Legislature mandates $200 tuition increase

Before the semester has even begun, the University likely has set rates for next year’s tuition increase for the bulk of students on campus.

The state budget, signed into law Aug. 7, mandates that tuition will increase by $200 for every undergraduate student on campus for the 2010-11 school year.

That increase is typical for in-state undergraduate, but is significantly lower than the standard out-of-state student increase.

Under state law, UNC-system schools are prohibited from increasing tuition beyond that $200 for in-state students, which effectively negates the University’s often-controversial tuition talks.

Usually, the University assembles a tuition task force in the fall that makes recommendations to the chancellor and the Board of Trustees with input from students, faculty and administration. But this year, there isn’t a need for that.

“A tuition process is extremely unlikely given the specificity of the language in the budget,” said Dwayne Pinkney, assistant vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Graduate students would also be bound by the mandated increase unless their schools’ tuition hikes were approved by the UNC-system earlier this year. Some schools establish these rates on a two-year basis.

But all of this could change as the state budget situation improves or deteriorates. The tuition provisions will be reevaluated during the N.C. General Assembly’s short session next summer.

While the University will not be able to further increase tuition for residents, non-resident students weren’t technically afforded the same guarantees, though top University administrators seem unaware that these students are exempt.

Administration officials said they are planning to apply the $200 increase across the board, to both residents and non-residents.

This increase is more or less in line with the $160 increase to in-state students last year and represents a tuition increase of about 5 percent. But it is far less than the $1,150 increase on out-of-state students last year and would represent a tuition increase of less than 1 percent for those students.

“It’s a good year for out-of-state folks,” Chancellor Holden Thorp said.

While students will be paying more next year, the money will not be coming back directly to UNC.

That’s because the legislature will be taking the money raised by the increase as just another revenue source, effectively a flat tax on university students across the state.

Usually, dollars from tuition hikes come back to the University mostly in student aid and faculty salaries.

This spring, the UNC-system Board of Governors approved a $160 increase for UNC-CH undergraduates. The state considered raising it to $200 and not sending it back to the University, but a compromise in the legislature allowed the board’s recommendations to stand for the current year.

The administration is still planning to collect the same data as they would for the usual tuition process, said Bruce Carney, interim executive vice chancellor and provost who would lead the tuition task force, but said they won’t actually go through the same process of campus meetings and input.

“I know in talking to the chancellor there didn’t seem to be a point of going through the exercise, which would be one of frustration,” Carney said. “But we have to be prepared to do this anyway, because tuition is critical to faculty salaries and student aid.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.