UNC Wilmington Tuition to Increase by $411.50 for 2010-11; Necessary to Protect Academic Quality
7/14/2010 6:41:27 PM
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The University of North Carolina Wilmington announced today that tuition will increase by $411.50 per undergraduate student and $412.60 per graduate student for the 2010-11 academic year. Increases are taking place across the UNC System after the N.C. General Assembly gave universities the option to raise tuition to address some of the budget cuts higher education is taking, once again, in this year’s state appropriations.
“We do not want to raise tuition, but given the alternatives available to us at this point, it is our only recourse,” said UNCW Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo. “Our classes, programs, research and outreach initiatives are profoundly important to North Carolina and to the thousands of students we educate each day. They deserve the very best opportunities we can give them, and to do that, we must have adequate funding.”
University administrators understand that the increase will be difficult for many students and their families, DePaolo said, but the reality is that state appropriations and tuition are the main sources for funding undergraduate instruction, and the state no longer has the resources to fund universities to the degree that it has in the past. With the cuts that have been made to higher education in North Carolina, the General Assembly is asking students and families to pay a higher percentage of the overall cost of their education, she noted.
The General Assembly limited the tuition increase to an amount equivalent to the size of each university’s budget reductions for this fiscal year. There is also a requirement that 20 percent of the revenues generated from the tuition increase be set aside for financial aid. At UNCW, the remaining revenues generated will be used for academic-related needs, including:
• increasing or maintaining much-needed faculty positions to ensure that enough sections of high demand courses can be taught,
• supporting retention and graduation goals by providing resources for academic support units, primarily the university libraries, that would suffer greatly by additional reductions and
• replacing outdated equipment for labs and classrooms as well as aging computers.
State appropriations for UNCW’s 2010-11 operations were reduced by approximately $3.7 million. Without a tuition increase, these new budget reductions would require the elimination of 23 staff and 15 faculty positions. UNCW’s loss of state funding over the past two years totals $20 million, which has forced the university to eliminate 98 administrative positions and increase workloads, eliminate some programs, increase class sizes, defer equipment and computer purchases, curtail travel and take other cost-saving measures. At the same time, the university focused its attention on making sure these cuts did not adversely impact its academic quality.
North Carolina legislators clearly recognized the importance of preserving the academic core at all the UNC institutions by giving UNC President Erskine Bowles the authority to approve tuition increases, DePaolo said. The only alternative would be to compromise the education of the state’s students by cutting additional programs and eliminating hundreds of faculty positions across the UNC system.
“I am committed to seeing that this tuition increase is used directly to restore and improve the curriculum and instruction that our students need and deserve,” she said. “UNCW remains one of the least expensive institutions among our peers, even with this tuition increase. The tuition increase at UNCW will be the second lowest among the UNC campuses.”
There were some successes for UNCW and higher education during this past legislative session, including:
• new state funding of approximately $3.4 million for UNCW’s projected enrollment growth,
• funding of approximately $1.6 million for the operation of new buildings, including the Nursing Building and the Shellfish Research Hatchery at the Center for Marine Science
• allowing UNCW to keep revenues from the earlier 2 percent campus-initiated tuition increase,
• funding provided for need-based financial aid and
• funding authorized to repair and maintain buildings.
“The reality is that our situation could have been a lot worse,” said DePaolo. “At one point we thought that we might not receive funding to be able to open our new Nursing Building and Shellfish Research Hatchery on schedule. Also at one point the legislature had mandated an 8 percent tuition increase and would have kept the revenues at the state level. We are fortunate that we can use the current tuition increase to offset cuts from this year and protect our academic core.”
Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu
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