Although tuition increases have generated the most controversy in the past few months and years at schools in the University of North Carolina System, another increasing cost of attending UNC schools — increasing student fees — has gone unremarked.
Less than a year after hundreds of University of North Carolina students marched to the Capitol to protest UNC budget cuts and large tuition increases, tuition increases are again being proposed for several UNC schools, yet the students are now mute. They were in August when legislators debated a 9 percent, retroactive tuition hike for all UNC system students (which passed Aug. 30) that The Daily Tar Heel wrote a story about it, “Low Turnout for Anti-Tuition Rally Frustrates Leaders,” on Aug. 28. “Despite the possibility of additional charges,” the DTH noted, referring to the tuition increase, “rally organizers had difficulty enticing student involvement.”
Some illegal immigrants may now pay resident tuition to attend public universities in California, thanks to legislation signed last year by Gov. Gray Davis and a vote this week by the University of California Board of Regents. In North Carolina, a bill before the Senate would create a commission to study doing the same thing here.
The UNC Board of Governors last week allowed tuition increases at eight campuses, which drew fire from some board members.
In a contest of crises, the floods of Floyd won out over the underfunding of UNC. Or so it would appear. Certainly the state faced a crisis in the hurricane’s wake. But is the situation facing UNC right now a crisis?
The beginning of a new year is really only the progression of one day after the next, natural and mundane, but human custom has made it so that we note it as the crossing of a threshold. This customary observance is heightened now as the upcoming threshold is especially (but only) numerically significant (from year 1999 to year 2000). Here Clarion Call bows to custom to mark this crossing by presenting three higher-education issues of 1999 that will bear watching in 2000.
Two department heads at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took their case for tuition increases to cover faculty salary increases to the students last week. David Guilkey, professor and chairman of the Department of Economics, and Ed Samulski, professor and chairman of the Department of Chemistry, wrote an editorial in the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, Oct. 28 in favor of a five-year plan to raise tuition at UNC-CH by $1,500.
A new study challenges the assumption that an education from an elite college translates into greater earnings than an education from a less prestigious school.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is in crisis, according to professors and students who squared off in a debate this week over a plan to increase student tuition. The tuition increases would be used to boost faculty salaries. The debate was sponsored by UNC-CH’s Dialectic and Philanthropic societies.
Students, state legislators and private donors may soon be asked to help raise faculty salaries at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, despite evidence that UNC-CH’s faculty salaries there are among the highest in the nation.
This year’s House budget proposal of $13 billion includes tremendous gains for higher education, including millions more for community colleges. The full House is expected to vote on the budget this week.