North Carolina’s public universities have always struck a careful balance between state support and student tuition, making sure that students and their families can afford a high-quality college education.

But since 2007, that balance has slipped. Public universities have been hit with more than $500 million in state reductions. As the state invests less, students and parents have to pay more.

A report last year by the General Assembly’s non-partisan Program Evaluation Division spelled out the link between tuition and public support.

“As state support has declined, North Carolina students and their families have paid a higher share of the cost of their education,” wrote the legislature’s policy analysts. “UNC students now pay $699 more toward their education than they did in 2007-08, whereas the State pays $2,516 less.”

As public universities suffer cuts in state funds, students and families are left to shoulder a heavier burden.  “Cost shifting from taxpayers to students has been a driver of increased student debt and decreased college affordability,” the General Assembly report concluded.

With per-student funding still well below pre-recession levels, even as the economy has begun to recover, the state’s public universities have worked hard to identify savings and efficiencies to hold costs down – only 28% of the reductions in state support have been passed along as higher costs to students. And the campuses have done it while largely protecting the classroom.

“UNC campuses have made cuts to campus operations and other non-core functions to meet budgets,” legislative analysts found. “The focus on campus operations allows universities to minimize the impact of budget cuts on students and faculty.

Those tough decisions have helped North Carolina’s colleges and universities maintain a high-quality education, even with tightened budgets. While tuition and fees have risen, all the state’s public universities remain among the least expensive anywhere in the country, consistently ranked among the best values in all of higher education by Princeton Review, US News, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, and others. That’s a deliberate choice — UNC policies call for campuses to keep tuition and fees among the lowest when grouped with comparable schools.

Keeping that value will take a renewed commitment to solid state funding for colleges and universities. Only through strong public investment can North Carolina consistently keep tuition low and quality high.

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http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/PED/Reports/documents/UNC/UNC_Report.pdf, Pages 6-9.