Letter to the Editor

As a proud Duke graduate and beginning professor, my impulse is to celebrate any victory Duke achieves over UNC, but alas, I found nothing but a bitter taste when I heard of NC State Senator Tom McInnis’ proposal to force eight course teaching loads on all UNC system professors. Unless given reason to do otherwise, I will take McInnis’ statement of motive at face value that his goal is to improve teaching quality by putting more students in contact with professors instead of teaching assistants. However, his proposal to micromanage the university by imposing higher teaching requirements will only serve to drain UNC of its research-active faculty and, ultimately, quality instruction in the classroom.

With ever increasing tuition and student debt, it is understandable for parents and policy makers to have their sights focused on reforming higher education. However, this stress over finances has served to cloud many people’s view of the broader mission of higher education. Research universities are not primarily job training centers, nor are they simply places of undergraduate instruction. Such places exist in the form of community colleges, teaching colleges and liberal arts colleges. However, the mission of places like UNC and Duke is multi-pronged. At the foundation lies the pursuit of knowledge. Successfully pushing forward the frontier of knowledge requires scholars dedicated to their field, resources, and critically, time. From this foundation, universities disseminate knowledge at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The end product is both to provide a private good in the form of employable skills to graduating seniors but also a public good in the form of research breakthroughs and a well-educated citizenry.

Finding a remedy to the financial stress of college will not be easy. Ironically, McInnis’ approach runs up against the free-market philosophy he and many conservative Republicans espouse. Micromanagement, regulation and price controls—e.g. tuition caps—will only serve to widen the divide between struggling public universities and resource-rich private universities like Duke.

Aaron Hedlund

T'06