HEART OF THE UNIVERSITY
faculty and students, engaged faculty
members who are excited by their
research, the right mix of graduates and
undergraduates, and great graduate students who, in turn, attract great faculty.
These rank among the most compelling
reasons to choose a public research university like Carolina for undergraduate
education.
The college’s most important resources
are professors who are excited about their
subjects and who enjoy both research and
teaching. For many students who come to
UNC, the first time they sit down with a
research professor in class might be the
first time they have met someone who has
done something that no one else has ever
done before. That is the most important
thing that the College of Arts and Sciences can do: Give a student from rural
North Carolina the opportunity to learn
from someone who has made a great discovery or published a groundbreaking
book. If our society is ever going to do
something about global warming, poverty,
inequality, epidemic diseases and other
issues affecting our world, we need some
new ideas. It is crucial to expose our students to what it is like to have a new idea
and to follow it through.
This is why we have put such an
emphasis on the first-year seminars and
undergraduate research, and why we are
expanding our honors program — to
increase and enhance the close interaction
of undergraduates with outstanding
research faculty.
The money to run it
Despite recent tuition increases, we are
still relatively inexpensive compared to all
of our major competitors and one of the
best deals in the country for getting an
Ivy League-caliber education for a public
university price. And we are fortunate to
have the support of the N.C. General
Assembly and the voters who supported
the bond revenue that made it possible to
launch our newest facilities. However, it
takes more than tuition and state funds to
fully finance the faculty, facilities and programs that make the college and Carolina
great. We also rely on research grants and
private funds from alumni and friends.
In thinking about our public peers in
this context,Virginia is a very different
university from Carolina. It has a significantly higher percentage of out-of-state
students, so it is actually much more like a
private university. Michigan also has more
out-of-state students and a much larger
total enrollment than Carolina.Virginia
and Michigan are both great schools, but
if we became just like them, we would
lose some of the qualities that distinguish
Carolina.
Meaningful comparisons
What makes Carolina different? If you
look under the hood of the car, you will
find high-quality doctoral programs combined with an outstanding undergraduate
program that is smaller and more focused
on the liberal arts than what you might
find at many of the public universities
with which we often are compared. That
mix is really what makes Carolina unique.
There are other great liberal arts
schools — such as Davidson, Washington
and Lee, Grinnell and Swarthmore — that
are nothing like Carolina because they’re
