Chancellor James Oblinger said his reason was simple. The UNC-system president, Erskine Bowles, felt strongly that each university’s tuition increase needed to be reflective of the legislature’s treatment of it.
Though it’s not a zero-percent increase, as Chancellor James Moeser recommended for UNC-Chapel Hill, Oblinger said he thinks it’s fair.
“I didn’t ask for zero because we were entitled to ask for 6.5 percent,” Oblinger said, referring to the Board of Governors’ cap on increasing tuition for the next three years.
Oblinger sent a memo to the joint tuition and fees committee recommending an approximate three percent tuition increase for the next academic year.
He said what drove him away from asking from recommending no increase was “the observation that we have been growing significantly.”
Student Senate President Greg Doucette, who is also the co-chair of the University’s Fee Advisory Committee, said he did not think with the way the current system at the University is structured that there could ever be a recommendation not to increase tuition.
“It’s set up so there’s really no way to block an increase unless it’s an administrator blocking an increase,” Doucette said.
Bobby Mills, student body president and co-chair of the Tuition Advisory Committee, said he was content with the chancellor’s recommendation because it was exactly what he had recommended.
“I feel, at certain times, increases are needed because we are like a business,” Mills said. “With that being said, there are times where you need to cut certain parts of that.”
According to Doucette, the administration claims that students will always vote against increases.
“Regardless of whether or not that’s true, when so many students are against a fee increase, that should raise some eyebrows. The same applies to tuition,” he said.
Doucette argued with the notion that there is a wide-spread belief in the University that NCSU has kept its tuition low for so many years that it’s time to increase it.
“I don’t agree with people’s cost of attendance going up,” he said.
The chancellor’s motion to not increase tuition to the 6.5 percent cap, Doucette said, was a political move.
“The chancellor realized it wouldn’t have gone over well with the public [to raise to the cap],” Doucette said. “It wouldn’t have gone over well with the legislature.”
The chancellor said not having any tuition increase did not address any of the University’s needs, including providing funding for the provost’s quality and accessibility fund, which the provost was required to develop a three-year spending plan for.
“The money we did get is all very targeted, very earmarked,” Oblinger said. “We can’t use it for quality and accessibility.”
According to Oblinger, UNC President Erskine Bowles demands to know the specifics of where the money is going for that category.
The University’s fee advisory committee requested a 6.5 percent increase of fees, which Oblinger said he supported, especially since the committee did not recommend every group to receive its full increase.
Although the Board of Trustees members have the ability to veto recommendations on tuition and fees and have done so to increase the athletics fee in the past, Oblinger said he is not aware of any such plans.
“Nobody [from the BOT] telegraphed me about fee requests,” Oblinger said.
Despite the fact that the Board of Trustees and Board of Governors can override recommendations that individual universities’ tuition and fee committees make for their institutions, Oblinger said all the groups are on three different distinct levels and have the ability to disagree with him.
Although Oblinger said the Board of Governors has discussed several plans to limit tuition and fee increases, including a tuition consistency plan, where each class of students is guaranteed to pay a set amount for tuition over a four-year period, he said the board decided the cap would be most advantageous.