The education of Molly Broad.

• Author: Cline, Ned
• Position: Capital

There is a lot of angst in Chapel Hill over why Carolina football coach John Bunting can't win and whether basketball coach Roy Williams can win as many as he ought to. There is also growing concern about another UNC leader's performance and future. President Molly Broad isn't tottering on the edge of a cliff, by any means, but she is facing increasing scrutiny over what her critics are calling missteps.

Through it all, she remains confident--some say defiant, even arrogant--because that's her style. But that style is part of the problem.

She doesn't listen well, her detractors complain. And though she has been in the job six years, she hasn't mastered the intricacies of Tar Heel politics--crucial to anyone in her position--and has angered key state legislators, who provide the system's $1.8 billion budget and appoint members to UNC's Board of Governors, to which she reports.

She enraged Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand by supporting employment contracts for chancellors of some campuses. "I just told members of her board that they better stop all that contract talk or they would be gone before she is," he says. "There is no doubt in my mind that she was pushing contracts for chancellors because she wanted one for herself."

Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight calls Broad "very intelligent," but he adds that the job might be too big for her. House Education Committee Chairman Alex Warner characterizes her administration as an "air of arrogance ... a nose-in-the-air tea party." Others are more genteel in their expressions but no less disturbed. "I'm fearful she is not reading the sentiment of those whose support is essential to her success," one former member of the Board of Governors says.

While her support might be slipping, it hasn't evaporated. Her supporters, in fact, can be as passionate as her critics. "I think Molly Broad has taken the university to new levels," says former Gov. Jim Holshouser, chairman of the Board of Governors committee that recommended hiring her. "She has brought outstanding attributes to the job. The university is in the best shape it has ever been." Board member Priscilla Taylor calls her a "good, effective leader." Taylor, Holshouser and others laud Broad for the effort she put into getting the $3.1 billion university bond referendum passed in 2000 and the need-based scholarships that she initiated.

But what has upset lawmakers as well as some of her board members are the contract issue, personnel...