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UNCP trustees
recommend tuition increase
The UNC Pembroke
Board of Trustees voted December 5 to recommend a $300 tuition increase
for the 2004-5 school year.
The 12 percent tuition
hike, and the estimated $1.3 million it would generate, would be divided
equally between faculty and staff pay increases and increased financial
aid to offset the increase for students on aid.
The proposed $300
"campus-based" tuition increase would be followed by a second
$300 hike in 2005-6, the board recommended. The UNCP board passed the
tuition adjustments to the UNC Board of Governors for its approval.
Student fees would
also increase for 2004-5 after the trustees approved a $35 hike in fees
to be split between technology, athletics and student activities.
The board approved
the tuition increase by an 8-2 vote, with Trustee Rebecca Bullard and
Student Government Association President Nadean Hafner dissenting.
Bullard said UNCP
may lose its reputation as an "affordable university."
But Chancellor Allen
C. Meadors defended the request, saying state cuts and several years
without staff and faculty pay increases have been painful.
"The legislature
has moved away from its financial responsibility and placed the burden
back on the campuses," Chancellor Meadors said. "We have had
employees drop their health insurance, and these are people making $17-18,000
a year."
UNC Pembroke's tuition
and fees, at $2,490 per year, are fourth lowest among the 16 UNC campuses,
Chancellor Meadors said. While praising the trustees for holding down
tuition, the chancellor said the other campuses are requesting similar
or larger campus-based tuition increases.
Hafner passed out
a letter to the board requesting a $200 increase, saying $300 is "too
high." She said more than a third of UNCP students have jobs and
more will have to get jobs to pay for increased tuition.
Trustee Dick Taylor
sympathized. "I sympathize with you because I worked my way through
school, but what the state has done to us, education wise, is preposterous,"
Taylor said.
Faculty Senate Chair
Tom Dooling said faculty would endorse a larger tuition increase if
it went to pay salary increases. He said lack of pay increases may hurt
faculty recruitment and retention.
"There is a
sense of unhappiness among faculty," Dr. Dooling said. "There
is a marketplace where there are steady (pay) increases."
Chancellor Meadors
apologized to students, but said he could not allow UNCP to fall farther
behind other universities in North Carolina.
"We would love
to stay below every other university, but we've lost $6 million to state
cuts, and campus-based tuition increases stay at the University, unlike
the last (North Carolina General Assembly-mandated) tuition increase,
which went to the state."
In other action,
the UNCP trustees approved a record number of graduates for Winter Commencement.
395 students, including 75 graduate students, will receive diplomas
on December 13, said Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Roger Brown.
The board also approved
the purchase of the four buildings of University Village Apartments
by the UNCP Foundation, Inc. Vice Chancellor for Business Affair Neil
Hawk said the Foundation plans to build two additional units residential
units at the North Campus complex.
And, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth
Dole will be speaker at Spring Commencement, Chancellor Meadors announced.
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