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SOURCE: News & Observer
02.08.07
EDITORIAL: Another hit on students
There seems to be a disconnect these days between trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill and the students they're supposed to look after. By approving a $250 tuition increase for in-state students ($1,250 for those from out-of-state), the trustees want to hike tuition and fees even further past the sad benchmark they've already passed, a doubling of in-state tuition and fees since 1999. That's if the move is approved by the UNC system's Board of Governors, a group that tends to be similar in background (meaning affluent) to the trustees.
And sadly, this is likely to happen year after year after year, because UNC system President Erskine Bowles convinced the governing board to approve a 6.5 percent annual cap on tuition increases for in-state students. Bowles' policy has the effect of guaranteeing that tuition will rise.
The students who really get hit, of course, are those in the middle class who don't quality for much financial aid. (UNC-CH has, admirably, a program to help the poorest students graduate without debt.) For those students, any increase is tough. And what about all the families out there with kids in high school who might take a look at the projected expense, of which tuition and fees are just a part, and tell their kids, "We just can't afford this."
In addition to raising in-state tuition, trustees continue to treat out-of-state students as cash cows. That's unseemly, and it's also foolish. Out-of-state students add greatly to the diversity on campuses, and tend to be good students. And if the tuition and fees now charged to them ($19,524 this year) are still a bargain and thus draw more interest from excellent out-of-state students, that's good.
North Carolina has been well-served by making higher education affordable for all. With every tuition increase such as the one proposed at Chapel Hill, the risk grows that the sons and daughters of taxpayers who have long supported the UNC system will be denied what the state always has viewed not just as an opportunity, but as a right.
