Housing crisis worsens stagnant WCU wages


“It’s about time,” said Peter Hans, president of the UNC system, in an interview during his July 1 visit to WCU. “It’s all about recruiting, retaining and morale for incredibly hard-working people who have seen college overcome one of the biggest challenges I hope we’ve ever seen in the past year with COVID . “

Governor Roy Cooper proposed a 7.5% increase over two years for university and community college employees, while the North Carolina Senate more recently passed a budget that included a 3% increase. The House has yet to adopt his version, but Hans predicts that number will fall somewhere between Cooper’s proposal and that of the Senate. The three parties will then have to meet and agree on a final version.

“I’m going to stay after this,” he said. “I know the Chancellor (Kelli Brown) has been a very strong and very strong advocate, and I think we will be successful.”

A drop purchasing power

The question of wages is not new. It’s an ongoing topic of discussion at board meetings and budget negotiations, but a March 5 presentation to the board of trustees by Sean Mulholland, WCU professor of economics and associate director of the Center for the Study of Free. Enterprise, shed new light on how serious the situation is in Cullowhee.

“By all accounts, Western’s productivity is amazing,” said Mulholland, showing how the university’s 58.5% six-year graduation rate is the highest of 12 peer institutions listed as comparison. Earlier in that same meeting, the Trustees recognized WCU Distinguished Professor Catherine Brewer Smith of Communication Science and Disorders Billy Ogletree for receiving the 2020 UNC System Governor James E. Holshouser Jr. Award. for excellence in public service, an honor that recognized Ogletree’s 28 years at WCU prepares those in the field or new to lead the way in supporting people with speech-language pathologies.

“The reason we have good people like Professor Ogletree is because of investments in the past,” Mulholland said. “And that’s why we’re doing so well today. “

Over the 10-year period from 1993 to 2003, WCU inflation-adjusted salaries increased by 8%, and although the size of the inflation-adjusted increase decreased over the periods 10 years later, it remained positive throughout the period 2001-2010. , when it barely exceeded the 0% line. From there, the trend reversed, and since then the 10-year change has been decidedly negative, over the 2010-2019 and 2011-2020 periods reaching past 8% less, according to Mulholland’s analysis.

Trustees are the only faculty members who saw a positive change in inflation-adjusted income over the period 2009-2018, at 2.2 percent excluding acting appointments. Meanwhile, professors saw a 3.78% drop in their inflation-adjusted income, assistant professors saw a drop of 8.59%, and full professors a drop of 9.76%, with Inflation-adjusted earnings for associate professors and instructors plummeted 17.08% and 17.55%, respectively. . These numbers are significantly worse than statistics from universities across the country and in North Carolina.

“You don’t see anywhere near the drop in actual pay that you are witnessing at Western Carolina University,” Mulholland said. “That is, Western Carolina University lags behind the higher education sector.”

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A landscaped terrace in the Tom Apodaca Science Building offers a breathtaking view of the campus. Photo by Holly Kays

Meanwhile, 80% of employees who fall under North Carolina state human resources law are paid below their job title’s median compensation, a recurring shortfall of $ 3 million, Mulholland said.

At the same time, Western employees receive a lower employer pension contribution and pay a higher health care premium than employees at peer universities across the country.

‘Why isn’t NC invest in your future? ‘

Later in the March 5 meeting, Faculty Senate President Kadie Otto stressed the urgency of the situation, appealing on behalf of the Faculty Senate to now bring back increases in the cost of the faculty. life.

“The fact that the freshmen were only five years old the last time the professors had a COLA is baffling. Why is NC not investing in its future? Reads the report she gave to the trustees.

A month and a half before the meeting, Otto emailed the professors asking them to share how the lack of COLA affected them, and in response, she received 113 emails covering 55 single-spaced pages of text, she declared. A thematic analysis by Assistant Marketing Professor Heidi Dent found that 55% of responses expressed frustration, 19% expressed support, 18% concern, 7% fear, and 1% expressed frustration. hope.

“When I reflect on the time, energy and effort that teachers have put into surviving this crisis, what saddens me the most is knowing what the teachers would have otherwise done and thought,” he said. she wrote.

Housing at the heart

Mulholland’s analysis explored this question of the cost of living. Compared to peer college towns and UNC towns, in a typical cost-of-living analysis, Cullowhee is halfway there.

“Why do we feel like it’s expensive to live here, but by COLA parameters, it’s not as expensive to live here? ” He asked.

The answer, he says, is housing.

“The Middle House in Cullowhee is an apartment complex,” he said. “This is not a single family home.

Apartments and mobile homes make up three-quarters of housing in Cullowhee. By comparison, in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Pembroke, Wilmington, Durham, Greensboro, Asheville, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville and Elizabeth City – 11 of the 14 university towns in the UNC system – more than half of the inventory is made up of townhouses or single-family homes – family homes.

The Middle House in Cullowhee may be cheaper than the Middle House in peer communities, but college professors don’t want to live in student apartment complexes. However, a three-bedroom house in Cullowhee costs around $ 300,000 – the fourth most expensive of the 14 UNC communities, Mulholland said.

Due to low inventory, even people willing to buy a three-bedroom for $ 300,000 might not be able to find a home in Cullowhee. Only about 20% of Cullowhee’s homes have three or four bedrooms, and no five-bedroom homes are available. This is the smallest proportion of the 14 UNC university towns examined. In nine of these cities, more than half of the houses have three or more bedrooms.

“It takes a lot to get me going, but when I go for it, I go for it, and frankly, it doesn’t hurt. It makes me angry, ”then-president Bryant Kinney said in reaction to Mulholland’s presentation.

Rector Richard Starnes said the university has struggled for years to increase salaries, over the past seven or eight years, investing $ 5.5 million in faculty and staff salaries from its own funding. internal. But without state help, he said, it is impossible to fully address the problem.

“We just can’t do it alone,” he said. “This is a situation where we will need the support of the General Assembly to help rectify this.”

The need to increase wages is a discussion within the institutions of the UNC system, but many of the problems in Cullowhee are unique to Cullowhee, as evidenced by Mulholland’s housing cost data.

Hans said he was ready to consider Cullowhee-specific solutions to this Cullowhee-specific problem, and that he and Brown were already discussing the pros and cons of various proposals.

“In fact, the Chancellor (Brown) and I met on some creative approaches to this issue earlier,” he said when asked for the possibility on July 1 “although I’m not sure. that we are prepared to disclose it at this time. ”

About Mark A. Tomlin

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