The FedEx Global Education Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. License: CC0 1.0 Universal.
Over winter break, news broke that UNC’s six area studies centers were planned to close. This information was first established at the November 12th meeting of the Board of Trustees, the same meeting where the incoming tuition hike for all students was proposed. Chief Financial Officer Nate Knuffman framed this as a move to reduce costs in one of the slides presented at the meeting. Fourteen centers and institutes are slated for closure in the name of a measly $7M over three years, including the six area studies centers. This is despite the University having $1.9B in unrestricted reserves and continuing to splurge on our flailing football team and controversial academic programs. While disappointing, this continuing deception from UNC’s conservative administration should surprise nobody, and has spawned protests sponsored by organizations such as TransparUNCy on the 7th of January. The situation came to a head last week, when the Board of Trustees decided to shutter the centers, while proposing to absorb some of their features into existing departments.
It doesn’t take a math major to understand that these cuts save literal pennies on the dollar, but what’s most surprising is that this will actually hurt the university financially in the long run, as these centers are actually bringing in more money than they cost to operate. The administration's argument about our financial situation immediately falls apart once you look at where our funding priorities seem to truly lie. The controversial School of Civic Life & Leadership (SCiLL) has managed to accrue over $20 million in federal and state funding over its roughly three-year existence, approximately $7 million a year. This is the same amount of money the university has determined that the study centers need yearly. Earlier this year, we handed Bill Belichick a $50 million contract over five years. For the same amount of money, we could have funded the study centers for seven years.
However, analyzing these study centers from a purely financial perspective removes our ability to see the immaterial value they provide to students. Part of not just the Carolina Experience, but any university experience, is receiving a global education and being exposed to a wide variety of perspectives. This is fundamental to every student’s development and is not something we can sacrifice in the name of fiscal responsibility, as palatable as the administration tries to make this sound or as dire a picture they try to paint about our financial position. Additionally, the plan to absorb some of the study centers’ functions into existing departments is idiotic. The study centers exist because they combine things that no department can do on its own, like coordinating research and better connecting students to other global universities.
To be clear, UNC is not a business; it is a university. It isn’t supposed to be profitable, and so it doesn’t need to engage in marginal cost-cutting measures. Yet it does. If we are to take the administration's argument to its logical conclusion, should we also cut back on the amount we spend on heating, electricity, and water? These are obviously critical things to have at any school, but so are things like the study centers.
So why is the administration even bothering to cut these programs? The answer is simple: politics. Project 2025 explicitly calls for the dismantling of area studies centers, just like the ones we have at UNC, at universities across the nation, centers that students have spent literal decades fighting for. It’s clear that as Project 2025 and its fascist agenda gain momentum nationwide, they hope to neuter the possibility that students can compare the deteriorating state of our country to other areas of the world that have seen similar democratic backsliding throughout history. They want us to be blind to global inequalities and to stop questioning why we live in such immense prosperity, yet this prosperity is not shared globally. This is the fundamental playbook of austerity: sacrificing quality of life in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Student reception to this announcement has naturally been abysmal. On the first day of class, TransparUNCy hosted a protest on the steps of the South Building that I was fortunate enough to attend. Several university professors spoke up about how the study centers had positively impacted their lives and how if they shut down, UNC would lose one of its most valuable connections to universities across the world. TransparUNCy also hosted a teach-in on January 20th, the day before the Board of Trustees met to vote on closing the study centers, to raise further awareness for this issue. The Board of Trustees met on January 21st and 22nd and, unfortunately, confirmed their decision to cut the area studies center, alongside eight other centers. Regardless of the eventual outcome, the administration demonstrated time and time again that they have a profound disregard for the quality of their student’s education. We can’t let this be forgotten.