The $6 million budget shortfall facing the University of North Carolina Asheville is forcing a reorganization of the school, resulting in faculty layoffs, early retirements, and cuts to academic programs.
UNCA’s sharp decline in enrollment — down 22.2 percent from 2018 to 2023, the steepest decline of any of the 16 schools in the UNC system — is the leading cause of the financial crisis, the school’s chancellor, Kimberly van Noort, told faculty and staff last month. Total enrollment in the UNC system grew by 2.3 percent during the same period.
State funding for the campus is based on enrollment, and with fewer students, UNCA’s state appropriations have declined along with tuition income. One-time infusions from the state and COVID-19 relief funding kept the crisis at bay until now.
“We didn’t see it coming at the time,” Roger Aiken, chair of the UNCA Board of Trustees, told The Watchdog. “There was such a convergence of one-time funds … Maintaining the experience was what we were trying to do as opposed to trying to go through a revamping of the organization.”
UNCA’s board of trustees is the governing body responsible for overseeing the operations, strategic direction, and financial stability of the school. Aiken was appointed to the board in 2019.
Van Noort arrived in 2022 as interim provost under then-Chancellor Nancy J. Cable. During nearly a year as interim chancellor after Cable resigned, she “knew that the enrollment was an issue,” she told Asheville Watchdog. “Being on this campus every day convinced me that this was an incredible place that had so much potential … There is no reason why students should not be beating on our doors to get into the school.”
Per state law, van Noort has until the end of June to balance the books and eliminate the $6 million deficit. Expected declines in state support for UNCA in fiscal year 2025 would push the deficit to $8 million, the university stated.
An unspecified number of the school’s 61 adjunct (part-time) professors will be laid off, and possibly lecturers (full-time faculty on time-limited contracts) too, she said; the actual numbers will be determined at the department level.
Certain faculty over age 55 are being offered incentives to retire, and the school is reconfiguring its curriculum, moving away from humanities and toward more sciences in hopes of attracting more students.
No more “liberal” arts
Van Noort is the school’s sixth chancellor or interim chancellor in the past decade, and was the first to be chosen under a new state policy that reduces the involvement of UNCA’s faculty and local trustees in the search process, while giving greater control to the UNC Board of Governors and UNC System president, all of whom were appointed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Although UNCA is the “designated liberal arts and sciences campus in the UNC System,” according to the UNC System website, van Noort has dropped the word “liberal” from her description of the school in her official updates to staff, faculty, and students, instead calling it a “public arts and sciences university.”
Van Noort’s decision to drop the word “liberal” from her description of UNCA may appease Raleigh Republicans who have a distaste for anything with a liberal tag. But van Noort says the change is rooted in the evolution of the school’s curriculum.
“We are beginning to talk about what it means to have this larger role of sciences in a traditional liberal arts and sciences institution,” she said.
Adjuncts to be first to go
While van Noort said her No. 1 priority is to preserve “the student experience,” her first cost-saving move was to reduce the number of adjunct professors, part-time employees who perform many of the same teaching roles as full-time faculty members but who are paid far less.
“We’ve come to rely very, very heavily on adjuncts here,” van Noort said. She now needs to cut those costs, which will require asking more of the full-time faculty, who say they already have heavy workloads.
“You have to take a look at your instructional costs and make sure that your full-time faculty are teaching as many students as they’re able to,” van Noort said.
Adjuncts are often employed to teach the humanities curriculum, a core set of courses required by UNCA as the designated liberal arts and sciences university in the UNC system. In academia, the humanities typically include the study of history, philosophy and religion, modern and ancient languages and literatures, fine and performing arts, media and cultural studies, and other fields.
UNCA told the humanities adjuncts at a Feb. 9 meeting that their contracts would not be renewed for the fall semester. At least one of those adjuncts walked out after receiving the notice, leaving an administrator to pick up that class, a source confirmed to The Watchdog.
Humanities adjuncts “over and over again expressed disbelief and frustration,” said one adjunct who attended that meeting but asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions. “Losing adjuncts will affect students’ experience hugely, and the university’s savings will be minimal,” the adjunct said.
Adjuncts typically are allowed to teach only two courses a semester, earning approximately $5,600 per course, with no benefits. If they teach four courses in an academic year, they make $22,400 annually, an income below the poverty level in high-cost Asheville and one that would qualify them for food stamps. Adjuncts told The Watchdog that many have second jobs to make ends meet.
Van Noort has warned that the school’s 61 lecturers, who are full-time faculty on time-limited contracts, may also face layoffs. She told The Watchdog that department heads have been charged with examining their slimmer budgets and considering the costs of faculty.
The chancellor has warned that “key reorganization” is necessary to address the budget shortfall, and some departments are being considered for mergers.
For any layoffs, “It’s going to vary by department and the needs of the program to deliver their curriculum,” she said.
Incentives for tenured faculty to quit
Van Noort also has another tool for paring down faculty. Last year, the General Assembly created a special fund to incentivize the retirement of tenured faculty for five schools with lower enrollments — UNCA, UNC Greensboro, NC Central, East Carolina, and Winston Salem State universities.
The offer applies to tenured faculty older than 55 who have been with their school for 10 years. They would receive a year’s salary as an incentive to leave.
“We’ve made all of the faculty who are eligible aware of the opportunity,” van Noort said. “And we’re working with the system office about funding those requests now.”
She said she did not have the total number of eligible faculty or how many had chosen the offer, but one of them told The Watchdog that multiple people applied. In the last academic year, according to data available from the university’s Institutional Research department, UNCA had 122 tenured faculty, 61 each of full professors and associate professors.
“Students are really upset and not attending classes,” one tenured faculty member who asked not to be identified, said. “They are worried for their faculty and the value of their degree. How do we design and deliver cutting-edge, innovative curriculum under these conditions?”
Van Noort has also asked her vice chancellors to “see if there are some reductions we can make” in operating costs.
UNCA has frozen hiring, travel, and other spending. But van Noort said she intends to fill two senior posts currently open: the provost and vice chancellor for budget and finance, both with salaries near $200,000.
When van Noort was chosen as chancellor in November her base salary was $300,000. As of the end of the year, her salary was listed as $375,126, making her the ninth highest-paid chancellor of the 16 UNC universities.
A dozen UNCA employees were making more than $150,000 a year as of late December, most of them administrators, according to a UNC system salary database.
Academic programs could be cut
Academic program cuts are likely coming, and first up is the humanities program, the liberal arts core curriculum, which van Noort said was “very large.”
“I created a task force to take a look at our liberal arts core. They’ve been working almost a year now,” assessing what other schools are doing, she said.
She warned staff and faculty in January that a “comprehensive review” of academic offerings was needed. UNC Greensboro, which had the second largest enrollment decline over the last five years, undertook a similar review in late 2022 and this February eliminated 20 academic programs, including five undergraduate majors, three language programs, and 12 graduate programs.
“We’ll review our program in the manner similar to what they did at UNC Greensboro,” van Noort said. But with urgent action needed to address UNCA’s budget deficit, she said, “I don’t know that our timeline will be the same.”
Various faculty, all of whom asked to be unidentified, said they were distraught by the turmoil of the budget cuts, but did not bear any personal animosity toward van Noort. They said they recognized she has a tough job, even if they objected to the cuts so far and the impact on faculty and students.
Liberal arts, humanities degrees down nationwide
Nationwide, liberal arts education has taken a beating.
“The humanities are facing difficulties in almost every state,” according to Robert Townsend, the co-director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators project.
At the national level, the number of awarded bachelor’s degrees in the humanities fell 18 percent from a recent peak in 2012 to 2021, according to Townsend. North Carolina’s rate of decline was 23 percent during the same period.
While the humanities program at UNCA is likely to endure cuts, van Noort said she intends to double the size of the mechatronics program, which combines electronics and mechanical engineering, and which UNCA operates with North Carolina State. Students in the program earn degrees from both schools.
“Those students have jobs months before they graduate,” van Noort said. “It’s amazing.”
Funding and leadership churn
UNCA’s nearly decade-long decline in enrollment has meant less and less state financial support, as well as fewer students paying tuition.
John Liposchak, who was vice chancellor for budget and finance until Feb. 19, said at a Feb. 6 budget presentation that tuition income between 2019 and 2024 dropped $5.5 million, and state enrollment funding for 2018-2024 fell $5.6 million, resulting in a decline of $11.1 million in revenue.
Liposchak’s predecessor, John Pierce, who retired in 2022 after 14 years at UNCA, told The Watchdog that the state has underfunded UNCA for many years. Pierce suggested that the combination of the relatively small size of UNCA — roughly a quarter of the size of an average UNC school yet bearing all the system’s administrative requirements — and the high cost of operation in Asheville have significantly contributed to underfunding.
Pat Smith, a former chair of the UNCA Board of Trustees and a donor, said that the school “has not been funded or valued” by the UNC system, and “we need their help.” She said that the extraordinary leadership turnover has hurt the school.
Van Noort came to UNCA from the UNC system office, where she was vice president for academic programs, faculty and research from 2016-2018, and senior vice president for academic affairs from 2018 to 2022. After she served a short stint as UNCA interim provost, UNC System President Peter Hans appointed her interim chancellor after Nancy Cable resigned in October 2022.
Her close ties to the UNC system office are regarded by some as a plus for her chancellorship, while coloring her selection as the system’s preferred candidate. Political meddling in the governance of the UNC system’s universities, and in particular the choice of chancellors, has long been an issue.
Aiken, who led the chancellor search committee that chose van Noort, praised her for having built a network of relationships in the Republican-dominated General Assembly, which determines funding for the system’s universities.
UNCA’s leadership churn has led to continually changing priorities and faculty departures, Smith said. Van Noort is now initiating a new strategic visioning process called 2030, starting with a survey open to faculty, students, and the community. Cable had put in place a Revitalization Plan 2021-2028 just three years ago.
In that plan’s presentation in 2022 to the UNCA faculty Senate, the school’s state underfunding and enrollment decline, as well as its highest number of staff departures in the system, were clearly spelled out, making it apparent that one-time funds would not be enough to pull the school out of its structural budget trouble.
Enrollment push
Addressing the enrollment decline was already on van Noort’s to-do list before she was named chancellor. She began focused efforts to increase enrollment last year, using more marketing, a cost-free program for lower income students, and greater outreach through alumni.
The marketing department is doing more advertising across North Carolina. It has a revamped website and has produced an array of slick marketing materials to send by postal mail.
Last October, UNCA also began free tuition and fees for first-year students and transfer undergraduates whose families make $80,000 a year or less. Called “Access Asheville,” the initiative followed UNC Chapel Hill’s move last July and has potential to attract students of more modest backgrounds. North Carolina’s median household income is just over $66,000.
Currently, 72 percent of UNCA students receive merit-based or financial aid, including 30 percent who receive federally funded Pell grants for undergraduates with financial needs. Van Noort is proud to have attracted a larger number of students this year who are the first in their families to attend a four-year university.
While the school’s turmoil may now influence whether parents want to send their children there, van Noort says she has revamped the admissions and financial aid administration. “We’ve made our financial aid process much more strategic,” she said, and “we are responding and admitting students more rapidly.”
“We are hosting events in Raleigh, Greensboro, Wilmington, and Charlotte,” she said, and asking alumni to open their homes to host prospective students.
These efforts have helped to increase applications by 30 percent over the last two years, she said.
“We have to differentiate ourselves in ways that are compelling,” said van Noort said, given that UNCA must compete with all the other UNC schools for North Carolina students. A particular competitor is Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. Western Carolina is one of four schools under a UNC system program called NC Promise that charge just $500 a semester.
Higher Education and Job Market
In a 2022 BestColleges survey, more than 6 in 10 Americans said that the financial burden of earning a degree made college inaccessible.
Notably, UNCG chancellor Gilliam told WUNC regarding the recent cuts there, “The question that people ask today is ‘Can I get a job?’”
Van Noort wants UNCA students to be more informed about career planning.
“We are doubling down on internships,” she said. “Those are valuable experiences not only for decision-making but also for the skills that students gain. And that’s how I think we can make a liberal arts education relevant and exciting and future-oriented here.”
The concern with student debt and getting a job dovetails with the increasingly lower confidence in higher education by the American public. A Gallup poll last summer revealed that confidence in higher education was at an all-time low. Only 36 percent of respondents had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, compared to 57 percent in 2015 and 48 percent in 2018.
Republicans had the steepest decline in confidence, falling to just 19 percent in 2023 from 56 percent in 2015. Democrats’ confidence fell only 9 points, to 59 percent in 2023 from 68 percent in 2015. Independents, which outnumber both parties in North Carolina, had a drop to 32 percent, from 48 percent.
The Gallup poll results echoed an earlier survey by the Pew Research Center in 2019, which said that views of the value of higher education were “increasingly linked to partisanship.” It noted, “The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican.”
Seventy-three percent of Republicans say higher education is headed in the wrong direction because students are not getting the skills they need for the workplace, and nearly 80 percent are concerned that professors bring liberal political and social views into classrooms, according to the Pew Center’s research.
Reflecting the concern with job earnings, the NC General Assembly commissioned a $2 million study by Deloitte to examine the return on investment for degrees awarded by UNC system’s public universities. It looked at median lifetime earnings, or projections of earnings, minus the cost of the degree.
The study found that those with a bachelor’s degree could expect lifetime earnings of $1.2 million, or $572,000 greater than North Carolinians without one. For those who earned a graduate degree, lifetime earnings would be $2.1 million.
For a bachelor’s degree, engineering ranks fifth of the six top-earning categories. For graduate degrees, medical, health, and engineering take the top earnings. Notably, liberal arts programs such as history, political science, arts, and languages, were not among the high earners.
Each of the 16 universities in the system was told to evaluate the results of the study for their own planning.
Van Noort said she recognizes that education “is a huge investment for many people.”
“Our responsibility,” she said, “is to get our graduates out there into great careers, into great positions as citizens.”
[Editor’s note: This story was updated March 12, 2024, to add that UNCA Chancellor Kimberly van Noort’s dropping of the word “liberal” from her description of the school has occurred in her official updates to staff, faculty, and students.]
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and surrounding communities. Barbara Durr is a former correspondent for The Financial Times of London. Contact her at bdurr@avlwatchdog.org. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/donate.
This article states:”Per state law, van Noort has until the end of June to balance the books and eliminate the $6 million deficit.” Just curious…what happens if van Noort fails to meet that state-imposed deadline? Is she defenestrated, perhaps replaced with a state functionary with authority to cut the UNCA budget until the deficit is eliminated?
Among the many flaws to this plan: UNCA will now pay some of the best tenured faculty (age 55 or above) to leave, which will likely diminish the university’s reputation even more…
What does the Athletics program cost? How much revenue does it generate? How is that revenue used?
Looks like UNCA is bent on becoming AB-TECHNICAL Community College Number 2 (emphasis, mine)–so much for “higher education” and “higher thinking.” Combine that with grade inflation, censorship, and lack of respect (and pay) for teachers and professors, and you have a recipe for disaster. To say nothing of that testy and continuing “top heavy” administration problem (with inflated pay and perks.)
What is the compelling reason to choose UNCA over other universities in the system? Where is a Center of Excellence? Is average sufficient?
Wow. If the Chancellor succeeds in balancing UNCA’s budget by June, we need her skills in Washington…come November, let’s write her in.
I suspect the state’s granting of very limited tuition at WCU several years ago had an even greater effect on UNCA’ enrollment than student major choice. That was a politically motivated gesture with a huge impact, especially during the pandemic and given Asheville’s high cost of living.
That was exactly my thought as well.
Are colleges institutes of higher learning where students are taught to think critically and learn about the past to avoid the same mistakes and make progress in the future or are they trade schools? UNCA isn’t the only school forgetting about the importance of the arts and teaching people to open their minds to other ways of thinking and doing.
It’s not a matter of UNCA “forgetting” about these things. It’s a matter of the GA being unwilling to fund schools that teach people to think. The same thing is happening to higher education in other GOP dominated states. The GOP fears people who can think won’t vote for them and the more they cut education funding, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As usual, blame it on the Republicans!
Everything the progressive liberals touch, turns into a total fiasco.
When “the progressive liberals” were in charge of education, NC ‘s schools were ranked among the best in the country. Now that the GOP is in charge,NC’s schools are in the bottom 20% of the country. Tell me again how it’s “the progressive liberals” who turn things into total fiascos, but try to come up with some actual evidence this time.
Your comments are laughable, HAB!
Maybe you are the one that should come up with some evidence?
Because Repubs scuttle all the good things about NC.
Such as, building the Blue Ridge Parkway, for example??
This is a good time to get rid of Dead Wood” and that isn’t age related! how are these instructors evaluated? Also, to do some top-trimming!
Chancellor Cable’s revitalization plan clearly addresses all of the problems UNCA was experiencing and proposed solutions. Why was she not allowed to carry them out? (Why was she fired?)
Maybe UNC-A should consider paying adjuncts less than $5,600 per course since AB Tech adjuncts in the transfer curriculum with the same credentials are only paid around $1,500 per 3 credit hour/contact hour course. Also the UNC-A art department changed the statewide 3 credit hour Art courses several years ago to 4 credit hour courses which I questioned was to allow the full time faculty to teach less courses. Maybe the chancellor should revisit that because no other UNC university did that.
I’m not sure where they got the adjunct pay information. I was an adjunct at UNCA and only made $2,700 for a 3 credit hour course or $3,600 for a 4 credit hour course.
You all are really missing the opportunity to dig into spending. Like why does the VC of Student Affairs get paid $205,592 a year to live rent and utility free in a $11.8 million dollar property? No utilities, $300 a month for cable, internet and a landline?!, $850 for 3rd party landscaping (UNCA has their own grounds people), $120 for pest control, ignores parking permit rules (students pay hundreds of dollars to park). And what has she even done for the University to grow enrollment or foster a better environment (the infmaous Highsmith active shooter training happened under her)?
Or how about Kimberly paying $3.5k for hors d’oeuvres to celebrate her announcement and covering it up by making Janet Cone talk to us about athletics for 20 minutes and chalking the event up to “spirit week?” And the $8k spent to the country club for BoT, local politicians, and athletics board members to dine and drink during the chancellor “search.”
Don’t even get me started on athletics and advancement spending….
Someone didn’t have a problem spending money until they got the job officially.
“ Last October, UNCA also began free tuition and fees for first-year students and transfer undergraduates whose families make $80,000 a year or less…”
Apparently, they can’t even give it away. When the customer sees no value and doesn’t want your product, you generally consolidate, cut costs, and make your product more desirable to the market. Get rid of majors and programs that lack meaning, hard skills, and job potential. Cut faculty who teach those obsolete majors and reposition yourself. I find it funny that people get political about this. I presume that 98% of UNCA’s administration and faculty are hard core liberals. Their management has driven the institution into the ground. Not political at all. Just wiffty, soft, kumbaya view of how an institution is run.
This is a death spiral that the school will never recover from.
Maybe students don’t want to attend college in crime-ridden Asheville?
Maybe students don’t want to live in crime-ridden, expensive Asheville?
Cut the duplication. Merge WCU and UNC-A.
Redesign of the entire way we deliver opportunities: personal and professional growth, multi-disciplinary experiential learning, development of dynamic, creative, empathetic and critical thinking skills, pertinent soft skills such as emotional and social intelligence, the ability to engage respectfully with people from myriad backgrounds and generations. Policy makers should focus on empowering future generations to build intergenerational wealth through entrepreneurship and innovation. Administration should better support faculty who inspire and deliver students the knowledge and tools to correct social and other ills rather than focusing on creating the next cohort of laborers for industry likely to be replaced by AI anyway. Faculty who have amazing ideas and expertise to help make this happen have no structural, economic or political power at UNCA to execute these changes in a timely manner. Therein lies the problem – A tenured social science faculty member at UNC Asheville.
Absolutely right. Repube thrive on the stupes.
“When van Noort was chosen as chancellor in November her base salary was $300,000. As of the end of the year, her salary was listed as $375,126, making her the ninth highest-paid chancellor of the 16 UNC universities.
A dozen UNCA employees were making more than $150,000 a year as of late December, most of them administrators, according to a UNC system salary database.”
Could Watchdog name these high-paid employees? Why has Van Noort been given such a high raise after only a year on the jobd? Has it occurred to her what a statement it would make if she had declined the increase? Why eliminate low-paying jobs, instead of cutting back on the highest salaries?
It’s publicly available info here: https://uncdm.northcarolina.edu/salaries/index.php
You can look the salaries up yourself:
https://uncdm.northcarolina.edu/salaries/index.php
Go woke go broke! I walked on that campus with my daughter and saw all the flags in the middle of campus. The agendas they were pushing made us turn around and get back in the car. It doesn’t help that Asheville had become a sanctuary city that is no longer safe. I was not about to send my daughter there.
While no one can foresee the future, and matters of the gravest importance may only be seen with hindsight, these developments occurred under UNCA’s leadership.
Thus, while adjuncts must teach classes that are economically viable, the losses that have occurred should not be allocated solely to the adjuncts. Rather, UNCA leadership must bear its portion of these losses, particularly when, if necessary, it comes to bearing job loss and salary reduction. Failure to allocate loss to UNCA leadership and concentrating loss in a class of people not responsible for the current trends sets up a misaligned and inappropriate incentive structure, as leadership would always have a “put” on UNCA.
Further, and if necessary to save jobs, proportional salary reductions should take place along all pay grades (with the highest pay grades taking the highest percentage hit…not pay hikes), rather than allocating job loss to a particular class of UNCA staff that is not at all responsible for the current difficulties.
Ideally, UNCA leadership (and I believe its staff) should be incentivized to go “long” UNCA. That is, when UNCA does well, they all proportionally benefit, and when UNCA does poorly, they all proportionally bear loss.
That said, I feel that these developments represent a real opportunity for UNCA if UNCA can get the right people. A reduced cost structure and a re-commitment to providing value in education, both in the cost of education and the quality of education (from science to liberal arts), can, if leadership has the vision, give rise to a project that has the promise of changing all of WNC for the better. What an exciting project that would be … and what an honor it would be to be part of that effort!
Mr. Rogers is correct. Leadership should take a reduction in salary. The Chancellor should have declined her raise.