The Carolina Way is Dead, pt 1

For those of you who haven't  watched this video, do so.  It's funny.  If you're not a Duke or Carolina fan, or don't follow sports, you may not get it all, but trust me, it's funny.



So the other day I was talking to a guy who works at UNC about retention.  Time was, when a Stanford or a Princeton would swoop in and try to buy up a UNC faculty member, UNC did pretty well retaining them.  Of late, the numbers have been slipping.  One of the big factors cited by departing faculty in why they left?  Athletic scandals.

And, indeed, they have been difficult.  They ended up besmirching a good Chancellor, who fell on a knife not of his own forging and skipped town for a less stressful job.

Meanwhile, up in Raleigh, another Carolina Way is threatened, not just with eclipse, but with extinction.  For all our lives NC has been the state that provided a winning formula of investing its own money in public education and attracting private money to exploit the synergies offered by its universities, thereby becoming a place where a range of educated people would like to live, allowing the state to rise up the value chain in its core exports, from tobacco to intellectual capital.

How does this all tie together, you may ask. Well, it ain't one neat package, but certainly there is a common theme of short-mindedness and narrow instrumental-functionalism to it all. The university has been too focused on the short-term glory of the light blue, as if Dean's great legacy was on the court more than off it, when I think the converse is, if anything, the case.  And the legislature, and the electorate with its support of Amendment One -- have turned their attention to restoring some mythical North Carolina of the past that has made us the laughing stock of the nation and the world.

At this point in time, the university has a to lead and reestablish a tone. It should forget about trying to keep up with Duke on the court and focus on being a center of learning and strength.  Fire Roy Williams. Anybody who can compare a bad season to a catastrophe-ripped nation doesn't belong in Dean's chair.  Get a coach in with his priorities in the right place, and have the university turn back to its core competency.... blah blah blah

(this so often happens.  What feels like a cogent blog post in the morning degenerates in the afternoon into a half-baked rant.  Oh well.  At least the video was funny)