RALEIGH – As it has since 2011-12, state investment in North Carolina’s public university students remained flat last year – and still almost $2,200 a student less than before the Great Recession.

State support for the University of North Carolina System shrank from about $12,600 per student before the recession to about $10,400 in 2017-18 (in constant 2018 dollars).

That means a student and/or her family pay – or worse, borrow – more. North Carolina college graduates have indeed seen steady increases in student debt over the past decade.¹

The $10,411 the state spent per student in 2017-18 is almost the same as it spent in 2011-12, as the state was emerging from the recession.

North Carolina’s flat support appears consistent with findings by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) that state support for higher education seems to be stabilizing – but at nowhere near the levels of support before the Great Recession.

“Ten years out from the start of the Great Recession, per-student higher education appropriations in the U.S. have only halfway recovered,” SHEEO found in its latest report on state higher education finances.²

But North Carolina has a requirement in its state constitution that the state must offer citizens a college education for “as far as practicable … free of expense.”³

Are we living up to that promise?

Starting in 2005-06, average tuition and fees at UNC System institutions rose steadily. But this year, according to figures from The College Board, average tuition and fees actually declined.

That’s likely due to two factors, both ordered by the NC General Assembly in 2017:

• NC Promise – $500-a-semester tuition for in-state students at Western Carolina, UNC Pembroke and Elizabeth City State universities. The budget tuition rates began in Fall 2018 and have prompted increased enrollment at all three schools.

• And four-year fixed tuition at all state universities – a student is guaranteed to pay the same tuition for eight semesters.

THE FLAT SPENDING reflects a lack of investment in University faculty and strategic initiatives. Faculty have seen state raises of 1.5% or less for several years.

When the UNC System last surveyed how faculty salaries at UNC campuses compared with their peer institutions in 2015, it found that 11 of the 16 campuses were below the median salary paid by their peers. 

It’s likely that competing institutions gave their faculty larger raises over the past several years, so the gap would be even larger today.

The NC House’s and Senate’s versions of the 2019-21 state budget, which is now being negotiated in conference committee, would both allocate raises of just 1% or $500, whichever is greater, for university faculty and staff.

The longer the state ignores university and community college faculty compensation, the more likely it is the professors we expect to equip our children for the global economy of the 21st century – and associate and assistant professors as well – get poached by competing universities.

Some chancellors have begun to point out that particularly in hot housing markets in Wake, Orange and Mecklenburg counties, junior faculty in particular – many with young families and making nowhere near six figures – find it increasingly difficult to find affordable housing at their current pay.

¹https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2017/05/nc-disinvestment/; https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2015/01/north-carolina-shifts-the-states-burden-to-students/.
²https://sheeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/SHEEO_SHEF_FY18_ExecutiveSummary.pdf; pp. 3-4.
³https://www.ncleg.gov/Laws/Constitution/Article9, Article IX, Section 9.