The Future Winner Among State Us is…U North Carolina?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Michigan the state is in bad shape, no argument there. The University of Michigan is in a tough budget year, true, but it is FAR from needing a funeral dirge played. </p>

<p>You might hear hand-wringing remarks from faculty, but that’s because their deans and chairs are putting pressure on them to find some cost-cutting opportunities. Some of those conversations may have had an alarmist tone, and some units are feeling a greater revenue pinch (like the executive MBA program, for obvious reasons). But U-M is in a pretty secure financial position, which is why there have been so many news stories about it, why Lansing is eager to work with the URC, why we bought Pfizer, and why our bond rating didn’t budge. </p>

<p>You can go ahead and believe U-M is on the verge of collapse, but you’d better find better evidence to support the claim if you’re going to make it in this thread.</p>

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You are more optimistic than Chancellor Thorp. With a much lower endowment, UNC is more susceptible to cut in state funding.</p>

<p>"UNC System campuses face budget cuts of 5 percent in Gov. Beverly Perdue’s budget proposal, released last week.</p>

<p>For Carolina, this means a cut of about $29 million, one that likely will result in employee layoffs and cutting expenses across campus.
…
Thorp wrote that he has asked campus leaders to reduce expenses before eliminating staff positions but that some layoffs would be inevitable… Employee cuts likely would come from nonfaculty staff…</p>

<p>In an interview, Thorp said UNC must start hiring faculty again as soon as it can. “By far the biggest thing that’s happened is canceling the 50 faculty searches, and we need to start hiring faculty again really, really soon…”
…
Capital projects at Chapel Hill already are suffering. Three projects are on hold: the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center expansion, the law school’s move to Carolina North and a new building for the psychology department. The addition of luxury suites and other enhancements to the south side of Kenan Stadium has been postponed…"
[UNC</a> General Alumni Association :: Carolina Faces 5 Percent Cut in Governor’s Budget](<a href=“Carolina Alumni”>Carolina Faces 5 Percent Cut in Governor’s Budget - Carolina Alumni)</p>

<p>On the other hand, Michigan is going ahead as planned with its commitment to create 100 new faculty positions:</p>

<p>President Coleman: “Over the next five years, we are committing $30 million in salaries and start-up costs to create 100 tenure-track faculty positions that will expand interdisciplinary work and increase faculty connections with undergraduates. These positions are being centrally funded and will complement the regular faculty hiring in the schools and colleges.”</p>

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<p>GoBlue,
Of the five most highly ranked publics, U North Carolina has several financial advantages:</p>

<p>1A. Lowest tuition cost (Reason A). This is the easiest to identify. They have not priced themselves out of the market, particularly for OOS students. </p>

<p>1B. Lowest tuition cost (Reason B). Having such a low current tuition rates gives them the greatest latitude for being able to raise rates closer to their public and private competitors. The private colleges that collegeboard.com says most overlap with U North Carolina are Duke, Cornell, Boston College and Boston U. U North Carolina is $20,000 or more cheaper than these schools. U North Carolina could raise tuition rates faster than the average for several years and still be priced at a major discount to these and other privates. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>They still have fewer than 20% OOS students. Thus, if it were desirable, there is scope to expand OOS enrollment and thereby increase tuition revenue. </p></li>
<li><p>Excellent financial aid. As noted previously, they meet 100% of demonstrated need for their in-state AND their out-of-state students. Surely some of this capability occurs because of the lower cost of attendance.</p></li>
<li><p>The state of North Carolina has much of its engineering programs run through North Carolina State University. This lowers the operating cost at Chapel Hill as engineering departments are among the most expensive, if not the most expensive, academic programs to run. This frees up cash that can be used for other undergraduate programs.</p></li>
<li><p>Economically, the state of North Carolina’s growth prospects are excellent and its economy is well-diversified from banking to healthcare to tourism to manufacturing to agriculture. There are some current unemployment problems (primarily due to fallout from the construction bust and jobs related to that), but the only structural blemish is that the state once had a lot of textile businesses, but most of these have either closed/moved or downsized. The major cities in North Carolina are flourishing, but the smaller towns where a lot of the textile folks were located are not doing as well. </p></li>
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<p>We can evaluate this on a state-by-state basis, but the thread began with the idea that some unique local factors were of major concern to some of the elite publics, ie, California has got a massive budget problem that will hit the UC system, U Virginia lost a significant amount of money in its endowment in the last year and U Michigan has the dual problems of sizable endowment losses and a regional economy that is deteriorating and is unlikely to give it a much-needed forward push. By comparison to all of these, the situation in North Carolina in general, and at U North Carolina in particular, is positively sunny. </p>

<p>dstark,
I’m not completely sure, but I think that the GDP of both NC and Michigan are somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 billion with NC slightly larger. But NC’s is growing while Michigan’s is declining. </p>

<p>BTW, I agree with you that all of these institutions will have to increase tuition in the years ahead. However, I hope you would agree that, among this group of colleges, U North Carolina has the most latitude for doing so. </p>

<p>hoedown,
For the record, I’m not predicting the demise of U Michigan. It is a fine state university with deep resources. However, I think that there are others that are better positioned at present and that their surrounding geographies will help their boats float more easily than those in Michigan (or California or Virginia).</p>

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<p>If UNC doesn’t offer top engineering and science programs, they can only raise their tuition so much, since liberal arts grads don’t make as much on average.</p>

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<p>You know what Hawkette, I was wrong. I screwed up.</p>

<p>North Carolina does have a slightly higher GDP than Michigan’s.</p>

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<p>

Let’s compare them using hawkette’s favorite SAT metric:</p>

<p>Critical Reading > 700
UNC: 24.6%
Michigan: 21.5%</p>

<p>Math > 700
UNC: 30.0%
Michigan: 45.9%</p>

<p>Writing > 700
UNC: 23.5%
Michigan: 28.0%</p>

<p>Does it look pretty darn close to you?</p>

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Are you saying Michigan has smarter students overall?</p>

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<p>Okay, let me just put this simply as an average Ohioan would say:</p>

<p>MICHIGAN IS THE BEST PUBLIC UNIVERSITY IN THE COUNTRY AND ALWAYS WILL BE!!!</p>

<p>…okay, maybe that’s not what the average Ohioan would say, but it is quite obvious to see and here’s why:</p>

<ol>
<li>Michigan has no in-state competition, or much competition in the region surrounding it- There are no Dukes or Wake Forests nearby. It’s a good 4-hour drive to get to Northwestern, the only relatively comparable university in the area. Michigan also has a very heavy population base in Detroit and surrounding environs, 10 million in-staters to draw from, and can also easily obtain students from Ohio (45 minutes away), Indiana, and Illinois, all of which do not have comparable public universities in regard to prestige. Considering that makes 40 million people that only have one major university to look to for a ecxcellent public education, it ups U of M’s drawing power a lot. Even though its tuition is expensive, it is still less than comparable private universities.</li>
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<p>UNC, on the other hand, has absolutely ridiculous quotas on the number of in-state students it must have (like 85 percent or something ridiculous like that? U of M is at about 60 percent or so, which is much more sane and reasonable), guaranteeing a lackluster student base (after all, NC does contain a significant portion of appalacia…) It also must compete with the other, higher quality, and better institutions nearby, like Duke or Wake Forest, both of which are far superior. UVA, another superior institution, is right up the street as well, along with the awesome College of William and Mary. Considering that roughly 25 million people in that area have many far superior universities to choose from in the area, it makes UNC rather uncompetitive and extremely tied to North Carolina’s economy.</p>

<ol>
<li>Michigan is at rock bottom, North Carolina can fall. While people begin to realize what a value it is to invest in Michigan again, business and industry will come back, especially since the incentives and infastructure are already in place in this beautiful state. Much of the problem was the fgact that Michigan was a Union stronghold, but if card check gets passed, the nation will be put on a level playing field once again. Unions will also have less control after GM and Chrysler restructuring occur, and they will be redefined to contain many pro-employer values. Space in Michigan is cheap, in good shape, and very well connected to the rest of the midwest, the northeast, and the south, something that research triangle is not. As Florida and California are beginning to show decline now, soon the rest of the south and southwest will follow. But don’t worry- like before, Michigan and the rest of the Rust Belt will be happy to blas</li>
</ol>

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<p>Goblue,
This thread was not claiming that the student body at one school is stronger than another, but rather that one institution has a better competitive position and room to maneuver than the others. I think U North Carolina has the brightest near term upside of this group. </p>

<p>In specific response to your statements above about student quality, if the comparison were just the Arts & Sciences of each school, then my guess is that the student bodies of U North Carolina and U Michigan would be indistinguishable from one another. When you factor in the engineering and the higher percentage of higher scoring OOS students (20% at U North Carolina, 30% at U Michigan), then it is no surprise that U Michigan’s Math SAT scores are higher and deeper in the student body. That’s the normal pattern, eg, look at schools like Rensselaer (52% at 700+) or Carnegie Mellon (66% at 700+) that also have a high percentage of engineers. </p>

<p>OHKid,
Nice post and glad you are so enthusiastic, but I’m pretty sure that your views are far from the standard in the Buckeye state. And it’s a fact that in the USNWR rankings, U Michigan has never even ranked as the number two public school in the USA, much less the first. LOL. But glad that you’re enthusiastic about the school and I hope you get accepted. No one is saying U Michigan is a bad place…except for maybe some of my friends in Columbus.</p>

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<p>Absolutely incorrect. North Carolina is the nation’s 10th most populous state, and has plenty of quality students to choose from. Only the best in-state students get into UNC, and many end up turning down schools like Duke and Wake to attend UNC. No North Carolinian in their right mind would turn down UNC for Duke and Wake, which offer similar academic environments at a much, much higher price. </p>

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[quote]
2. Michigan is at rock bottom, North Carolina can fall. While people begin to realize what a value it is to invest in Michigan again, business and industry will come back, especially since the incentives and infastructure are already in place in this beautiful state. Much of the problem was the fgact that Michigan was a Union stronghold, but if card check gets passed, the nation will be put on a level playing field once again. Unions will also have less control after GM and Chrysler restructuring occur, and they will be redefined to contain many pro-employer values. Space in Michigan is cheap, in good shape, and very well connected to the rest of the midwest, the northeast, and the south, something that research triangle is not. As Florida and California are beginning to show decline now, soon the rest of the south and southwest will follow. But don’t worry- like before, Michigan and the rest of the Rust Belt will be happy to blas</p>

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<p>It’s pretty simple why UNC is so hard to get into. Low tuition and only 18,000 undergrads in a state with a fairly high population. While NC and VA both have stellar flagship universities, they just don’t educate nearly as many students as larger schools like Berkeley and Michigan.</p>

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<p>Hawkette, Michigan students have higher average SAT scores than UNC students. Yes or no, does Michigan have a stronger student body than UNC?</p>

<p>I’m not asking why. Just yes or no?</p>

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<p>You’ll never get an answer out of her dstark that is favorable to Michigan. I gave up a long time ago.</p>

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<p>hawkette- no need to apologize. William & Mary is happy to be the highest quality and most undergrad focused state supported school in America. You couldnt have paid a higher compliment.</p>

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<p>^ Yes, W&M is a fantastic choice if I want to major in US History.</p>

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<p>Hehe UCB. Touche.</p>

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<p>UCB- or become Sec of Defense or Chairman of Council of Economic Advisors. In fact the two most pressing issues facing the country (war in middle east & the economy) Obama is relying on W&M grads. </p>

<p>I’ll leave you to count your science grants while W&M people work in the real world.</p>

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<p>Cal people are pretty proud of Christina Romer too. ;)</p>

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Not everyone agrees that 1/3 of the students at a state-supported school should be OOS. In fact, there has been controversy about it, even at the legislative level.</p>

<p>[The</a> Michigan Daily Online – Attacks on out-of-state enrollment continue](<a href=“http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/oct/10-07-98/news/news1.html]The”>http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/oct/10-07-98/news/news1.html)</p>

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<p>Yes, because the countless engineers who designed the computer you are using right now worked in some other dimension.</p>

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<p>IBclass06. I always enjoy reading articles that are 11 years old. Such relevant information.</p>