By Eric Johnson

RALEIGH (February 29, 2024) – “How much does college cost?” is one of the more confounding questions in American life.

It depends on where you attend, how you choose to live, and what kind of aid and scholarships you qualify for — all variables that add uncertainty and anxiety for families trying to make a major life decision.

Starting this year, the state of North Carolina is bringing a little clarity to this muddled picture with the Next NC Scholarship.

Instead of waiting until deep into the college application process to get any sense of available aid and scholarships, Next NC promises that in-state students from households earning less than $80,000 can expect at least $5,000 in scholarship money to attend a public university or $3,000 to attend a community college. Students with greater need or attending higher-cost institutions could receive substantially more.

That means tuition is effectively covered for those families at nearly all public colleges and universities, given the relatively low cost for North Carolina residents.

“Financial aid is so complex, and complexity is the enemy of access,” said UNC System President Peter Hans, praising the simple criteria to qualify for Next NC. “This is real progress.”

Before the launch of Next NC, state and federal aid was delivered through grant programs that often weren’t clear to students until they received a full financial aid offer from a university — much too late to have any influence on where people chose to apply or whether they considered college at all. By making the criteria for the scholarship relatively simple, the new approach helps reassure students and families that they’ll be able to afford higher education, hopefully making it more likely they’ll apply.

At Wednesday’s meeting of the UNC System Board of Governors, officials explained how campus leaders, financial aid directors, and state lawmakers worked together to simplify the tangle of federal Pell Grants and state aid programs into a single scholarship.

That’s how good public policy should be designed, in a way that gives people real information so they can make informed decisions. Most middle-class and low-income families have effectively been carrying around $5,000 or more in annual college money without knowing it, because of how convoluted the aid process can be. With Next NC, families know about the aid up front.

That’s crucial at a time when cost anxieties loom large for many families, and stalling enrollment threatens to slow progress toward the state’s education attainment goal. North Carolina badly needs more qualified high school graduates to view college as a viable, valuable pathway — which it overwhelmingly is.

A comprehensive, state-mandated return-on-investment study conducted last year found that UNC System schools deliver on their promise of economic mobility and financial payoff for the vast majority of graduates. Nine out of 10 low-income graduates in the study moved up the socioeconomic ladder, with the average lifetime return on an undergraduate degree approaching half-a-million dollars.

There is much more to college than money, of course, but low-income families are especially and reasonably concerned about the financial risks of pursuing a degree. Polls over the last few years have found growing skepticism about the value of a college degree alongside a belief that alternative paths — job training, short-term credentials, tech boot camps — might be better options.

That’s wonderful if it leads people to find their calling outside of higher education, but it risks deepening generational inequality if it means fewer first-generation and working-class students choose to pursue an enriching college experience that still packs life-changing power.

For all the hype about companies and governments dropping degree requirements, analysis from the Burning Glass Institute published this month found that there’s been virtually no change in who actually gets a foot in the door at most firms.

“There is a big difference between changing a job ad and changing the types of candidates ultimately hired for a role,” researchers found. “Simply dropping stated requirements seldom opens jobs to those who don’t have a college degree.” Even at organizations that officially scaled back degree requirements, managers went right on hiring college graduates.

College still pays. It pays especially well for low-income students who attend an affordable public university, get solid financial aid, and graduate on time. And the reality is that higher education in North Carolina has gotten more attainable, not less, over the past decade. Tuition for in-state students at public universities hasn’t budged since the Obama administration, and average student debt among UNC System graduates has been declining for the past few years.

The Next NC Scholarship should help drive that message home, reassuring more families that college is a meaningful option. That will matter for the individual students who benefit, and for a fast-growing state that needs all the well-schooled talent it can get.

Eric Johnson works for the UNC System and spent five years working for the UNC Chapel Hill Office of Scholarships & Student Aid.