<p>Cutting</a> Chapel Hill loose - Other Views - NewsObserver.com</p>
<p>Looks like tuition is about to rise considerably.</p>
<p>Public universities have a mandate to support the public good and be accessible to the public. The university is meant to serve the people of North Carolina. I think it would be awful to see this wonderful resource become privatized. Privatization is tantamount to exclusion of people based on parent’s income level. Is this what we want from our (largely federally supported) public education system? A place where the children of wealthy people go for maturation. The reason that our university system attracts people from every country in the world is that it is a meritocracy where the best and brightest go to develop knowledge. I would expect that privatization of public universities would exacerbate the already substantial gap between the lower classes and the upper classes.</p>
<p>I believe they will increase enrollment from more out of state students.</p>
<p>Belevitt:</p>
<p>So how much are you will to raise your taxes to support Carolina to the appropriate level?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps not what we want … but isn’t UNC-CH already doing so? With a max of 18% OOS, the school is already subsiziding the … higher and high-middle class. </p>
<p>In fact, as a private university, UNC might be better equipped to support the lower class with generous need-based aid all the while raising fees and tuition in general. </p>
<p>But, this is really not about the really rich or the really poor … or is it?</p>
<p>UNC system is to cut many of its faculty, so I am not surprised that to keep what UNC has, they have to increase the tuition, or to increase the OOS acceptance, to even out the deficit.</p>
<p>^I agree.
One of the biggest hurdles UNC faces apart from cuts in funding from the state is that its required to have 82% of its students be in-state. Though this is fine, allowing more OOS kids would be beneficial to the school, financially and otherwise.</p>
<p>“Public universities have a mandate to support the public good and be accessible to the public…”</p>
<p>belevitt, very well-stated!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe it’s not what we want, but you get what you pay for. Many state legislatures aren’t providing sufficient financial support for their public universities to continue to provide low tuition to large numbers of in-state students. The sensible response? Raise tuition for in-state students, and/or admit more high-tuition OOS students. That’s the trend just about everywhere. </p>
<p>As for the idea that public universities are “largely federally supported,” I think that’s just erroneous. Yes, a few major research universities pull in big federal research grants, but that money is contractually obligated to support specific areas of faculty research, not to subsidize undergraduate education. Most public universities don’t bring in all that much in federal research funding, and those that do are competing directly with private research universities for those research dollars. I don’t see anyone saying that “largely federally funded” private universities like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford need to reduce their tuition. Public universities also benefit from federal Pell grants, federal student loans, and federal work-study money; but so do privates.</p>
<p>Bottom line, if state legislatures won’t bite the bullet and raise taxes enough to fully subsidize the cost of educating in-state students, public universities will have no choice but to raise tuition, admit more OOS students, or both. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.</p>
<p>Mandates have to be fair too or the just become another unfunded mandate. They will do those things IF the public provides adequate funding to do that. Few states have done that the last decade or even two in some states. A few never did it.</p>
<p>Not all public unversities are created equal. Some have always been intended to educate the best students of the state by offering them an undergraduate education that is second to none. If such a public university is not funded adequately by the state, its top students will not be given the education they deserve.</p>
<p>We are facing a similar problem here at UW-Madison with the state only providing 18% of our budget. Chancellor Martin is in negotiations with the state to give us more freedom from many of the state controls that add cost without adding value. See: [New</a> Badger Partnership](<a href=“http://newbadgerpartnership.wisc.edu/]New”>http://newbadgerpartnership.wisc.edu/)</p>
<p>As a UNC graduate, let me say that NC would be much better off if it gave more freedom to UNC. Flagship state schools like UNC and UW-Madison, besides being educational institutions are huge economic generators, bringing in much more money then they cost their their states. In Wisconsin, UW-Madison employs over 16,000 people and receives 1.1 billion in grants and contracts for research. Chapel Hill and Madison should have the ability to set their own priorities.</p>