About a month ago, we all received an email from NC State about the university’s new physical master plan. While the email was a bit overdue, given construction has been impacting campus since the summer, it was nice to have a 224-page document to detail what these changes entail.
After reviewing the master plan and looking at the current state of college education in the country, I believe it’s far better to invest in building new universities than expanding current ones.
NC State has continually accepted more and more students over the past few years. With last year’s incoming class, the school welcomed its largest freshman class in NC State history for the third year in a row. They followed up on breaking that record this past fall with 5,614 incoming first-year students.
If NC State intends to continue this trend, it makes sense to expand and revitalize the campus. We all know many of the facilities on campus, namely the dining and residence halls, can’t meet the demands of current students. Housing itself is especially insufficient. While it’s amazing that nearly 10,000 students live on campus, that means at least 17,000 of the total 27,317 undergraduate students can’t.
Even the master plan itself admits to the failings of the residence and dining halls.
“The residential village that is situated west of Dan Allen Drive and includes Bragaw Hall, Lee Hall, Sullivan Hall and Fountain Dining Hall supports the highest concentration of on-campus student housing at NC State,” the report says. “The quality of these facilities is no longer sufficient to adequately address student life needs. Lee and Sullivan Halls lack ADA accessibility, and Fountain Dining Hall is significantly undersized and outdated.”
I don’t think anyone would disagree with this sentiment — these facilities are in dire need of attention, especially to accommodate the influx of students.
There shouldn’t be any blame placed on the first-year students themselves; everyone deserves access to a college education. However, many of the changes seem encouraged by the ability to hold more students rather than to help those currently enrolled.
Campus should be more accessible in every sense, and I think there are a lot of great ideas in the master plan that would encourage that.
Improving and expanding the walking paths would make campus more navigable for the large student body. Creating more areas on campus where students can gather, study and dine sounds amazing. Upgrading old buildings to make them more accessible to people who use wheelchairs is a necessary change.
But all of these changes, especially making campus more wheelchair accessible, shouldn’t be contingent on so many larger and lengthier construction projects that’ll upheave sections of campus.
Much of the master plan is based in making campus more connected, but if one of the intentions of the plan is to get more students on campus, then how connected can it all really be?
Ultimately, this isn’t sustainable for students. There is a finite number of people qualified to be professors in the Triangle. If we want to continue to show off our 16:1 student-to-professor ratio, then it’s in our best interest to keep our growth at a manageable pace. If you think more classes taught by graduate students is the answer, you are sorely mistaken. Further, constant construction and detours doesn’t exactly develop goodwill with the students who will graduate before it’s completed.
This also has an impact on the larger collegiate environment. The issue of universities closing is an ongoing issue. According to The National Center for Education Statistics, there were 2,015 public universities in 2010. That number fell to 1,892 in 2021. This rate has massively increased over the decade prior.
While small private schools seem to be the most susceptible to closure, other types of institutions are not immune. Meanwhile, private, elite institutions like Harvard, Duke or Yale are doing very well in their endowments.
While we are neither a private nor elite institution, it seems the campus wants to move in that direction. In 2000, NC State’s acceptance rate was about 65%. In 2023, that number fell to about 46%.
Granted, the number of people who apply to NC State isn’t within the University’s control. But when the college admissions process is designed to prioritize “top applicants,” you’re inevitably neglecting the sector of the population that might not have had the ability to do well in high school for any number of reasons.
NC State can boast that last year’s incoming class had an average 4.31 weighted GPA, but for the largest university in North Carolina, I’d like to think we’re trying to serve North Carolinians of all backgrounds, not just privileged ones.
All of this is to say we’ve really betrayed our title as a public institution. More students are being brought on campus without the facilities necessary to support them beyond freshman year, all the while having to navigate constant construction and blockages for a future they will have already graduated from.
It’s never been just about the construction. The foundation we came here on is being ripped up, and though we’re told it’s for the better, it certainly doesn’t feel that way and the master plan doesn’t give me any hope.
