After nearly a year of public university chancellors pleading for state legislators to provide enrollment growth funding, the money will finally flow to their campuses.
The long-awaited funds are a result of the state budget. Legislators earmarked just shy of $154 million for enrollment funding. That money supports growth in student classes, support services like academic advising, and new degree programs.
Kirk Bradley chairs the UNC Board of Governors' budget and finance committee, which is responsible for approving university funding allocations. He called the budget "remarkable."
"It's an incredible budget when you look at the enrollment growth and some of the projects that they're funding to make sure that the system is preparing the workforce and the research that the state of North Carolina needs," Bradley said.
In addition to those investments, administrators at UNC Pembroke hope to use enrollment funding to "make headway" on faculty salaries.
In a budget report administrators sent to the BOG, the university noted that it has the lowest paid workforce in the System on average. Concurrently, UNCP also has some of the highest rates of faculty turnover.
"In the eight-year period, there is not a single year when UNCP’s (turnover) isn’t higher than the system’s overall rate. And just like last year, UNCP has the most students per employee," reads the report.
"Turnover is more problematic for schools that are already thinly staffed," the report continues. "Whenever someone leaves, someone else must pick up the slack — which means our students get worse service and the remaining employees feel more stress, which leads to more turnover."
The UNC BOG voted to allocate about $4 million in enrollment funding to UNC Pembroke on Thursday.
The state legislature, however, chose to only fund one year of the UNC System's enrollment growth on a recurring basis. That means institutions will receive full enrollment growth funding for fiscal year 2027, but more than $46 million of funds is not guaranteed for the following year.
According to the UNC System, this creates a "significant challenge" for the state's public universities.
"Institutions will therefore be required to either absorb the reduction, reallocate from other priorities, or identify replacement recurring revenue to sustain commitments that are inherently continuing in nature," reads a budget report from UNC System staff. "This recurring-to-nonrecurring mismatch complicates multiyear planning and places added pressure on institutions that have limited flexibility to backfill the loss."
UNC System Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Haygood told board members Thursday that only "further legislative action" could correct that mismatch.
Meanwhile, one public university isn't receiving any enrollment growth funding at all.
Unlike its 16 peer institutions, East Carolina University is facing an enrollment funding decrease of about $6.6 million. This comes as the Greenville-area university is navigating significant financial pressures stemming from what it calls "volatile" federal funding and a decline in traditional-aged college students.
ECU is in the midst of reducing its operating budget by $25 million over the next three years, which includes eliminating 44 degree programs. Administrators told the UNC System they’ll spend the next year investing in high-demand programs "aligned with critical workforce needs."
According to the System's Vice President for University Finance, institutions have "multiple funding sources" to support their operations. She told board members general fund revenue, which includes enrollment funding, makes up less than half of public universities' operating budgets.
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