UNC Fights to Retain Faculty Members
By Katie Cline

In an academic battle of supply and demand, U-N-C is waging a war against other colleges to keep their professors.

Students are returning to campus to find some faculty members are no longer here. Other schools are offering them positions and many professors are accepting. Associate Provost Steve Allred says the main reason is salary.

“We’re competing fairly well,” Allred says. “We can go head to head with other big private and big public schools and often win a retention battle, but it’s an ongoing debate, an on going battle and sometimes we lose.”

The percentage of retention battles UNC was winning was on an upward trend, peaking at 66 percent in the 2004-2005. The number dipped back down to 52 percent last year.

The economics department lost four faculty members last year alone. Economics Department Chairman John Akin says that means fewer classes containing more students.

“Everything that happens is worst for the quality of your classes,” Akin says. “You find ways to make do, but it’s very difficult.”

Some offers included a 50 percent pay increase, but others who left cited reasons such as better benefits or more academic support.

“And even a person who loves it here, and it’s a really good place, and they are doing really good work and have really good colleagues, that’s so much money that it just hard to turn down for your family,” Akin says.

Allred says that being ranked the fifth best public school in the nation makes UNC faculty an attractive target.

“The disadvantage of increased publicity, of people saying ‘wow what a great place’ is that we are on everybody’s radar screen,” Allred says.
Salaries come mostly from tuition and the state budget. Tuition increases are unpopular, and state support varies from year to year. But the administration is hoping for more money to offer professors in the future.