In case you missed it...
Lost in much of the fanfare last week related to N.C. State's hiring of its new chancellor was a final decision on the controversial UNC system retreat rights policy.
The UNC system's governing board finally, after months - and months and months - of deliberations, approved changes putting some teeth into a policy that, until now, had given departing chancellors an unchecked golden parachute - on the taxpayer dime.
Here are the details.
The UNC system's Board of Governors will probably approve changes this week to a policy that gives campus chancellors a golden parachute of sorts when they leave their leadership roles.
Board members have spent months tinkering with the current policy on administrative leaves, which has traditionally granted chancellors - and the university system president - a one-year "research leave' at full pay after they step down.
A board committee will discuss the issue Thursday and the full board will likely vote on the policy changes Friday.
The board committee will soon begin revising a similar policy related to other top administrators like vice chancellors and provosts.
The board's actions follow reports in The News & Observer that showed the policies have, at times, been abused. Over the past five years, the universities have paid a combined $8 million to 117 administrators on leaves.
One change: the policy will be scaled back to a six-month leave, but will give the system president the discretion to offer more than that amount of time if it is suitable.
"The president is the one doing the negotiating," said Hannah Gage, the board's chairwoman. "If he needed that, the board felt comfortable giving him that latitude."
Another big change is some new accountability. Under current policy, chancellors who have left their posts have enjoyed their one-year leaves without having to answer to any supervisor or produce any work.
Under the new policy, they would have to submit a work plan for the time off, and at the end, provide a summary report of what they did to prepare themselves to return to the faculty.
And third, these former chancellors would no longer receive the same pay as they did while leading their campuses. They will receive a faculty salary on par with salaries of their colleagues who hold comparable rank with similar levels of experience.
This week, the UNC system's Board of Governors will consider a policy change that will significantly curtail the research leaves that the system president and campus chancellors have traditionally received.
The change follows several months of discussion prompted at least in part by a News & Observer examination of the current leave policy, under which the university system granted leaves and paid out $8 million over the last five years to 117 administrators.
The policy has allowed senior administrators with five years of service a research leave of up to one year the the same salary they earned in that administrative post. Under the changes proposed by UNC President Erskine Bowles, those leaves will be limited to six months at a salary level commensurate with those in the academic department where the employee would return to.
A UNC system policy guaranteeing chancellors a one-year leave at full pay when they leave the top job plays a key role in recruiting top talent, the leaders of five of North Carolina’s public universities said Thursday.
This group of campus chancellors, which included UNC Chapel Hill’s Holden Thorp and N.C. Central University’s Charlie Nelms, spoke today at a workshop for members of the UNC system’s Board of Governors, which is likely to scale back the four-year-old “retreat rights” policy in the coming months.
The current policy allows a university president or chancellor retiring after at least five years of service a one-year “retreat” at full administrative pay, followed by a return to the faculty. Their salary then would be 60 percent of what they earned as chancellor or president.
Rosemary DePaolo, now in her seventh year as chancellor at UNC Wilmington, said the retreat rights policy, while difficult for those outside academia to digest, is a critical piece of the compensation package for people considering a leadership post at a public university. These are difficult, stressful jobs, so potential chancellors want to know they’ll be taken care of it they become unpopular on their campus.
“We do need a cushion upon which to fall back, because falling back is all too likely,” said DePaolo, who is the second longest-tenured chancellor in the UNC system, behind only John Bardo, Western Carolina’s leader since 1995. “These are high-risk jobs with high turnover. You might not like [retreat rights] philosophically, but this is a business and we have to compete.”
The "retreats right" policy has been employed broadly at North Carolina's 16 public universities, UNC records show. Over the past five years, taxpayers have paid about $8 million to 117 administrators who either returned to the faculty or left the university. In 24 cases, the payouts were for $100,000 or more.
A recent News & Observer review found that these agreements, along with other transitional payments, offered sizable sums of money with few or no strings attached, in at least three cases violated UNC system policies and in some cases rewarded administrators with as much as a year's salary for a job poorly done.
For more on this story, read Friday's News & Observer.
The UNC system's governing board will have a lot to talk about when it reconvenes Thursday after its summer break.
The recent passage of the state budget will surely be on the minds of some campus leaders.
And a Thursday workshop discussing the controversial "retreat rights" issue should be interesting as well.
In case you missed it - UNC system leaders are expected this week to curtail a policy that offers university higher-ups a tidy perk upon their retirement - full pay for up to a year to spend re-tooling to prepare to go back to teaching.
Here's a link to our coverage of that issue.
And the board may make a significant change to its health insurance policy for students.
As we reported earlier this year, health insurance offerings for students differ from campus to campus, and leaders want to standardize it to get better rates. The proposal would require all students to health insurance unless they can prove they already have it.
Click the attachmen t below for a memo on the issue.
The board meets Thursday and Friday. It will discuss the health insurance issue at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, with a workshop on the retreat rights issue to follow at noon.
