Students Rallying Against Potential Historic Tuition Increases

CHAPEL HILL - We’re less than a week away from what could be an historic tuition increase for the 16 universities in the UNC system. The Board of Governors is expected to vote Friday on the proposed raises that some UNC leaders say are needed to make up for the deep state budget cuts.

 

UNC-Chapel Hill leaders recommended a 16 percent in-state tuition increase at the university. UNC system President Tom Ross thought that was too much and made a recommendation of 9.9 percent. He says his proposal would be limited to only two years.

 

“We are in a circumstance in which even if we do this tuition increase, we’re still –as a system – just about have the lowest tuition in America,” says Ross.

 

But many UNC students say even Ross’ proposal is just still too high. With the final vote days away, campus groups have been mobilizing students to protest against any tuition increase. About fifty students joined NAACP state president William Barber Wednesday to rally on the front steps of South Building.

 

“People are struggling. People are hurting,” says Barber. “And this is not time to put the extra burden of a tuition increase nor is it a time to undermine people’s hopes and dreams that their children could go to college, get a college education and be a productive citizen.”

 

Junior Zaina Al-Sous said at the rally that student voices are being left out of tuition discussions and students deserve to be voting members on the Board of Governors.

 

“We the students have a right to say something,” says Al-Sous. “And when we come together, when we raise our voices in unison in demand that the administrative powers take notice… we cannot be ignored because we must always remind them that this is our university.”

 

Many of those cheers and chants at the gathering came from students of the Education Justice Alliance. A group started by UNC students and people in the community.

 

The group has been organizing teach-ins, rallies and meetings. Just anything to spread the word about what they see as the danger of tuition increases for lower income families.

 

Senior Caitlin Williams is on the forefront of that effort. A friend of hers, senior Spencer Kuzmier, built a tool to teach peers about the reality of student debt.

 

The tool is simple. It’s on an excel sheet and you just plug in all of your financial information and it spits out your total cost of education for four years under the different tuition proposals. 

 

“When people start plugging their information and go ‘oh my gosh, this is how much I’m going to pay back and I wanted to be a teacher and I’m never going to be able to pay my loans back’,” says Williams. “This is so crazy.

 

Under the highest tuition proposal, in-state undergraduate students would face an $800 increase next year while out-of-state students would face about a $1,600 increase.

 

Ross defends his proposal as affordable, but still able to bring in more money for the universities.

 

“It is not going to fill a hole, but we hope to put band aids on some of the most serious bleeding to preserve the quality of the institution,” says Ross.

 

Ross says just last year the system lost more than $400 million in state funding.

 

But students with the Education Justice Alliance, like Williams, say Ross should find other band aids to fill the hole like looking to alumni donations and the university’s endowment.

 

The group is trying to offer free bus rides for students around the state to protest the tuition proposals at the Board of Governor’s meeting Friday.