Future of UNC-system enrollment growth funding remains uncertain

For UNC-system universities, an increase in student enrollment used to mean an increase in funding.

But with the system’s Board of Governors changing the criteria for receiving enrollment growth funding and state budget cuts expected to continue, administrators are worried about filling another hole in their budget.

In the past, the board rewarded schools that reached a new level of enrollment growth with funds earmarked for certain costs, including faculty salaries and other institutional costs.

The N.C. General Assembly approved the board’s full request for funding this year, said Jonathan Pruitt, associate vice president for finance for the system.

But administrators are uncertain about the fate of the funding.

The system received $45.8 million in enrollment funding this year — a decrease from $59 million last year, Pruitt said.

Last year the board enacted a new set of performance-based criteria that institutions must meet to receive the funding.

The criteria goes beyond enrollment growth to include freshman and sophomore retention measures and degree efficiency standards, said board member Paul Fulton.

“Graduation rates at some campuses were really poor,” he said. “If some kids are coming and not completing their degree, you’re not using your dollars efficiently.”

Trey Standish, assistant director for enrollment planning at N.C. State University, said schools that don’t meet the criteria or grow in enrollment will not be funded.

“If you don’t reform, you can’t grow anymore, and if you don’t grow, you can’t get that funding,” he said.

NCSU received $11.1 million this year, the largest amount of enrollment funding in the system. Next year, officials hope to receive a similar amount.

“Our enrollment did grow,” Standish said. “But in terms of funding and if the UNC General Administration has the capacity to fund it — we don’t know.”

This year, three schools did not receive funding: Fayetteville State University, N.C. Agricultural & Technical State University and Elizabeth City State University.

Jon Young, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at FSU, said the school didn’t expect to receive funding because of a lack of growth, so it didn’t apply.

The board will enact new standards for all system institutions in 2013, meaning the university will have to improve its student performance to receive funding.

Only 54 percent of its freshmen 2008 class came back for their junior year this year.

FSU has spent the last three years revising its policies to meet these new standards, Young said. Implementing the board’s standards has stalled enrollment growth, so the university has not been applying for the system’s enrollment funding.

“No one would have ever envisioned that in the fall of 2011, we would have lost almost 14 percent of our budget,” Young said. “The impact is worse than we ever would have imagined.”

Young said FSU administrators hope to request funding for the 2013-14 school year. But he’s unsure if the system will even have enrollment growth funding to hand out to universities.

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