Funding for enrollment growth is allocated through the state's expansion budget, which serves mostly to provide revenue for items not funded in previous years.
Some legislative leaders and system officials are hoping to move enrollment growth to the state's continuation budget, which carries over from year to year. The difference is that in tough budget times the N.C. General Assembly is hard-pressed to fund expansionary items, and University enrollment growth falls in that category.
Doubt over whether the legislature would find the $66 million needed for enrollment growth for next year prompted the UNC-system Board of Governors to approve an 8 percent tuition increase for in-state students and 12 percent increase for out-of-state students in March to fund about half that total.
Just days before the BOG approved the increase, Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, and House Speaker Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, sent a letter to the BOG vowing to support moving enrollment funding from the expansion to the continuation budget.
But Jeff Davies, UNC-system vice president for finance, said this move will probably not be made until next year.
Davies said he is not concerned that the move will not be made this session. "The parties involved in this process realize that the first real opportunity we have to move enrollment growth to the continuation budget won't be until next year," he said. "The timing is such that it is just not possible right now."
Brad Wilson, newly elected chairman of the BOG, said that if enrollment growth is not shifted to the continuation budget, the BOG will be forced to consider other tuition increases in the future to fund enrollment growth.
Amy Fulk, Basnight's press secretary, said there is a positive consensus in the Senate regarding the switch from the expansion to continuation budget.
"A lot of senators agree on switching enrollment growth to the continuation budget, and so far there has been no strong opposition to this plan," she said.
