One of the key changes to the policy could be the addition of a clause stating that the board will not increase tuition to fund enrollment growth. In March, the BOG approved a systemwide 8 percent in-state and 12 percent out-of-state tuition increase to provide $33 million in enrollment growth funding.
The tuition increase -- the first of its kind ever approved by the BOG -- was prompted by the state's gloomy fiscal outlook, which made most board members believe securing the funds from state revenues would be nearly impossible.
BOG member Ray Farris said that if the board refuses to fund enrollment growth, the N.C. General Assembly will feel pressured to provide funding. "It's very unlikely that the legislature will stop funding enrollment growth," he said. "I don't think they would allow that to happen."
UNC-system Association of Student Governments President Jonathan Ducote, a nonvoting member of the BOG, said legislative leaders assured board members that enrollment growth would be provided by the General Assembly in the future. "We're pretty much banking on that promise," he said.
A BOG ad hoc committee on tuition and fees drafted the proposal change, and it could reach the entire board by February, Ducote said.
If the proposal is enacted, system officials also would be required to consider if tuition rates would be in the bottom quartile of rates across the nation.
Ducote said mandating that tuition stay in the bottom quartile would allow students and families to better plan for increases. "If you set an upper limit, a reasonable person can really define what really is as free as practicable."
Although Ducote said he supports the proposal as a whole, he said he is disappointed that it does not require campuses to hear student voices when deciding on tuition increases. "As the policy is written now, I have many concerns as to why student involvement was not better-defined," he said. "Tuition increases have kind of been a closed-door policy, and in a lot of cases they cut students out of the process entirely."
BOG member Ben Ruffin, who created the ad hoc committee in spring 2002 near the end of his second two-year term as board chairman, said the potential changes in the proposal are indicators of the system's long-held stance on tuition.
