Martin Center Staff

RALEIGH – North Carolina Community College System leaders could be paving the way for a future bond referendum with their current budget request.

Leaders discussed the possibility of a bond referendum when approving, in November, a $1.11 billion budget request for the 2007-09 biennium. That budget request also seeks an additional $1.35 billion for capital needs. Vice President for Business and Finance Kennon Briggs admitted that the budget is large and may be unrealistic. Briggs did not say how much a possible bond would be or when the system would attempt a bond package.

“We have to state our case now and continue to pound the message,” Briggs said.

Increasing faculty salaries was the second-highest budget priority out of 11 presented to the Board of Governors’ Committee on Budget and Finance October 12. The administration plans to seek funds from the 2007 legislature to boost faculty salaries, on average, to the 80th percentile of their peers. This would mean adding $43.9 million in 2007-08 and the same amount for 2008-09. The $87.8 total would be in addition to 4 per cent merit-based increases, which will add up to $136 million for the two-year period, plus a proposed $2 million for distinguished professorships.

These numbers come from a “draft for discussion purposes only” list of priorities presented at the meeting and could change. The top priority is need-based financial aid, with a total proposed request for such aid $53.6 million. Other high priorities include $1.75 million for the “Academic Summer Bridge” program for students not ready to enter as freshmen, funds for University of North Carolina Online ($10 million over two years), and a variety of research projects totaling $59 million for 2007-8 and $29.6 million for 2008-09.

CHAPEL HILL — Despite the rude reception given former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and other conservative speakers at UNC-Chapel Hill recently, there are indications that the effort to get conservative voices on campus is making progress.

One liberal student even complained in a local paper recently that the star power of conservative speakers now outshines liberal speakers.

Leftist and liberal students on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus have kept up their tradition of heckling, disrupting, and walking out of speeches given by conservatives, most recently when Ashcroft appeared on campus last month.

UNC-Chapel Hill freshman Austin Fowler spent about $500 this semester on textbooks. His classmate Andrew Wein spent about $400.

“On top of that, Student Stores didn’t have a CD I needed,” Wein said. “They only had used copies, which don’t work because they are made so that they can only be activated once.”

Students like Fowler and Wein are experiencing a growing national problem. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office found that “college textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation for the last two decades.”