[ad_1]
A board of trustees committee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill refused Wednesday to give its approval to a proposed 3% increase on in-state undergraduate tuition for the incoming class, calling on the university to keep that tuition flat for another year.
The proposed increase on in-state undergrads, which came from the university’s administration, would have amounted to $211 per student per year and raised about $800,000 in the first year. Current in-state undergrad students wouldn’t have been impacted by the increase.
Schools in the UNC System, including UNC, haven’t raised tuition on in-state undergraduate students since the fall of 2017. The UNC Board of Governors, for the first time since that hike, is allowing the boards at UNC System schools to consider a tuition increase.
Chancellor Lee Roberts said during the meeting that he supported the proposal and called it “a very measured, reasonable increase, entirely consistent with our obligations to the North Carolina Constitution.”
But trustees on the budget committee weren’t swayed, citing constitutional concerns, university spending and the UNC System’s taking of money from the university through performance metrics.
Several trustees said they would support the tuition increase if the UNC System promised not to take money off the Chapel Hill campus to give to other schools in the system. Trustees contend the UNC System took $7 million from the campus under a new performance formula and repeatedly called it a “tax.”
However, a majority of the board said it was opposed to the in-state undergraduate tuition increase under any circumstance.
“I think the principle on in-state tuition is that you don’t raise it unless you absolutely have to,” said trustee Jim Blaine, one of the most vocal critics of the plan. “I don’t see in our budget that we absolutely have to.”
Blaine criticized the university for a $1-million contract with a D.C.-based public relations and communications firm, saying such spending feeds into the narrative that UNC is not careful with its money.
“I don’t see the point in an $800,000 increase on in-state students, given our constitutional obligations, and I would like to see the graduate stuff reworked to be where it’s not shifting more of the burden to in-state students,” Blaine said.
So the committee instructed the administration to bring back a proposal that includes no tuition increase on in-state undergrads and instead raised tuition on out-of-state graduate students to compensate for the lost revenue. The full Board of Trustees meets Thursday in Chapel Hill. The full board could consider the original proposal as well.
Trustee Ralph Meekins was the lone vote against the plan to ask for a new proposal. Meekins said the original tuition proposal went through a long vetting process with administrators, students and faculty. He said he would take the Board of Governors’ allowance of an increase “as a recommendation that we should.”
“We’ve gone nine years without increases in our tuition,” he said. “We are the No. 1 university in the country for the money and we need to stay competitive in that area.”
The original proposal presented by the administration included a 10% increase on out-of-state undergraduate students and no increase on the base tuition for either in-state or out-of-state graduate students. The proposal also included increases for housing and meals. The trustees on the committee were OK with the out-of-state undergrad, housing and meal parts of the proposal.
NC State’s board of trustees will also consider a proposal to raise tuition by 3% at its meetings this week.
No matter what the university trustees ultimately decide to do regarding tuition, it might not be the last word. The Board of Governors oversees all the schools in the UNC System. And Republican lawmakers in the state House and Senate voted earlier this year on dueling budget proposals to hike tuition and force spending cuts at nearly every UNC System university, including Chapel Hill. Those plans are on hold as the legislature has failed to pass a new state budget.
The Chapel Hill campus announced a $70-million cost-cutting plan in July.
In-state undergraduate tuition has remained at $7,019 per year since the 2017-18 school year. Fees at UNC were $2,076 for the current 2025-26 academic year. The proposal included a $53 increase in fees to help fund a new campus recreation and wellness center as the university has outgrown its current one. Construction on the new rec center isn’t expected to begin until at least 2027.
The university has been aggressively raising tuition for out-of-state undergraduate students. Tuition for those students was $26,575 in 2012-13 and is now $43,152, but demand in the form of applications continues to rise.
“You should be contemplating a world where we’re going to be likely in this range [of increases] for some time,” Nate Knuffman, the university’s chief financial officer told the committee.
[ad_2]