In fiscal 2009, UNC Chapel Hill's endowment lost nearly 20 percent of its value. In real numbers, that's $440 million, from $2.2 billion to about $1.8 billion.

"That's a painful, significant loss," John King, of the UNC Management Co., told campus trustees this week. "It's something we'll be dealing with for a while."

Though tough to stomach, the endowment loss is not unusual. Universities everywhere have struggled this year with significant decreases in the value of their endowments. A study by Cambridge Associates shows that the average loss in fiscal 09 by a group of 163 colleges and universities is 20 percent - so UNC-CH is right at the average.

"Fiscal 09 was the worst college endowment year in decades - I'd even say years," King told trustees. "It's going to take a lot of time to repair the damage that occurred last year."

For more on the university's annual endowment fund report, click the document attached to this blog post.

Documents:

Don't like today's decision by trustees at UNC Chapel Hill to increase tuition and fees?

Try going to UCLA.

 At Carolina, trustees approved a plan today that would raise tuition and fees for in-state students by 5.2 percent.

At UCLA, all you-know-what is breaking loose as that campus ponders a 32 percent increase to its sticker price.

Yes, 32 percent.

Read more here.

At UNC Chapel Hill, trustees have signed off on a tuition and fee increase package for the next academic year.

The plan, which will now be submitted to the UNC system's Board of Governors, raises tuition $200 for in-state students. Out-of-state undergrads would get a $1,127 rate hike, while out-of-state grad students would pay $732 more in 2010-11.   Fees would go up $96.01 for all students.

Under the plan, in-state undergraduate students would pay $5,921.42 in tuition and fees next year, and out-of-staters would pay $24,736.42.

Those numbers do not include room, board, books and other expenses.

There's a catch to all this. The 2009 General Assembly has already set rates for 2010-11 that will raise in-state tuition $200 or 8 percent, whichever is less. That decision trumps anything on the campus or UNC-system level.

So the tuition rates the UNC-CH campus trustees approved today include that $200 increase for in-state students.

But last UNC system President Erskine Bowles said recently that legislative leaders  are willing to listen to alternate proposals.

If the General Assembly's edict holds, all tuition revenue raised would go into the state's general fund. If it decides next year to adopt a university tuition plan instead, revenue raised would be used for campus needs, and half of it would be set aside for financial aid.

Campus officials would very much like to keep that $200 that the General Assembly has targeted for the General Fund.

The increase for nonresident students has created some discontent, but campus and UNC-system leaders have long viewed those students differently than North Carolinians. Tuition for out-of-state students has often been set with market and competitiveness data used as guidelines.

Ryan Morgan, a UNC-CH student representing 5,000 other non-resident students, told trustees prior to Thursday's vote that the cost of an out-of-state education is forcing some students to withdraw.

"I myself am graduating one year early because I can't afford to stay here an additional year," said Morgan, who is from Alabama. "Out-of-state students are imperative to the quality of the university. What good is the best university in the country if you can't afford it?"

Read more on this issue in Friday's News & Observer.

John Grisham, author of 23 books including numerous best-selling legal thrillers, will deliver UNC-Chapel Hill's spring commencement address.

Chancellor Holden Thorp will preside at the ceremony on May 9 at 9:30 a.m. in Kenan Stadium.

Grisham's daughter, Shea,graduated from UNC-CH last year with a degree in elementary education and teaches in Raleigh.

“John is an engaging speaker who will have a profound message for our graduates and their families,” Thorp said in a news release. “His prowess with the written and spoken word makes him an excellent choice for a commencement speaker.  He has an inspirational story to share.”

Thorp chose Grisham in consultation with the University’s Commencement Speaker Selection Committee, which is made up of an equal number of students and faculty.

The author spoke at two North Carolina Literary Festivals held on campus, in 1998 and the most recent festival in September. 

Grisham’s last book, "Ford County," was published on Nov. 3 and is his first collection of short stories. "The Innocent Man," published in 2006, was his first work of non-fiction. Nine of his books have been made into movies.

UNC Chapel Hill's hiring of a corporate efficiency consultant last year was, at first, controversial on campus.

The on-campus furor over the hire, which was funded by an anonymous donor, seems to have subsided, and now the university is getting some good publicity for the move.

First, other big-name universities, like Cornell and Berkeley, followed Carolina's lead. And now, the New York Times has chimed in with a story noting, as the Times likes to do, a  trend in the making: universities turning to private consultants to look for cost savings.

Here's the story.

UNC Chapel Hill is getting the word out.

That's my conclusion, anyhow, from a new analysis of the nation's colleges and universities and their ability to get their brand out into the public realm via global print and electronic media, Twitter, blogs and social media.

The analysis comes courtesy of the Global Language Monitor. UNC-CH ranks 9th and is one of four major public universities in the top 10. Michigan tops the list, ahead of MIT and Harvard.

The top 10:
1) Michigan
2) MIT
3) Harvard
4) Columbia
5) University of Chicago
6) University of California-Berkeley
7) University of Wisconsin-Madison
8) Stanford
9) UNC-CH
10) Cornell

Duke placed 24th on the list.

The Sierra Club at UNC Chapel Hill is taking aim at the coal-fired cogeneration plant on the outskirts of the UNC-CH campus.

The club is in the midst of a campaign to convince the university to move beyond coal to renewable energies. 

It will host a rally today at 11:50 a.m. at the Polk Place flagpole.

Not surprisingly, the effort has a Facebook presence.

At UNC Chapel Hill, student leaders are bringing back an old tradition: the homecoming parade.

Homecoming is this weekend in Chapel Hill, and Carolina takes on Duke in football at 3:30 p.m. The parade will start at 11 a.m. at the Columbia Street/Cameron Avenue intersection.

As Student Body President Jasmin Jones writes today in the Chapel Hill News, student leaders want the event to be a town/gown initiative.

The last homecoming parade is believed to have been in 1993, according to this Daily Tar Heel report.

Remember back last week when UNC Chapel Hill hosted its first Thursday night football game?

Well, some folks got twisted a bit out of joint over it. (Click here and read the story and the comments...)

And to be sure, the UNC-CH faculty has long played a role in the university's decision not to schedule a disruptive Thursday night game on campus.

But UNC-CH made it happen this year. And if it bothered you, you're not alone. You need look no further than Blacksburg, where your Tar Heels will tonight be squaring off against the Virginia Tech Hokies. There, too, classes are being let out early due to the game, though it's being done on less of a formal basis.

And there, too, some faculty say a Thursday football game, broadcast nationally on ESPN, essentially proves that athletics trumps academics.

The Washington Post has this topic covered in some detail in today's paper, and the story ends with this quote from a Virginia Tech prof, proving that not every academic sees the issue the same way.

A football team "does great things for the university, much more so than somebody discovering something in their PhD dissertation, which five people read. That's true, and we're going to have to live with it."

In a scathing letter published today in UNC Chapel Hill's Daily Tar Heel student newspaper, an emeritus faculty member bludgeons the university for last week's football game, which necessitated an early end to the workday for thousands of employees.

Charles Murphy wrote that the move illustrates that the university is ruled not by academics but by athletics, and writes that the operating rooms at the hospitals were shut down to accommodate game traffic.

He wrote in part: "Even UNC Hospitals operating rooms closed at 3 p.m. last Thursday. God help those who have the audacity to become acutely ill or injured during the Sacred Hours."

Well, that's not precisely accurate.

This according to Karen McCall, a spokeswoman for UNC Health Care:

The hospitals and ambulatory care center have 35 operating rooms.

That's 31 at the main hospital and the women's and children's facilities, and four more at the ambulatory care center.

At the hospitals, two are always held open for emergencies.

Hospital officials did not shut the rest down at 3 p.m. last Thursday, the time at which university employees were ordered home to clear the way for football fans, McCall said.

Rather, the hospitals went to a reduced operating room schedule in much the same way it would on holidays or at other times when there are fewer scheduled surgeries.

Thus, there were 18 operating rooms in use at 3 p.m. that day, then scaled back to 9 at 7:30 p.m., McCall said. The operating rooms at the ambulatory care center were shut down at 3 p.m., as were the clinics there, she said.

The next morning, everything resumed at a normal schedule.

"We reduced the number of operating rooms running in response to the fact that people would have a hard time getting in and out," McCall said. "We never closed. The emergency room is always open."