Despite student objections, the board of trustees for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill agreed Thursday to raise tuition by $400 beginning next fall in an effort to preserve the quality of the school's faculty.
The trustees' decision came at the recommendation of a task force on tuition chaired by Provost Robert Shelton, who said Carolina's faculty salaries currently fall well below those at peer institutions, and that additional funding would be needed to fix that disparity.
Chancellor James Moeser emphasized the urgency of increasing faculty salaries immediately, rather than waiting a year for economic conditions to improve before raising tuition. "Can we as a university really afford to be dead in the water... for a full year?" he asked.
Student body president Justin Young, an ex officio member of the board, argued that the university should look to other sources of money--such as increased private donations or state funding--rather than passing the burden to students during a recession, particularly since the tuition increase will not be enough to cover the entire cost of the faculty salaries effort.
"This isn't something that will be able to solve that problem," said Young, the only member of the board to vote against the increase.
But Moeser explained that the university is already looking at other sources of funding. "Tuition's going to be at the margins," he said. "The capital campaign and the increase in private support will be the most important."
He added that with another tight budget year in the General Assembly, it will be nearly impossible to increase public funding. "We're going to be going to the Legislature fighting defensive battles to protect what we already have," he said.
Still, Young argued that if the University lets students shoulder more of the cost now, it would send a signal to state lawmakers that they could rely on students to pay still more tuition in the future.
"This is not merely a one-time $400 tuition increase, but it kind of sets a precedent and a general tone," said Mikisha Brown, president of Carolina's Graduate and Professional Student Federation, who joined Young for his presentation.
Several trustees agreed that relying too much on tuition could develop into a problem in the future, but they said a short-term increase is still necessary.
"As stewards, we really have no choice but to do what we're going to do today because we're really the last line of defense," said trustee Rusty Carter. "We have to do what we have to do now, but we have to find a way not to be in this position every year.... I think what we need to commit to is a strategic leadership plan of a sort."
The decision brought opposition from students, many of whom attended the standing-room only meeting. About 100 students from both UNC-CH and North Carolina State University demonstrated Thursday morning against the increase, which many feared could lead to tuition increases across the entire UNC system.
"When this university increases tuition... the rest of the 16 universities across the state tend to follow suit," Brown said.
Young reported that a poll found concerns of affordability among students; 33 percent said they could not afford any tuition hike, and only 14 percent said they could afford the full $400 increase.
The task force's plan tried to alleviate this difficulty by promising that 40 cents on each dollar of the tuition increase would be devoted back to financial aid to ensure that less affluent students would not be hurt by the increase, though Brown and Young disputed the efficacy of this measure, particularly for minority students.
"Tuition increases tend to lead to diversity decreases," Brown said.
This year, Chapel Hill undergraduates from North Carolina paid $3,277 in tuition and required fees, so the additional $400 represents a 12.2 percent increase for them--in addition to a potential 4.8 percent increase that the separate UNC Board of Governors might approve for all 16 state universities.
"Four-hundred dollars might not seem like a lot to an average person, but it is a lot for a graduate student and for some undergraduate students," Brown said. "It's half of your rent, it's a third of your stipend, for most grad students."
She added that graduate student stipends would need to be increased along with tuition.
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