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?

In a letter to faculty, staff and students, UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp this week noted that cuts to the new year's operating budget are expected to total 10 percent.

Those won't be across-the-board cuts at UNC-CH or, most likely, at other public universities as well. UNC system officials generally frown at that practice, preferring instead to be analytical and critical in their budget-cutting and find places that can best take the hit or are under-performing.

In Thorp's memo, which you can read by clicking the attached document, he writes that the budget picture in Raleigh "remains bleak."

"Revenue projections haven't improved during the fourth quarter," he writes. "Nothing has changed expectations that significant cuts will be necessary for all state agencies in the new fiscal year."

A 10 percent cut at UNC-CH will total about $60 million in lost funding.

One bright spot - a new contract UNC-CH just inked with Nike for apparel and equipment for sports teams include a $2 million donation to the Chancellor's Academic Enhancement Fund, which Thorp will use to pay fixed-term faculty and instructors.

Documents:

UNC Chapel Hill is turning once again to a search consultant for help finding a top administrator.

William Funk, whose Dallas-based search firm was paid more than $100,000 to lead last year's chancellor search that resulted in the hiring of home-grown Holden Thorp, will earn $72,800 plus expenses to find the university's next provost.

The university will pay Funk with private sources, not state money.

Funk knows Carolina well. Along with running last year's chancellor search, he advised the University of Kansas during its recent search for a new president. The result? The hiring of Bernadette Gray-Little, the UNC-CH provost whose departure now necessitated the new Carolina search.

Of course, a campus search committee has been assembled as well. Its task will be to evaluate candidates Funk brings to them. Shelton Earp, who directs the university's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, will chair the committee.

Bruce Carney, a professor of physics and astronomy, will serve as interim provost. Carney is apparently the university's go-to interim guy; most recently, he served as interim dean of the university's College of Arts & Sciences, a post left vacant when Thorp was elevated to chancellor.

It is not unusual for a university to employ a consultant to run this sort of search.

Funk is well-known in education circles. He has conducted searches for about 300 university presidents or chancellors and, according to his website, is responsible for placing about 70 current university leaders in their jobs. He was once dubbed "the matchmaker" by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's that story, though you may need a password to access it.

"He knows everybody in higher education," said Roger Perry, chairman of UNC-CH's Board of Trustees. "He knows who all the prospects are and he really knows how to check them out. When you get interested in somebody, he really knows how to vet that person as far as strengths and weaknesses."

The UNC Chapel Hill student organization that caused a stir on campus by bringing in two speakers who oppose illegal immigration has lost its faculty sponsor.

Chris Clemens, a professor of physics and astronomy, has stopped advising Youth for Western Civilization, a fledgling group that brought former congressmen Tom Tancredo and Virgil Goode to campus this past semester.

Tancredo's speech went off the tracks when protesters were so disruptive that campus police shut the event down, leading campus officials to call the former congressman to apologize.

Goode's talk the following week was marred again by protesters - several of whom were arrested - but he was able to finish speaking.

Clemens said today he supports the UNC-CH students who formed the local group, but thinks they should separate from the national Youth for Western Civilization organization, which helps fund the local group's activities. The national organization is led by "provocateurs" who like to stir things up and create controversy, Clemens said.

"The national group has its own agenda," he said, adding that bringing in controversial speakers baits protesters, who appear willing to continue protesting their campus events. "It's going to be impossible to have any constructive dialogue. The radical leftists on campus are not going to let them do anything without total disruption."

A conservative, Clemens says he's a rarity on the liberal Chapel Hill campus - so much so that he's one of just a couple professors conservative students can turn to when they need a group advisor.

Clemens advises three such groups now, and has been involved with as many as five at one time. But generally, it involves little heavy lifting; you sign some forms, you answer the occasional question. 

"My philosophy is that it's a student-run organization, so let the students run it," he said.

But the furors that erupted following the Tancredo appearance last semester illustrated to Clemens that the campus YWC group - as long as it carried that name - would create more trouble than he has time for. He'd be willing to help the YWC students if they broke from the national group and re-formed with a new name.

"It's my time, and it's my concern that this is not the best way to have a constructive conversation," he said.

The Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper, has more on the story here.

State budget officials have given public university and community college leaders the green light to start spending again. Conservatively.

 The Office of State Budget and Management has told campuses that on July 1, it will lift a spending freeze put into place April 9.

This word follows the recent passage of a N.C. House budget plan, the third such proposal following those previously put forth by Gov. Beverly Perdue and the State Senate.

Essentially, state budgeters have told universities to move ahead with financial planning while assuming a budget cut next year in the neighborhood of nine percent - the cut proposed last week by the State House. That proposal was more severe than those put forth by Perdue or Senate budget writers.

On campuses, deans and division heads are being told to start planning conservatively but expect the freedom to make spending decisions rather than having them handed down by legislators.

"It's good news for us," said Rob Nelson, the UNC system's vice president for finance. "The folks closest to the students are the ones who can make the best decisions."

The freeze affected hiring, travel and other university functions.

Since you're dying to know what a day in the life of UNC Chapel Hill's chancellor is, I give you this link to Holden Thorp's blog.

His latest entry is a day-in-the-life featuring very brief conversations with his kids, a glimpse at what a busy university adminstrator has for lunch - nuts and a banana - and, after work, a movie with the family.

Sounds like Thorp and his son, John, are quite the Trekkies.

 Bernadette Gray-Little is the second straight UNC Chapel Hill provost to leave Carolina for the top job at another major public university.

Gray-Little, who was just tapped for the chancellorship at the University of Kansas, has served as provost at UNC-CH since 2006. She succeeded Robert Shelton, who left the post to take the presidency of the University of Arizona.

For UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp, the vacancy is an opportunity to put his stamp on his executive cabinet. And as he says in this open letter regarding Gray-Little's impending departure, the provost's job is a big one. The provost is the university's chief academic officer, overseeing 13 schools, the College of Arts and Sciences, the university libraries and assorted other academic units.

The local newspaper out in Kansas sent a reporter to profile Gray-Little. You can read that story here.

Back in 1993, UNC Chapel Hill set a state record by collecting 1,052 pints of blood at its one-day blood drive. At the time, it was the largest single-day collection in North Carolina, a record that held until last September.

That's when the folks at Appalachian State took ownership of the title, collecting 1,060 pints.

On Tuesday, June 2, UNC wants its title back. It will hold its annual blood drive at the Dean E. Smith Center from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a goal of 1,100 pints.

For more info or to register to give blood, click here.

Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State are using geography to their advantage in a new joint cancer study using dogs as models.
Generally, cancer researchers use mice. They create tumors and then study their tendencies and reactions to treatment.

But folks at UNC and NCSU are now leveraging proximity - a cancer center in Chapel Hill and a veterinary school in Raleigh, in the hopes of figuring out how to treat lymphoma in both dogs and people. Turns out, most major academic cancer centers aren't close enough to vet schools to collaborate on such research.

Kristy Richards, an assistant professor of medicine and genetics at UNC's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, has teamed up with several researchers at NCSU as well as a geneticist at Duke to look at a common dog cancer, Large B Cell lymphoma. She spoke to us recently about the project. Here are excerpts:

Why dogs?