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Opinion: Under Bowles, UNC System Sets Tuition Beyond Reach Of Students

By D.G. Martin, The Raleigh Telegram

Thursday, July 29, 2010

RALEIGH - Opinion columnist D.G. Martin says that the new massive tuition hike proposed by UNC system president Erskine Bowles and the board violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the NC Constitution.

An Unwelcome Birthday

Gift To Bill Friday

By D.G. Martin

In a poignant moment at William Friday’s 90th birthday party in July, current UNC President Erskine Bowles stopped by to express regards to his predecessor. Later, in a video, Bowles praised Friday for his leadership and wisdom.

Ironically, only a few hours before the birthday party, Bowles took action that may have hammered the final nails in the coffin that will bury one of the University’s policies that Friday fought hardest and, until recently, most successfully to preserve.

For Friday, maintaining the lowest cost to students for a university education is a critical part in insuring that all qualified potential college students get the kind of higher education that will make them better citizens and taxpayers.

Friday’s commitment to low-cost higher education went beyond the state’s constitutional requirement that “The General Assembly shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.” (Article XI, Section 9)

Today, university and legislative leaders largely ignore that constitutional mandate. It was different in earlier times, when some members of the University’s Board of Governors, such as the late Chuck Flack from Forest City, would greet any proposal to raise tuition by getting into your face and saying something like, “Can’t do it. Look at the Constitution and let me hear you say, ‘Article Nine, Section Nine.’”

Dick Spangler, who followed Friday as university president, took the Constitution’s and Friday’s low tuition policy to heart. In fact, the official painting of Spangler that is displayed in the university headquarters building shows him with a computer. The computer’s screen reads, “Article 9, Section 9.” As one who served under Spangler, I was not surprised.

It helped Friday and Spangler that the university-wide Board of Governors and the legislature, rather than the leaders or the boards of each campus, set tuition for the entire university system. Also, the proceeds from tuition increases did not go directly to the coffers of the campuses of the students who paid the tuition.

Thus, there was no direct benefit to each campus from tuition increases to its students. Friday and Spangler knew that if the campuses could raise tuition and apply the proceeds for faculty salaries and other compelling needs, any resistance to shifting more of the costs to students would melt away.

Friday and Spangler wanted the legislature to continue to be responsible for funding the university’s excellence as it shared responsibility with the university’s Board of Governors for keeping the costs to students low.

Notwithstanding their continued advocacy, those arrangements began to evaporate when Friday and Spangler were no longer in office.

And just before Friday’s birthday party, Bowles told the Board of Governors of his intention to approve additional tuition increases of up to $750 a year as set by each campus for its own use. All this was authorized by the legislature.

The state’s dire financial situation explains, in part, the actions of the legislature, Bowles, and the campuses. But it does not justify what may be that final nail in the coffin of a policy that served North Carolina so well for so long.

Reacting to these tuition increases, Friday told the News & Observer, with his usual grace and diplomacy, “The strength of this place has been that every child in North Carolina could dream of going to one of these institutions, if they did their work. Now, the cost is eroding that dramatically.”

If he were not so gracious and careful with his words, he might have told President Bowles, “I thank you for coming, but I wish you had brought a different birthday present.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In addition to being a newspaper columnist for dozens of newspapers across North Carolina, D.G. Martin is the host of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch program and the author of Interstate Eateries, available at interstateeateries.com.

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