The UNC Board of Governors passed a new business fee for undergraduates at Kenan-Flagler Business School, meant to expand enrollment by 50 percent on Friday, along with an increase in out-of-state student tuition.
The extra annual business school fee is $2,000 for business majors and $1,000 for minors, and will not apply to current juniors or seniors in the business school.
Douglas Shackelford, dean of the business school, said after facing accreditation problems due to having so many students in the 1980s, the school created a cap of approximately 400 business majors and minors per class in 1984.
“We admit about half the students that apply to the business school, and we know a lot of students don’t apply because the word on the street is that it’s very hard to get accepted,” Shackelford said. “So what we’ve been looking for is some way ... that we could do something that would enable us to get the funding to be able to expand the number of students who could study business.”
The proposal process for the fee formally began on campus during Fall 2017 and went through various committees on campus and the Board of Trustees, before moving on to the Board of Governors this past week. Along with the fee, the school plans to expand enrollment through fundraising and a capital campaign. This two-pronged approach is intended to expand the business school from 400 to 600 students over the next eight years.
Shackelford said the private funding is needed to pay for areas the fee cannot be used in, such as hiring additional faculty and building new facilities. The fee will be used to expand student programming, hire staff and provide financial aid.
Junior Poojan Mehta, a student in the business school, said the new fee will be good for the school because the extra funding will help grow the program, and the cost of the fee will be covered for students who are receiving financial aid.
“I know there are a lot of freshmen and sophomores who apply and don’t get in, who are well-qualified, just because there isn’t space in the program," he said. "So I think over the long run it makes a lot of sense, and in addition to that, most have a really good return on their investment in school."
Shackelford agreed and said the high job placement rate and average $70,000 starting salary for graduates from the business school will allow them to recuperate quickly from the cost of the maximum $4,000 fee they will now pay. He said while the fee could increase in the future, it will stay where it is for some time.
