Debra Mullis Headshot
The University of North Carolina system will always be a business at the end of the day, as every student is a new customer. Just like major corporations, the UNC System creates and follows a strategic plan every five years. The end of the 2021-22 academic year will mark the end of the UNC Board of Governors’ (BOG) Higher Expectations plan, which focused on student success, access, affordability, efficiency and community engagement.
The UNC System was successful in meeting many goals, but most of the goals were not lofty to start with. One of the main goals for student success was getting the five-year graduation rate to 70% by 2022, which now sits successfully at 72.7%. This goal, however, was only a 4% increase from the 66% five-year graduation rate at the time the plan was made.
Access was an area where universities fell particularly short. Despite the consistent growth of the overall five-year graduation rate, the degree completion rate for low-income students has stayed low, with the 2021-22 rate 11.8% lower than their goal of just 37% growth. New enrollments for rural and low-income students also did not meet the set targets.
The low achievement in the access area may be due to the UNC System murky affordability goals. The system is committed to providing education “in a cost-effective manner without regard to a student’s ability to pay,” as is already required by Title IX of the North Carolina State Constitution. No concrete targets were created to lower tuition costs and no concrete data was provided to show how tuition prices have changed in the past five years.
Tuition is revenue for the UNC system. Both a blessing and a curse, in-state students are on a fixed-rate tuition plan for eight semesters. Each new cohort of students can be charged a new, higher price — in 2021 the BOG approved an average tuition increase of 1.2%. There are also no restrictions to the growth of student fees. While tuition and fees have not grown by incredible degrees, there has been no plan to make anything cheaper.
The next five-year strategic plan was described by the BOG as a “refresh” of the previous plan in their meeting on Jan. 19. It plans to continue to focus on the same broad objectives to improve the community impact and student success, while working on returning enrollment to pre-2020 levels.
A big strategy for increasing enrollment post-pandemic is Project Kitty Hawk, a new system-wide online learning platform. Project Kitty Hawk will work with Online Program Managers (OPMs) and become its own registered nonprofit. Affiliated universities will get two-thirds of revenue from the online degrees. The OPMs will get the other third of revenue.
The UNC System and the General Assembly have both realized the current college customer-base will be on the decline because of the birth rate consistently falling in the past few decades. The General Assembly pledged $97 million towards Project Kitty Hawk in the most recent state budget. The UNC System now has its eyes set on appealing to the adult-learners, which it describes as an “underserved market.”
Colleges had to quickly make changes during the pandemic to classes, healthcare, housing and staffing. While the system has not fallen apart under the stress of the changes, any student enrolled in online classes can tell you they are not perfect. Adult learners have further difficulties to add to the online learning environment including demanding jobs, families and other responsibilities that will be difficult for the UNC System to support.
With the great emphasis on Project Kitty Hawk, the 2022 refresh to the UNC System’s strategic plan is future-oriented, but there are still current problems that require close attention. The BOG has now changed UNC chancellors’ financial incentives to be tied to the on time graduation rate instead of the five-year graduation rate. It also provides an incentive to chancellors to keep tuition increases in-line with median household income. Mental health is also now included in the student success metric in the refresh.
These are all important goals that will help finish what the Higher Expectations started. As of now, 24 of 50 pages of the new strategic plan’s presentation are spent on Project Kitty Hawk and only 9 pages are devoted to the new goals. This makes it seem like the other goals are less of a priority.
There is still room for educational, experiential and economic improvements for currently enrolled UNC customers. While lower enrollment is an issue the UNC System must deal with, increasing the base of customers they appeal to will not be the best way to fix fundamental problems in universities — like affordability and degree completion.
Although the campus town halls have all passed for providing public comment on the strategic plan refresh, there is still a survey and a form for open-ended feedback.