Budget Cuts, Courtesy of Donor X

An anonymous donor has given the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the funds to pay for a private consulting firm to recommend budget trimming cuts. Not everyone's happy with that. Among the more controversial provisions of the consulting contract:

Faculty and staff may only mention the consulting company's name in ways consistent with agreed-upon talking points: In addition to concerns about the anonymous donor, some faculty are unsure whether Bain brings the appropriate expertise to a project that amounts to suggesting university priorities. The company lists non-profit groups among its clients on its Web site, but the very fact that it approaches problems differently than does academe has been touted by Holden as a selling point.

Cat Warren, past president of the AAUP’s state conference, says it doesn’t make sense to use a company with such limited background in the realm of higher education.

“It’s like bringing in someone to operate on patient,and having someone say ‘Don’t worry, he’s not actually a surgeon, but he’ll bring a fresh perspective to the surgery,' " said Warren, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University.