RALEIGH (January 30, 2025) – Contrary to a national narrative of skyrocketing tuition costs, the UNC System signaled clearly this week that it intends to hold tuition flat for the 9th straight year in 2025-26.
System President Peter Hans told the UNC Board of Governors this morning that low tuition is part of the UNC System’s compact with the people of North Carolina.
“The heart of that promise is simple: In exchange for generous public funding, we will keep a life-changing education within easy reach of North Carolina families. People need to know that these institutions they support are ready and eager to welcome students from every walk of life, and that means keeping them affordable to families at all income levels,” Hans said.
“Low tuition, in other words, is our most basic public trust. It is a state constitutional commitment in North Carolina, and I often speak of it as a moral obligation as well.”
The board will vote to set 2025-26 tuition and fees at its meeting Feb. 27.
Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Haygood told the board’s Budget and Finance Committee Wednesday that the System staff will recommend no increase in tuition for in-state undergraduate students again for 2025-26. She noted that the move runs counter to narratives about ever-increasing university tuition.
“We are bucking that trend that people read about all the time in the national media,” Haygood said. “That is not the case in the UNC System.”
HANS EMPHASIZED that low tuition sends a powerful message about openness and belonging.
“Students and families need assurance that our public universities belong to them as much as anyone else,” he told the board. “…It is plain to me that any institution begins to suffer when it draws too much from a narrow slice of society.”
Out-of-state and graduate students could still see tuition increases, however. Proposed increases in out-of-state tuition could raise an additional $24 million in revenue, according to System projections.
The 13 institutions that receive revenue from sports gambling (all schools except UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State and the UNC School of the Arts) are projected to receive $2 million each in 2025-26, Haygood said.
The board waded into a variety of weighty topics during its meetings this week:
2025 Legislative Priorities
Haygood said that given tax reductions, the state’s financial position is expected to tighten for 2025-27. But she said the System will request an additional $30 million for performance funding, $5 million in reserves for new buildings that will come on line, and a $9.5 million increase in funding for NC Promise institutions that offer in-state students tuition of just $500 a semester.
As it has in recent years, the UNC System will request employee raises equivalent to raises granted other state agencies, along with a reserve to award additional pay in high-demand fields.
Haygood said rehabilitation and renovation of NC State’s Poe Hall – which has been found to be contaminated with PCBs – will be added to the System’s capital budget requests.
Western NC enrollment
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David English reported that all three campuses affected by Hurricane Helene – Appalachian State, UNC Asheville and Western Carolina – have seen an increase in spring enrollment over enrollment in spring 2024.
Even though UNC Asheville was forced to move all classes online due to the flooding, the campus saw a 1.9% increase in enrollment, English said.
Committee Vice Chair Gene Davis thanked the General Assembly for supplying funds to make this semester tuition-free at UNC Asheville.
“Your investment was a good one,” he said.
Nursing Expansion
In a 2021 series, Public Ed Works highlighted the state’s nursing shortage and the need to pay instructors better to expand capacity to train nurses. The state is still projected to face a shortage of 18,600 nurses by 2033.1
In 2023, the General Assembly provided $40 million for expansion of the 12 nursing programs in the UNC System by 50%. Katherine Martin, a senior advisor for health affairs in the System Office, told the board’s Education Planning Committee that $29 million has been distributed so far.
Campuses plan to use the money in different ways, Martin said. Western Carolina University wants to double its nursing enrollment over the next four years, she said.
Though there is high demand for nursing degrees in the region, she said, “There’s simply not enough capacity or faculty or clinical sites to place these students.”
Appalachian State University has a goal to increase enrollment by 60% over two years; it plans to devote the funds to hiring faculty and a student support specialist and building an endowment for nursing professors.
N.C. A&T State University plans to use its dollars for student support to increase on-time graduation, she said, as well as a mobile clinic and a simulation lab.
English added that the NC Board of Nursing requires each program to have at least an 82% pass rate on the state nursing exam, every UNC System nursing program now has a pass rate of at least 90%.
Teacher Prep in Early Literacy
Though the Board of Governors started insisting eight years ago that teacher-preparation programs in the UNC System must emphasize the science of reading, board members grew angry at the slow pace at which some campuses made the switch.
A review last September found that seven programs across the System still needed additional work to complete the transition. But Dr. Shun Robertson, interim senior vice president for strategy and policy, reported that all 15 institutions with teacher-preparation programs are now aligned with the science of reading.
“It makes me happy,” said Board Chair Wendy Murphy, a staunch supporter of the change in reading instruction. “Change is hard.”
Trustee Appointments
The Board voted to appoint:
• Former Domino’s CEO Ritch Allison to the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to complete the unfinished term of Dave Boliek, who was elected State Auditor in November; and
• Andrew Heath, a former state budget director under Gov. Pat McCrory, to the UNC Asheville Board of Trustees.
Both of their terms will expire June 30, 2027.
1 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=68297&code=bog, .pdf p. 3.
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