About Citizens for Higher Education

 

Formed in 2002, Citizens for Higher Education consists largely of alumni of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But it does work that benefits all 16 campuses in the UNC system.

Citizens for Higher Education has more than 150 members who contribute dues of $2,500 a year. To build support for UNC-Chapel Hill and other research institutions in the system, the group backs candidates for state office who generally support public higher education.

In the 2002 election cycle, Citizens for Higher Education backed candidates in 84 races across the state. In 2004, we supported candidates in 50 races in the primary and 79 races in the general election. In 2006, we made $425,000 in campaign contributions in the 2006 election cycle. Of 103 candidates that CHE supported in the 2006 general election, 102 won.

Citizens for Higher Education also takes positions on issues in the N.C. General Assembly and lobbies on those issues.

At a time when we need higher education the most, funds for higher education occupy a shrinking slice of the state budget pie. Though North Carolina has a proud tradition of the public university, we cannot take continued support for granted. Funding for higher education has increased in absolute dollar terms, but it has shrunk from 17 percent of the state budget in 1985 to 12 percent today. In that environment, Citizens for Higher Education aims to help the university:

? Address the challenge of competition for funds;
? Recruit and retain a world-class faculty;
? Attract the best and brightest students; and
? Enhance cutting-edge research that is critical to the state’s economy.

In an effort to move faculty salaries closer to the 80th percentile when compared with salaries at peer institutions, Citizens for Higher Education asked legislators to increase faculty salaries in 2006 and 2007. Faculty across the UNC system received average raises of 6 percent in 2006 and 5 percent in 2007.

Carolina also faces an impending surge in retirements among baby-boomer faculty. Some 41 percent of its faculty are 55 or older. University officials project that they must hire 2,000 faculty members in the next eight years, or the equivalent of 5/8 of the current 3,300 full-time faculty members.

During the 2007 General Assembly, CHE also helped build support for the University Cancer Research Fund, a new initiative in which the General Assembly committed to provide $25 million in 2007 for cancer research at UNC-Chapel Hill, growing to $50 million a year in recurring funds by 2009.

This is the equivalent of a billion-dollar endowment that pays out 5 percent a year to help fight cancer – a disease that afflicts one in three people. This effort is unprecedented and has statewide importance: Researchers at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center plan to use the entire state as a laboratory for research and to disseminate their findings both statewide and globally.

Unlike other political groups where donors contribute to benefit themselves, their professions or their businesses, members of Citizens for Higher Education give only to help their university. And that is a most noble cause.

We invite you to join this effort to build political support for the nation’s first public university. For more information, call 919-510-9240.

Send contributions to:

Citizens for Higher Education
Ray F. Peck Jr., Treasurer
10709 Brass Kettle Road
Raleigh, NC 27614