use dual addresses.

Does President Bowles use two email accounts?

 President Bowles has only one email account.

When a reporter or member of the public requests a chancellor's
emails on a particular topic, are they drawn from all accounts that
chancellor has?

  When responding to documents requests for a chancellor's email (whether from media or the general public), relevant email should be captured from all accounts, whatever the email address.  I certainly believe that to be the University-wide practice.
 There is no problem with a chancellor using more than one university email address, so long as all accounts used in the course of conducting University business are appropriately treated as public accounts.

One N.C. State University student says the situation with Mary
Easley's job and the resignations of the chancellor and provost is all the more galling because of how the state's budget cuts are affecting the students. Find more letters about NCSU under the letters tab above or click here.

Embattled former First Lady Mary Easley broke her silence today, sort of.

She just released an open letter that really doesn't say much. Will she step down from her N.C. State University post, as campus officials want her to do? It doesn't say. Will she fight for her job? No mention.

What does she think about the last few days at NCSU, during which Chancellor James Oblinger resigned as e-mails revealed the extent to which Easley's husband, former Gov. Mike Easley, played a role in her hiring?

No idea.

We have learned that she supports N.C. State.

She writes in part: "I urge all of the North Carolina State family to now focus on the best welfare of the students and be mindful of the great tradition of the university system in North Carolina. I will continue to fully support this outstanding institution."

Open the attachment below to read the entire, three-paragraph letter.

Documents:

It should be an interesting week in west Raleigh, where news continues to trickle out about ex-provost Larry Nielsen's pay.

We learn Sunday that the day before Nielsen resigned, Chancellor James Oblinger okayed an increase to Nielsen's severance package.

The change is apparently a violation of unversity policies. Read more about that here, and keep checking www.newsobserver.com. The plot will likely continue to thicken early this week.

McQueen Campbell, whose close ties to former Gov. Mike Easley were the subject of a News & Observer investigation, has resigned as chair of N.C. State's board of trustees.

In doing so, he insisted he's done nothing improper.

In a series of exhaustively-researched stories over the weekend, reporter Andy Curliss examines former Gov. Mike Easley and his many associations.

One, in particular, should be interesting to observers of higher education in North Carolina: McQueen Campbell, an Easley confidant who the governor twice appointed to the board of trustees at NCSU. Campbell, who now chairs that board - and did do when First Lady Mary Easley was given a massive pay raise - will soon step down when his term expires.

Curliss examined Easley's relationship with Campbell in the second major piece of his series. You can read that story here.

Here's a link to the entire story package, complete with timeline of events.

A researcher at N.C. State who made a career out of investigating the bacteria responsible for the words "contains live and active cultures" on every yogurt cup you've ever seen was recognized Friday for his work.

Todd Klaenhammer, who has spent 31 years in an NCSU lab, received the O. Max Gardner Award, the UNC system's top faculty honor. It recognizes a distinguished body of work primarily related to what some call "good bacteria," which we get through yogurt and other dairy products.

This bacteria helps bolster our immune systems, Klaenhammer explained Friday, drawing chuckles from members of the UNC system's Board of Governors as he accepted his award with a quickie version of Good Bacteria 101.

"If you count the number of cells in your body, there are 10 times more bacteria in you and on you than cells in your bodies," he told the audience, most of whom are not professors of food bioprocessing and nutrition sciences and thus had to take him at his word. "Think about that. They're the good guys. They protect you."

Klaenhammer explained that his research group - which has overseen the educations of 43 graduate students and 21 post-docs over the years -focuses in two areas. First, it works to understand the properties that make the bacteria beneficial to humans. And second, it goes a step further and looks for ways the bacteria can be used to deliver vaccines.

On that latter front, there's been progress. His work has created a new way to deliver an anthrax vaccine orally to mice, and it is also being used for HIV vaccine delivery research.

One projected benefit - because this bacteria can be easily made and stored in a dried form, it could provide a new immunization strategy in under-developed nations, where injections may not be feasible.

"The word 'groundbreaking' is used often," said Ann Goodnight, a UNC system board member who chaired the committee that selected Klaenhammer for the award. "But in the case of Dr. Klaenhammer, it is all too true."

The Gardner award honors top faculty from across the 16-university system, but in recent years it has had a Triangle flavor. Klaenhammer is the eighth member of the NCSU faculty to win the award since 1997; UNC Chapel Hill has had three winners in that same time period.

(NCSU and UNC-CH share one winner, chemist Joe DeSimone, who holds faculty appointments at both universities and won in 2000.

N.C. Central University faculty members have won twice in recent years as well – physicist Branislav Vlahovic in 2004 and biochemist Ken Harewood in 2006.