System Enrolls 1,000 Too Many

The system's enrollment was about 1,000 students over the planned amount, said Gretchen Bataille, UNC-system vice president for academic affairs.

She added that though official figures have yet to be released, each of the 16 UNC-system campuses experienced an increase in the number of students. "(The growth of all) campuses was up, and some had a growth in the high teens," she said.

The UNC system increased its enrollment for the 2001-02 school year by 4.3 percent -- 1,800 students over target. The additional students in 2001 left the UNC system with a $23 million hole in its budget, which the legislature funded in this year's state budget.

But the 1,000 additional students this year are not funded by the budget, leaving individual campuses to provide the needed funding.

UNC-CH's freshmen enrollment for the 2002-03 school year is 40 students under the projected total of 3,500. The 2002 freshmen class also contains 227 fewer students than in 2001.

Brad Wilson, chairman of the UNC-system Board of Governors, said the increase in enrollment is not a surprise. An increase in the number of college-eligible high school students will cause the system to continue growing, Wilson said.

Officials also say the additional students will hurt the system's ability to fund its enrollment growth with money allotted to it from the state budget.

Sen. Tony Rand, D-Cumberland, said $66 million was allocated in the state budget to the UNC system to fund enrollment growth.

The N.C. General Assembly usually provides funding for enrollment growth to help the 16 system campuses avoid having to impose caps on the number of students accepted.

Bataille said it is an individual school's responsibility to provide the money to correct its mistakes when it overshoots its enrollment growth. She added this leads to campuses with historically fewer students having extra money. Institutions often compensate the following year, she said.

She pointed to the example of UNC-Pembroke, where over-enrollment one year caused administrators to raise their funding expectations the next year.

But Wilson said over-enrollment is a mixed blessing. While a campus gains when more qualified students attend, university officials are faced with a greater strain on their budget, he said.

Concerns that the legislature would not provide the necessary $66 million for enrollment growth forced the BOG to increase in-state tuition by 8 percent and out-of-state tuition by 12 percent to generate a portion of the funding.

Wilson said that with the state's increasingly tight budget, funding enrollment growth will be more difficult this year.

He also said he is not in favor of forced enrollment caps and prefers a "natural cap" resulting from the presence of available resources on a campus.

It is unlikely that lawmakers will ever advocate a cap on enrollment, he said.

And legislators say their top priority is to not narrow students' options. "Education may be expensive, but ignorance is even more expensive," Rand said.

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