RALEIGH (May 15, 2024) – It might be a car repair. Or a student has a child. Or they suddenly face medical bills. Or trouble with child care.
Any number of obstacles can crop up that stop a student from finishing college. Life happens.
As the state pushes to reach a goal of 2 million North Carolinians with degrees or credentials by 2030, the UNC System and myFutureNC want state legislators to do more to help students who might stop out of college due to unexpected financial troubles.
Both the University System and myFutureNC are asking legislators in their current session to provide $8.5 million a year for “completion grants” of as much as $5,000 to help students at eight UNC campuses who are at risk of dropping out.
The effort aims at campuses with high enrollment by Pell Grant students: Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State, N.C. A&T, NC Central, UNC Asheville, UNC Greensboro, UNC Pembroke and Winston-Salem State. Students must be on track to complete at least 60 credit hours.
Though graduation rates across the UNC System have increased over the past decade, system officials say almost 27,000 students with more than 60 credit hours toward a degree have left without graduating since 2017. Of those, 14,000 had more than 90 credit hours toward the 120-hour requirement – three-quarters of the way there.
That’s heartbreaking.
“While students leave for a variety of reasons, finances are often cited as the number one reason students decide not to re-enroll,” the System Office says.
A similar program at Georgia State University reduced the time it took to complete a degree, particularly for Pell Grant recipients and students of color. And because students finished in fewer semesters, they also saw reduced student debt.1
THIS IS NOT a new idea.
In 2018, Gov. Roy Cooper announced Finish Line grants of as much as $1,000 for North Carolina community college students facing financial difficulty.
“We’ve seen great success with the Finish Line grant program for community college students, with roughly 88% of recipients shown to have either graduated or re-enrolled the following academic year, according to initial estimates,” said Cory Biggs, myFutureNC’s Director of Policy & Advocacy, in a briefing last week.
“The end result… is more North Carolinians with degrees, rather than some college – and corresponding debt – but with no degree to bolster them as they enter the workforce.”2
Similarly, the 49er Finish program at UNC Charlotte has helped almost 1,300 students return and finish their degrees.
As former UNC System President Margaret Spellings and former UNC Charlotte Chancellor Phil Dubois say in this 2017 video, helping students with 90 credit hours finish college is some of the best money the state can spend.
These are students who want to finish their degrees – life just intervened.
So let’s help them.
1 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=67951&code=bog, pp. 8-9. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OAOOVUWH-9dBSbmBOWLCaRwmjOfc7Sr2/view.
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a8ynhaWu3U.
Lillian Jane Steele,MA says
As a retired educator I did receive Pell Grants, a scholarship for four years in the Marching Band at Livingstone College in Salisbury,NC and also worked in the Carnegie Library on campus. This led me to do well in life. I also was interviewed by a black woman military officer who said that I could have entered the Army. I was very interested in Officers Candidate School and found our many years ago that my mom was also considered for the WACS during WWII and so was a favorite aunt. Now retired I implore you to continue to fight for these funds and so will I in order to continue to help out any student who needs it.