The Facts: The House Republicans released a proposed budget Tuesday, which involves a 15.5 percent cut from UNC system funding. This translates into a $447 million cut.

  Our Opinion: Cutting funding from education is a mistake the North Carolina state government cannot afford to make. It is their job to properly represent the voices of North Carolinians, and with these cuts they are neglecting to do that.   The UNC system has 17 campuses. 221,727 students are enrolled in these universities and the $447,561,332 proposed to be cut from the system by the N.C. House of Representatives will shake North Carolina’s higher education system to the core. This cut is not merely numbers being trimmed off the state’s finances or a few notches tighter on the belt of North Carolina’s budget, but the reduction and elimination of opportunities for a quality education for the students of North Carolina. Cutting funds from education is not only an inefficient solution, but one that should not even be an option.   This amount proposed to be slashed from the current budget could put 22,540 students through four years of college, based on the tuition and fees of 2011-2012 set by the UNC system Board of Governors. This number equates to roughly 13 percent of the undergraduate students currently enrolled in the UNC system. If the Senate and House agree on these cuts as the year moves on and the final budget reflects these feelings, it will not only cost the students of North Carolina a chance at a quality education, but put North Carolina in jeopardy of an uneducated future.   Programs like the Cooperative Extension Service and Industrial Extension Service aid universities in the UNC system to link their efforts to the North Carolina community. These programs will suffer at the loss of the 15.5 percent reduction. These universities do not only provide educational resources to its students, but to the state of North Carolina. The UNC Tomorrow Commission  once recommended the UNC system should “become more directly engaged with and connected to the people of North Carolina, its regions and our state as a whole.” With these cuts, how can we ever hope to accomplish such a task?   North Carolina representatives have ridden to the top of their political platforms on the promises of the improvement and preservation of North Carolina’s higher education. However, these cuts show otherwise. If our representatives hope for an educated future with a prosperous economy, they must realign their priorities from their political parties, and onto the education of their constituents. By not investing in education, these representatives are not investing in the people they represent—or the future of North Carolina.   As students and citizens of North Carolina, we are directly impacted by these cuts, and we do not want them. If these representatives are meant to represent our voices, then why are these cuts even being discussed? Our representatives are not listening to us because we do not want these cuts, but they keep pushing for them. They would not only be the end to many opportunities higher education provides for us, but for the future of our state. We cannot stand idly by while our General Assembly merely clips away at our education, we must act. The numbers of these budget cuts simply don’t add up, it’s time we check their math.