N.C. State students often find themselves comparing much about the University and student body to that of UNC-Chapel Hill, but such comparisons aren’t always applicable.

According to an article in the Triangle Business Journal, N.C. State spends half of what UNC-CH spends in regards to “education and related expenses.”

Findings from a recent University of North Carolina System General Administration report prompted the article. Last year, each degree issued cost the University $59,408 while UNC-CH spent $115,376 per degree, according to the report. 

In the past five years, N.C. State decreased the amount of money spent per degree by 13.8 percent as opposed to UNC-CH’s 6.8 percent decrease, the report stated. N.C. State also increased the number of degrees produced by 26.9 percent, while UNC-CH only raised this by 6.4 percent.

Though the Triangle Business Journal’s article compared the University’s cost cutting efficiency to our rivals, Chancellor Randy Woodson said he would rather compare these statistics with other universities that have similar programs.

“UNC-CH has a lot of professional schools, so it is not a fair comparison to make because the degrees are very different,” Woodson said. 

N.C. State only has one professional school: the College of Veterinary Medicine.

According to Woodson, the need for cost-cutting stems from a lack of state funding combined with an increased number of graduates. With more graduates and less money available, the cost per degree naturally has to decrease, Woodson said. “We can’t afford to keep growing if we are not getting the money to keep growing.” 

NCSU has already had to decrease the number of incoming freshman it admits. Unlike UNC-CH, almost all of N.C. State’s programs depend on state funding.

“It is not a good thing we have had to cut costs because that means we have lost money … it is a good thing that we have been responsible to the fiscal environment,” Woodson said.

The chancellor said he attributes the increased number of graduates to enrollment growth, especially in graduate programs. The 2006-2007 school year had one of the largest freshman classes the University had ever seen, so now many of those students are graduating.

This year, N.C. State saw a 15 percent increase in applications as opposed to last year. Woodson said he attributes the increase in applications to “how people around the state see us.”  For example, The Princeton Review ranked N.C. State as the sixth best value in the nation. 

Woodson said, “We work very hard to keep our educational costs as low as possible, and we reduced our tuition well below the UNC system.”

Seventy-three percent of the University’s undergraduates graduate within six years. Woodson said this is second in the state only to UNC-CH, which has a 90 percent graduation rate.

However, Woodson still cautions the making of this comparison between the two universities due to their differences in programs. 

“It has a lot to do with the difficulty of the subject matter,” Woodson said.

The chancellor said he would rather compare our graduation rates to other engineering schools like Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech. “That’s where we spend our time comparing ourselves.”

Woodson said he believes our graduation rates still have room for improvement and would like the increase of these rates to rely less on enrollment and graduate student growth and more on “academic success.”

Woodson said he hopes to increase “academic success” through the improvement of advising programs for students and believes the increase in enrollment will continue.

“We will likely remain the largest university in the state for quite some time,” Woodson said.