RALEIGH (January 11, 2023) – As the NC General Assembly returns today for its 2023 session, state legislators deserve credit for one good thing they’ve done for the state’s public universities: NC Promise.
The program offers in-state tuition of $500 a semester for in-state students and $2,500 a semester for out-of-state students. It started at three UNC System universities in 2018: Elizabeth City State University, UNC Pembroke and Western Carolina University.
This academic year, Fayetteville State University joined NC Promise, which Chancellor Darrell Allison sees as a definite boon for the school and its students.
“I do see it as a wonderful tool – no doubt about it – where the cost of education is a question for so many. So it definitely gets at the economic piece there, with $500 (a semester) for in-state tuition,” Allison says in the accompanying video.
NC PROMISE is about affordability and access in higher education.
Former UNC System President Margaret Spellings liked to point out that a student from Virginia could actually pay less in out-of-state tuition at nearby Elizabeth City State than the student would pay in in-state tuition at Virginia schools.
There were fears, skepticism and hesitation at first, though – Fayetteville State and Winston-Salem State both asked to be removed when NC Promise was first proposed in the 2016 session of the General Assembly.
But enrollment is up at all four schools since NC Promise was introduced, though it ticked downward just slightly this year at UNC Pembroke and Western Carolina.
Pembroke and Western enrolled their largest classes ever in fall 2018. Officials at Pembroke said they were prepared for an increase in first-time students, but surprised by the number of transfer students who took advantage of the low tuition.1
Elizabeth City reversed its declining enrollment, which fell to just 1,357 students in fall 2016. By fall 2022, it had climbed to 2,149 – a 58% increase.
And with the addition of Fayetteville State, FSU enrolled its largest class ever in fall 2022 – when most UNC System schools saw enrollment decline.2
“The NC Promise Program has been a success on multiple fronts,” concludes the UNC System’s annual report on the program. “College affordability has increased and ECSU, FSU, UNCP, and WCU have increased their enrollment.”3
“It’s been one of the better policy decisions that we have made over the past 10 years,” Senate leader Phil Berger told The Assembly last year.4
THOUGH NC PROMISE IS AVAILABLE to every student at Fayetteville State, Allison says the university has focused on two groups in particular:
- Transfer students from Fayetteville Technical Community College (FTCC), the state’s third-largest community college. In addition to NC Promise, FSU created scholarships to make Fayetteville State tuition-free for every FTCC graduate with an associate degree and at least a 3.0 grade-point average.
Fayetteville State saw “a very significant bump-up,” Allison says, in students from FTCC. “Where we’ve seen them as two different tracks, we see it as one,” he says.
The attention goes beyond checkbooks. “We’re really getting in tune with how do you not just get here, but how do we get you across the goal line?” Allison says.
- Military-related students. Fayetteville State is just 10 miles from Fort Bragg. Out of 102 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the nation, Allison says, FSU ranks No. 1 in enrolling military-connected students – 2,000 in fall 2022, or almost 30% of its 6,787 students, the highest percentage in the UNC System.
“(We’re) off to a good start, I think, with NC Promise,” Allison says.
AT THIS POINT, NC Promise costs the state $82.5 million a year to “buy down” tuition rates at the four universities.5
But since its inception, we’ve viewed NC Promise as a step toward fulfilling the state constitution’s mandate that higher education “as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.”6
It has increased access and affordability at four of the UNC System’s 16 universities and for 11% of its undergraduates. It was critical to reversing Elizabeth City State’s perilous enrollment decline.
Some want $500-a-semester tuition extended to other campuses. Others wonder how long the General Assembly will keep its promise. There are no signs the commitment has wavered, however.
So as the legislature returns to session, it’s not culture wars, but big, sweeping investments like this in our public institutions – and their students, North Carolina’s future workforce – that should be applauded.
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCULiUEzdgU&t=121s.
2 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2022/11/enrollment-down-across-unc-system/.
3 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=67036&code=bog, p. 17.
4 https://www.theassemblync.com/education/higher-education/a-higher-ed-subsidy-from-the-right-elizabeth-city-state-university/.
5 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=67036&code=bog, p. 16.
6 https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Constitution/NCConstitution.html, Article IX, Sec. 9.
Leave a Reply