View This Email In Your Browser
“Advocate. Don’t expect favors.”
As the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill entered the admissions season last year, that’s what trustee Jennifer Lloyd told board chair John Preyer the university said was trustees’ role in the process.
In the following months, at least six trustees asked senior staff members at the university for information on specific applicants or the admissions process, according to more than 100 pages of texts obtained by The Assembly through a public records request. Some texts showed trustees inquiring about students on the waitlist or asking about a student’s chances of admission.
“I would like to see [redacted] in,” Preyer wrote in one text to the secretary of the university. “This is a smart [redacted] who’d be good for lots of programs at UNC.”
Most of the trustees did not return requests for comment. All UNC-CH employees mentioned or included in the texts declined to comment.
“There is no written policy outlining how anyone may contact administration regarding admissions,” Kevin Best, UNC-CH’s senior director of media relations, wrote in a statement. “In practice, it is common for board members to seek guidance from designees of the chancellor about admissions or other questions.”
Researchers have long found that wealthy and well-connected applicants across the country have advantages getting into colleges. Still, to much of the public, the admissions process remains a black box.
“The appearance of a conflict can be just as damaging as an actual one,” said Demetri Morgan, an associate professor of education at the University of Michigan who studies governing boards.
–Erin Gretzinger
UNC-Chapel Hill Trustees Pressed Senior Staff for Admissions Information
Text messages The Assembly obtained found at least six trustees asked university employees for information on specific applicants or the admissions process.
Thanks for reading The Quad, a higher education newsletter written by The Assembly’s Matt Hartman and Erin Gretzinger.
Students don’t have assigned reading over the holiday break, and we’re not giving you any, either. The Quad’s semester ends after this edition so we can relax with our families. But we’ll be back January 9 to start 2025 off right.
Reach us with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.
Why Bother With Bill Belichick?
Last week, your intrepid Quad correspondent braved the crowds at the biggest sports story in the country to annoy officials with non-sports questions like: What’s all this football investment at UNC-CH mean for the rest of the university?
The Tar Heels’ newly installed head football coach, Bill Belichick, who led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl wins, will be paid $10 million a year with $3.5 million in potential bonuses. He also gets $16.3 million a year for his staff and $13 million a year in revenue sharing with his players.
Why pour so much money into Chapel Hill’s more disappointing revenue sport? Because the economics of college athletics—and higher ed—make football a key driver of university budgets.
Take sports first.
Football and men’s basketball “provide all the finances for the rest of the department,” UNC-CH athletic director Bubba Cunningham said at the press conference introducing Belichick. “The more successful we are in football, the more successful we are in basketball, the more opportunities we’re going to be able to provide for everyone else here.”
The NCAA settlement that will allow schools to pay athletes also lifts the cap on how many scholarships they can offer while placing new limits on roster sizes. At an Institute for Innovation event in October, Cunningham predicted the changes would mean “fewer student athletes, fewer sports” at most colleges.
Maintaining UNC-CH’s many non-revenue sports at a competitive level, as Cunningham hopes to do, would require more funding, and football is the best way to generate it. According to Sportico, the top-grossing football program in 2023, the University of Texas at Austin, had $183 million in revenue. The top men’s basketball program? $38 million. Even at UNC-CH—third highest in men’s basketball, 30th in football—the football team had higher net revenues.
In addition to making the sports world go round, football is also key to academic funding, according to UNC-CH trustee Jennifer Lloyd.
As the U.S. college-age population begins to shrink and some current students question the value of higher ed, universities are looking for alternate revenue streams. Donations are key.
“What we know is, in order to fundraise, you need engagement and you need alums who have a vested interest in what’s happening here at the university,” Lloyd said after the Belichick press conference. “And we know that our sports programs are the front door of that. So, it all works together.”
–Matt Hartman
Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here to get our weekly higher education newsletter.
They’ll Pass You By, Glory Days
Enough about the bad new days of college sports! What about the good old days? We just learned alumni nostalgia is the whole point of college sports, after all.
Thomas Beller, a longtime contributor to the New Yorker and The New York Times, went back in time with his review of Five Banners, a new book on Duke University’s basketball program during the Mike Krzyzewski years. It “evokes a bygone era when big-time sports was not so big,” Beller writes, when coaches “would wear plaid suits of dubious taste and then, after the game, they might hang around with reporters, drinking, smoking cigarettes, poring over grease-stained mimeographed stat sheets.”
But Beller couldn’t help but think about what the text didn’t cover—like how basketball changed during Coach K’s reign. “All this money sloshing around is like an underwater river that has burst out into plain sight,” Beller writes. “Perhaps its velocity has increased, but are we to believe it had not previously been there, out of sight?”
–Matt Hartman
The Glory Days of Coach K (and College Basketball)
A new book provides the ultimate insider’s view of Duke’s success before the money became gigantic, but this lullaby is just as noteworthy for what it leaves out.
Reach our team with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.
Recent Assembly Stories
What Roy Cooper Leaves Behind
No other North Carolina governor has seen his role so often reduced to trying to thwart his legislative adversaries. But that’s not Cooper’s only legacy.
Still Searching
Nearly three months after Hurricane Helene, Yancey County musician Lenny Widawski remains one of the few whose bodies have not been found.
Why Kaiser Bet on Cone Health for Its N.C. Expansion
The Triad-based health system hasn’t focused as aggressively on growth. Can it expand under a new owner without losing its identity?
The Assembly is a digital magazine covering power and place in North Carolina. Sent this by a friend? Subscribe to our newsletter here.