Shooting yourself in the foot, cutting off your nose to spite your face — a number of expressions come to mind when considering the adverse effects of any attempt by the General Assembly to roll back a key provision that has proven essential to maximizing merit scholarship offerings.
The law in question allows endowed scholarships that offer full tuition, such as the Morehead-Cain and the Robertson, to pay in-state tuition for non-resident recipients of their scholarships. The math is simple: The less tuition the scholarship foundation has to pay, the more scholarships it can offer.
The math is equally simple (though perhaps less quantifiable) when it comes to the effect this has on our university: UNC is undeniably a better academic institution because it is able to attract high caliber students — many of whom would otherwise be successfully recruited by other schools.
The quality of every student’s classroom experience is at least partially dependent on the quality of his classmates.
Furthermore, there are innumerable ways that such high-caliber students contribute to the prestige of our university (e.g., the disproportionate number of Rhodes Scholars from UNC who were also Morehead-Cain scholars).
And, believe it or not, educating the nation’s best and brightest has positive dividends for the state. There’s a reason the Research Triangle cultivates the immense amount of human capital that it does.
This isn’t even a resident versus non-resident issue. Because the Morehead-Cain Foundation balances the scholarships it offers both, any need to decrease non-resident scholarships will hit resident scholarship offerings as well.
UNC is facing the potential for at least 15 percent in cuts to its budget. As cuts materialize, our state leaders must know that a maintained ability to recruit the strongest students will be an essential tool to mitigate the damage.
If the quality of our institution must take a hit, the least that can be done is to preserve the quality of our student population.
