In a rare reversal, the full UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees went against a vote by one of its own committees on resident undergraduate tuition.
In a 6-5 vote, trustees approved a proposal from UNC-Chapel Hill administration to raise in-state undergraduate tuition by 3%. The board also voted to raise out-of-state tuition by 10% and increase the overall student fee rate by 3%.
The decision will lead to a $264 increase in resident tuition and fee costs for the incoming class of 2026.
Tuition has been flat for in-state undergraduate students at all of the state's public universities since 2017, due to a directive from the UNC Board of Governors. This year, the UNC BOG decided to let universities raise tuition for the first time since then.
Yesterday, the majority of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees' budget and finance committee decided they didn't want to take that offer. They said raising tuition would go against North Carolina's constitution to keep higher education as "free as practicable."
This led to a tension point at today's full board meeting when several members outside of the committee expressed that they did not share that view. Trustees discussed the decision for more than an hour, marking a second day straight of controversial debate.
Trustee Jennifer Lloyd said keeping tuition flat for the past nine years has come at a cost to the university's services to students.
"This is a large institution that needs to reflect the value of its market and needs to improve the services delivered at every single corner far in excess of the revenue that's currently coming in," Lloyd said. "We have tolerated an accumulated balance of deferred maintenance and other types of things that we shouldn't be tolerating."
The increase will bring in about an additional $800,000 annually or $3.2 million over the incoming class of 2026's next four years.
Trustee Jim Blaine called this "pocket lint."
"I am totally unpersuaded that it moves the needle," Blaine said. "I feel like (raising tuition) sends the wrong signal to people about our commitment to being efficient."
Earlier this year, Chancellor Lee Roberts announced his team was making $70 million in budget cuts amid state and federal funding uncertainty. The Trump administration has made $38 million in cuts to the university's federal research grants and UNC-Chapel Hill’s overall federal research profile has declined by $110 million this year.
At the meeting, Roberts said it's important to use "cost-cutting and revenue tools" simultaneously.
"We do have a significant effort underway to try to cut costs here internally and centralize our operations," Roberts said. "But there's never going to be a point at which you say 'okay, we're done making the operation run as efficiently as it possibly can and now we can look at revenue increases. We operate in a dynamic environment and we think we need to do both at the same time."
The UNC Board of Governors has to approve UNC-Chapel Hill and all the other public university's trustees recommendations for tuition before they become final. That vote will likely happen next year.
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