To the editor:
State Sen. Tom McInnis recently said that the student is “the most important customer we have in the UNC system.”
I won’t debate his wrongheaded semantics trying to equate education with profit-motivated enterprise (the same tired cliche analogy we’ve heard from every Republican about every subject ever). But I will say that his bill, SB 593, that attempts to force arbitrary class load increases on professors in the UNC system, because he seeks to shave off more than 500 staff positions and further decimate the state education budget, ultimately shortchanges both our students and our state.
My father in law recently stepped down as chair of the UNC-Greensboro anthropology department so that he could focus more on his research and field work. So far, this has included an extended trip to Mexico where he has completed a prestigious Fullbright fellowship, contributed very significant research about disaster relief and worked on his next book. I couldn’t be prouder of this man my son calls “Grand-dude,” so forgive my brag.
His field is not a STEM field; anthropology is a humanity, and therefore subject to the most punitive of these class load hikes. I invoke his example to say that policies like SB 593 that force higher class loads on professors, even those whose positions are primarily hired to be research-based, cripple research at our state universities.
Apparently, McInnis has never heard the phrase “publish or perish,” but it’s a sincere reality, especially in research-driven humanities such as anthropology. However, no up-and-coming trailblazers from ANY field would in their right minds want to come make their careers here when the environment to their research is so hostile.
Not only that, but why would any reputable academic like my father-in-law, who came here 15 years ago already well established in his career, want to come here now either? Do we want to attract the best and brightest or the dumbest and the dullest?
Draconian, arbitrary laws like SB 593 don’t attract the former, and will eventually leave us with no options but the latter. The same end result is true of the miserly way Raleigh Republicans have treated our K-12 teachers as well.
The disconnect between the Republican-led legislature with its penny-wise, pound-foolish death-by-a-thousand-cuts maiming of our public university system and the reality that the compounded effects these policies will ultimately have on our state is staggering.
How dreadfully ironic that in the state where university-driven research has done so much for our state economy that the “research triangle” has essentially become its own metro area, that our legislature would even consider harming research in such a boneheaded move!
April Bundy
First vice chair, 8th Congressional District
North Carolina Democratic Party