Services cut, tuition up in a system that's supposed to be mostly free

The (Wilmington) StarNews
Editorial
September 24, 2011

State lawmakers can spin it any way they like, but the this year's budget cuts to our public universities will have significant and likely lasting effects.

Throughout the University of North Carolina system, 3,000 people lost their jobs – that's 3,000 more people who no longer had a salary from which they paid taxes, home mortgages and covered their bills. Another 1,500 vacant jobs were eliminated, leaving more work for the employees who remain.  Meanwhile, students at our flagship school, UNC-Chapel Hill, are living with the results of an $80.7 million budget cut: fewer classes, larger classes, skimpier maintenance and the double-whammy prospect of higher tuition coupled with less money for financial aid.... The university administration, seeking to prevent further bleeding, is considering yet another tuition increase, even as financial aid becomes less available. Students and their families, many of them also struggling as a result of an anemic economy, are being forced to pick up a greater share of what had been a constitutionally mandated state expense. As we've noted here before, the state constitution prescribes that public university education in North Carolina “as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.”  Click here to read more.