CHAPEL HILL (April 29, 2026) – How do you run a massive research university when the state legislature, amid persistent inflation, hasn’t adopted a new budget in three years?

“It’s a challenge for Carolina and all the other schools in the (UNC) System to operate without a (new) state budget,” UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts – a former state budget director himself – says in the accompanying video.

“And the System has been clear that its number one priority for the short (legislative) session is passage of a budget that includes enrollment funding for the UNC System,” Roberts says.

North Carolina remains the only state in the nation that hasn’t adopted a budget for 2025-26.

Roberts explains that the UNC System is funded in arrears, based on the previous year’s enrollment – at the same time Carolina is moving to increase enrollment by 500 students a year.

So the General Assembly owes the state’s public universities $159 million for increased enrollment at a time when enrollment in many of the nation’s universities is  shrinking.

“We don’t have (additional) funding for the current freshmen, but also for the sophomores. Half of our undergraduate population has not been funded by the state – again, not just here at Carolina, but across the UNC System,” Roberts says.

“So we really hope and believe that that will be addressed here in the short session,” he says.