The Board of Trustees voted Friday to approve the fee requests submitted by Chancellor Jim Woodward as well as the campus-initiated tuition increase plan.
Both the fee package and the CITI now await approval from UNC President Erskine Bowles and the Board of Governors before going to the state legislature for final approval.
The fee package includes the indebtedness fee increase to pay fund the renovations to Talley Student Center and Atrium Food Court.
Students turned out en masse at a Student Senate meeting last month after senators passed a resolution endorsing the “Rally4Talley fee” which some said went against the results of Oct. 5 fee referenda. The fee review committee, which Student Senate President Kelli Rogers was co-chair of, then approved the package, sending it to the BOT where it needed and received full board approval to be passed on to Bowles and the BOG.
Rogers, who did not attend the BOT meeting, said the Board’s decision to reallocate 50 cents from the athletics fee increase to the education technology fee increase was a good indication of the University’s dedication to education.
“Specifically, the adjustment for the education technology fee and the athletics fee to make sure education was kept as a top priority for N.C. State was important,” she said.”
The approval of the campus-initiated tuition increase is an effort to both decrease and redirect a $200 tuition increase passed by the general assembly earlier this year. The plan reduces the “tax on tuition” to $150 and allows the funds to be reinvested in the University instead of going to the state government.
Rogers said the CITI was created with intention of not making the tuition increase a tax on students.
“[The approval of the CITI] was important and i think that the decsion to allow 50 percent of that increase to go back to financial aid was crucial, especially during this economic time,” she said. “The Board of Governors almost certainly sees and agrees with this tuition increase, as well.”
The Board of Governors, the governing body of the UNC System, next meets Jan. 8, 2010 where the CITI and the fee package will be on the agenda.
