Trustees pass hikes, athletic fees

With two separate votes Thursday morning, the University’s governing board set into action a pair of proposals that would tack an extra $1,000 for nonresidents and $250 for in-state-students onto the bill to attend UNC.

The tuition proposal, which would generate a total of about $7.4 million to fund top University priorities, includes an increase of $950 for out-of-state students and $200 for in-state students.

These hikes work in tandem with a two-year athletic fee increase — $50 next year and $100 the following year — that would secure funds for a merit-scholarship program and put the Olympic sports program on solid ground.

“What we are really trying to do is balance a number of needs to move us where we need to move as a university,” Trustee Karol Mason said before the board approved the proposals.

Through the fee proposal, introduced this week by Chairwoman of the Faculty Judith Wegner, revenues generated from merchandise that bears the University’s trademark would shift from funding athletics to funding merit scholarships. The student fee increase then would fill the hole created in the athletics budget.

Administrators said the athletics fee proposal was “dead on arrival” at the trustees’ University Affairs Committee meeting Wednesday.

The Student Fee Audit Committee and the Chancellor’s Committee on Student Fees rejected the proposal when it surfaced earlier this week. Both groups disapproved of the proposal’s timing and the precedent it could set for student fee funding priorities.

But the athletic fee increase took center stage during discussions at Thursday’s meeting of the full BOT.

Trustee Rusty Carter, chairman of the University Affairs Committee, said the board has been wrestling with a way to provide merit-based scholarships for years. He said he would not support tuition increases until such a plan was constructed.

“We absolutely have to do something about merit scholarships,” he said. “We absolutely have to do something about Olympic sports. We absolutely have to do something about tuition.”

Student Body President Matt Calabria attempted to delay the vote on the $100 athletic fee increase for 2006-07 until meetings next year. “This is something we want to get behind,” he said. “All I am asking is for us to take some time.”

John Ellison, the only trustee besides Calabria to vote against the fee increase, said he would support such an increase only if it were deducted from proposed tuition increases. “Up until now, in the history of this University, we have not asked students to subsidize the athletic program,” he said. “We are crossing a line now.”

But board members said the needs of the University were more pressing. “We either have to stop raising tuition or address this problem,” Carter said. “This is the best idea I’ve heard in four years, and we can debate it to the end of the earth, but it works.”

On the advice of Chancellor James Moeser, the board approved the proposal but deducted the fee hikes from tuition increases to avoid doubly burdening students.

The $50 athletic fee increase is tacked onto the $64.50 fee increase that passed through both student fee committees last semester. The $114.50 total increase, up 9.2 percent, would bring the total cost of fees for 2005-06 to $1,353.50.

On top of lobbying for more time to examine the fee hike, Calabria again tried to sway the board to reduce the out-of-state tuition increase proposal to $800. But trustees almost unanimously approved the hikes that boost undergraduate resident tuition to $3,405 and nonresident tuition to $17,253.

If the UNC-system Board of Governors and the legislature approve the University’s request, the University would gain about $7.4 million. After 40 percent of the revenue is set aside for need-based and graduate student aid, about $4.4 million would be left for priorities related to faculty retention.

The proposals await approval by the BOG, whose members have said they might veto in-state tuition increases for any system schools. But University officials continue to call campus-based hikes a necessity.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.