After criticism of the idea on Wednesday and passionate debate on Thursday, the UNC Board of Trustees approved an increase in tuition and fees for all incoming undergraduate students with a split vote.
The measure passed, as recommended by university administrators, 6-5 during the full board meeting Thursday morning with Trustees Ritch Allison, Jennifer Lloyd, Ralph Meekins, Vinay Patel, Malcom Turner and Student Body President Adolfo Alvarez supporting the change. Trustees Brian Allen, Patrick Ballentine, Jim Blaine, Marty Kotis and John Preyer dissented, while four board members were not present to vote: Rob Bryan, Perrin Jones, Vimal Kolappa and Ramsey White.
The potential tuition increases — which now head to the UNC System Board of Governors for review — would be the first since 2017, as the UNC System began a stretch of requiring tuitions to be kept flat. Chancellor Lee Roberts’ administration crafted the proposal after the System’s Board of Governors signaled earlier this year that North Carolina’s public universities could seek up to a 3% increase on its in-state undergraduate students. The flagship campus’ leaders proposed meeting that limit, which would translate to a $211 increase per year, alongside a 10% increase on tuition for out-of-state undergrad students ($4,320 per year) a $53 increase on student fees for the purposes of raising capital for a new student recreation and wellness center, a 7% increase on on-campus housing costs and a 3.9% increase on Carolina Dining Services fees.
Roberts and Vice Chancellor of Finance and Operations Nate Knuffman recommended the increases to bolster the university’s finances while raising the costs to address inflation over the last nine years and be closer to UNC’s peer institutions’ tuitions.
“When we compare ourselves to our peers, we’re required to stay in the bottom quartile by system policy and we’re well within that,” Roberts said afterward to gathered media. “Even with this very modest increase for resident students — [which] doesn’t affect any current students — we’ll still be one of the very best values in higher education. For our out-of-state students, we believe we have a responsibility to North Carolina taxpayers to charge market rates for a Carolina education. And that’s what we’ll continue to do: we’ll look at the peer data, and make sure we’re keeping pace with peers for out-of-state tuition.”
The vote followed a failed motion supported by the five dissenting trustees to pass all other increases while keeping North Carolina residents’ tuition flat and came after Wednesday’s Budget, Finance and Infrastructure Committee meeting where some questioned the idea of raising tuition for in-state students. Kotis, who chairs the committee, cited both affordability concerns and his belief of adhering to state constitutional language while some other opposing trustees voiced frustration over the marginal amount of money it would raise and whether it would be lost in the UNC System’s performance-based funding pool. Kotis also attempted at different times as the discussion continued Thursday to postpone the board’s vote on the item until all members could be present — with one motion ultimately taken up by Blaine before being withdrawn and another that failed to garner a necessary second trustee.
Kotis was among the trustees who had indicated their preference to keep in-state tuition flat earlier this fall and proposed further raising the rates for out-of-state undergraduate and graduate students to make up some of the costs. He argued the policy is not discretionary for the trustees to follow and instead a constitutional “mandate” based on its language on the UNC System provide education to North Carolinians “free of expense as far as practical.”
“We have not exhausted every other lever [beyond raising in-state tuition] unless we do those non-resident increases or look for other sources of revenue through there,” he said. “For that reason, I move we adopt a tuition and fee policy that reflects what the committee proposed yesterday.”
Lloyd pushed back on that argument, calling the notion of flat tuition as a constitutional mandate “a fallacy.” She said she was in favor of raising tuition higher than 3% if the system’s limit was not in place, citing the university’s success in earning recognition as the best value public university while also grappling with “deficiencies in the services we provide.”
“To look at a $9,000 total cost of attending the university as an in-state student and say ‘that is an undue burden,’ [and] to think that keeping it flat fulfills the constitution to be as free as practicable, that’s not true,” said Lloyd. “So, let’s be intellectually honest. Let’s either go to zero [tuition] and keep it free, and ask the Board of Governors to ask the General Assembly to fund the entire budget — or let’s just be pragmatic and reasonable, and look at the fact that tuition’s not flat…tuition’s gone down in real dollars because we haven’t even done a simple cost of living, inflation increase in nine years.”
Blaine, meanwhile, questioned a lack of plan from the university administration on how to use the extra funding that would come from an in-state tuition increase. He described it as an “easy button” or “lazy way” for UNC to improve its finances compared to further trimming the university’s annual operating budget — at one point saying he believes annual expenditures could be cut to fund all in-state students’ tuition but that the school lacks the will to do so.
“Again, $800,000 [annually] in a budget our size is pocket lint,” Blaine said. “I am totally unpersuaded that it moves the needle. I feel like it sends the wrong signal to people about our commitment to being efficient and to using the budget [correctly.]”
Patel said he understands argument of the trustees who wanted to keep it flat, but added he believes the UNC System and state government would not have granted the ability to raise tuition if they had other, preferred options for campuses. He urged for trustees to think about the long-term benefits of the step compared to the break from recent tradition of stagnant costs.
“I know keeping it flat right now is an answer for today,” Patel said, “but I would assume that after nine years to have the authority to do this…to give the authority to the schools to raise it 3 [percent], there is some reasoning behind it. And I would assume they have exhausted every option as provided by the constitution and the guidelines to do this.”
“I remember the heartache we had my first day on the board,” the trustee later said in response to Blaine, “when I said we needed to raise out of state tuition more than we were [at] the 1 or 2% when I first came on in 2021. Here we are talking about a 10% increase to that number four years later. That easy button has been pushed quite a bit, and now we’re working on the hard button with the $70 million that’s been identified [and this in-state tuition increase].”
Roberts described Thursday’s discussions as reflecting the “depth of commitment” the trustees have to maintaining affordability and balancing the responsibility to effectively run the university.
“I really appreciated the conversation about cost-cutting because trying to run more efficiently and trying to centralize some of our operations is something that we’ve put a lot of attention and focus on,” the chancellor said. “That’s going to continue: we need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time [by] try to run the university in a more conscious way when it comes to effective use of resources, while also being thoughtful about the tools we have to increase revenue.”
The UNC System Board of Governors is next set to meet on Wednesday Nov. 19, but Knuffman said on Wednesday the university’s tuition proposal would be submitted to the system in early December and the board would not take action on it until the spring. If approved, it would go into effect for the Class of 2030 first-year students arriving on campus fall 2026 — and would remain at that updated rate for those students’ traditional four years. The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, meanwhile, are not scheduled to meet again until Jan. 21, 2026.
Thursday’s full board meeting can be watched on UNC’s YouTube channel.
Featured image via Jon Gardiner/UNC.
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