As a parent who has supported three sons and a niece through undergraduate, graduate or law school, I understand the UNC Board of Governors’ concerns about increasing tuition rates and the use of some of those funds for financial aid for less privileged students. As a former dean of the College of Natural Resources at N.C. State, however, I feel their freeze on tuition and a cap on the level of financial aid to be used from those funds to be short-sighted.
First, one has to know the reasons for the rapid increase in tuition, both in North Carolina and across the country. After the Virginia Tech shooting and subsequent similar tragedies across the U.S., universities rightly increased campus security, including more campus police officers and psychological counselors. They also added loud speaker systems, video surveillance cameras and emergency text messaging, along with the staff to service those systems and training in emergency preparedness for all faculty and staff. Even the UNC Board of Governors considered spending an additional $1.7 million to further combat sexual assault on UNC campuses.
Parents nowadays and their students want spiffy gyms with climbing walls and saunas, not to mention swimming pools and bowling alleys, all staffed with personal trainers and even massage therapists. These amenities are not for gym classes but are to be available to all students around the clock. They want dormitories with big-screen TVs in the lobby, carpeting in the rooms and wi-fi throughout. They expect fabulous student centers with weekly entertainment, lots of clubs and staff to oversee them.
As for actual academic education, the cost has gone up, with the need for more high-tech laboratory equipment, computer hardware and software, distance education capabilities even for on-campus students, expanded library facilities, specialized laboratory renovation, universal wi-fi and, again, the staff to support these innovations. As higher education modernizes to meet the real needs of our graduates, there are now more student-research opportunities, study abroad trips, summer internships (some required) and specialty dorms for language or science majors. All of this has increased the cost per credit hour of instruction and the cost per student.
But all of these increased expenses pale in comparison to the decrease in the state legislature’s financial support of the UNC system. Year after year, the legislature has frozen pay raises, cut budgets and forced elimination of open positions. UNC-Chapel Hill alone has lost $325 million since 2008. N.C. State and the other 15 campuses have been treated similarly.
The legislature and now the Board of Governors seem to want to shift the cost of higher education onto the backs of the students and their families. No doubt all students should have some skin in the game and pay for part of their educations. We are used to seeing students get scholarships and work part-time and summer jobs and to seeing their families mortgage their homes and forgo vacations and old car replacements to fund higher education.
But the current costs leave our students debt-ridden upon graduation. And the poorer the student and his family, the greater the debt, if he can attend college at all. Let’s not forget that colleges also charge often substantial fees in addition to tuition for specialized degree programs or courses.
The money to pay for a higher education and the financial aid that provides a bootstrap for the economically disadvantaged has to come from somewhere. Capping tuition with the concomitant past and current lack of financial support of our legislature will only lead to lower quality education and decreased access to higher education. Capping the proportion of tuition used for financial aid will certainly decrease the diversity of our student body, both ethnically and economically.
The answer seems to be two-fold. One is to at least allow tuition to increase at the rate of inflation plus the cost of future cuts decreed by the legislature and the increased costs of education (except for the climbing walls and dorm carpeting). The other is for our Board of Governors members to lobby their Republican legislator friends to not only support the higher education system in this state, but also to replace funds lost in past budget cuts.
Education in North Carolina, including K-12 and higher education, has been a priority for decades and has made North Carolina the Silicon Valley of the East. It’s time to get back on top.
Robert D. Brown, Ph.D., of Cary is former dean of the College of Natural Resources at N.C. State University.
