Panel Tackles UNC-System Tuition Concerns

Topics discussed included recent campus-initiated tuition increase requests, alternatives to tuition increases and the role of the N.C. General Assembly in funding the UNC system.

About 80 people, including students from system schools statewide, listened to the panel members field questions of concern about the fairness of recent tuition increases. The panel included higher education leaders and state legislators.

Students and panelists expressed their concern that the average amount of tuition at UNC-system schools has increased 93 percent during the past decade.

Panelist and UNC-system President Molly Broad said tuition increases might be necessary to maintain competitive faculty salaries.

"It is the faculty that define the quality of a great university," Broad said.

UNC-Wilmington Chancellor James Leutze, who also sat on the panel, said faculty salaries at UNC-system schools have lagged 15 percent behind the national average for many years. "This is the first year that North Carolina has met the national average," Broad added.

Leutze said he sees at least eight professors leave his university each year to find higher-paying jobs and added that increasing faculty salaries is critical to avoid more losses.

Other panelists also echoed the need to raise tuition for competitive faculty salaries. "If we want to be great, we ought to pay for it," said Sen. Howard Lee, D-Orange.

Students from N.C. State University, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Chapel Hill and other schools asked the panelists for sources of university funding other than tuition increases.

The panelists pointed to alternative funding such as soliciting gifts from alumni or corporations and privatizing certain university services, such as housing.

But other panelists pointed out that it is vital to maintain academic integrity.

"We must not sell our good name for corporate support," Broad said.

Brett Pendergrass, UNC-C student body president, asked the panelists about public funds sent to private institutions in the form of financial aid at a time when Gov. Mike Easley is requesting the UNC system to return $21.1 million.

UNC-system Association of Student Governments President Andrew Payne, who also sat on the panel, said legislators should reconsider that funding.

"That's an area to be looked at first rather than tuition increases at public universities," Payne said.

Payne also discussed the importance of shrewd fiscal choices by state legislators. "It is the General Assembly's responsibility to make sure the state's budget isn't balanced on the back of students," he said.

But Lee and another panelist, Rep. Art Pope, R-Wake, stressed that tuition increases are inevitable as North Carolina faces difficult fiscal times ahead, including a $900 million budget deficit this fiscal year.

Broad added that the greatest challenge facing the UNC system is compromising between the state budget shortfall and the system's mission of making sure higher education is accessible, affordable and serves students' needs. "In the long term, the UNC system must find the right balance."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.