Editorial: Legislature must find money to keep UNC-system tuition reasonable

By: JournalNow Staff | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: January 25, 2012

It's time for the General Assembly to obey the state constitution regarding the university system.

Students and their parents face an untenable situation today. Education costs are accelerating twice as fast as general inflation. Family incomes are stagnant. Student earnings can't keep pace, and the college graduate's likely income is uncertain, given the lousy economy.

Add to this dreadful situation recent calls for double-digit tuition and fee increases — some as high at 15.6 percent — and it is hard to see how most North Carolinians can educate their children.

Fearing that families cannot afford such increases, UNC system President Tom Ross wants the Board of Governors to cap campus cost increases at 10 percent next year — with a 9.6 percent system-wide average — and 4 percent the following year. On average, Ross' proposal would have campuses, over the next two years, maintain the recent trend of limiting increases to 6.5 annually.

While that is much better than 15.6 percent per year, it's not good enough.

The Ross proposal simply maintains a rate that families and students cannot sustain. North Carolina must slow or stop UNC inflation, not maintain or accelerate it.

We recognize concerns that led university leaders to propose outrageous increases — the drastic state cuts to university funding over the past four years, especially last year, are truly harming our students and our economy.

The state constitution is not vague about the legislature's responsibility in this regard. It says that the legislature must maintain a university that is as close to being free of charge "as is practicable." Sustained tuition and fee increases that are more than twice the rate of general inflation do not meet that constitutional mandate.

This spring, the General Assembly must first cancel $10 million in additional UNC cuts scheduled for next academic year, then make no additional cuts, and then find new money to restore core university functions it cut last year.

Students and their families are paying enough right now. UNC has done its job in cutting expenses. Now it's time for the legislature to do its part and find new money.