TABLE OF CONTENTS    FRONT PAGE    NEXT ARTICLE   PREVIOUS ARTICLE

State produces draft of proposed tuition policies

Full tuition remission for graduate assistants and a streamlined process for setting tuition rates are two of the changes proposed by a state task force.

These proposed changes are part of a draft recommendation by the Tuition Policy Task Force. This task force, created by the Board of Governors, has spent most of the year developing a comprehensive policy for tuition and fees within the state university system.

The task force is about midway through its work and issued the draft report to get feedback from the Board of Governors and the 16 state campuses, said Jarret Cummings, director of special projects in the General Administration's planning division.

"We are trying to see if we are relatively consistent with where the university community is on this subject," Cummings said.

Among the recommendations are:

• Allowing the Board of Governors to set tuition rates at the board's annual March meeting. The General Assembly still would have final say on tuition and could alter rates approved by the Board of Governors.

  The change would mean tuition could be set in the spring for the following school year, allowing students advance notice on the cost of the next school year and how much financial aid they would receive.

• Limiting the amount that the Board of Governors could increase tuition to a rolling average of the last three years of the consumer price index. That would mean that if in the last three years the consumer price index had increased by 2 percent, 1 percent and 6 percent, the Board of Governors could raise tuition no more than 3 percent.

• Allowing graduate schools to give full tuition remission to graduate assistants. The state's graduate schools have long contended that the state law forbidding such tuition remission puts the state at a huge disadvantage in recruiting top graduate students.

• Each campus would manage its own remission of tuition for graduate assistants.

Each campus has a contact person responsible for collecting feedback to the task force's draft report.

At Carolina, the contact person is Pete Andrews, chair of the Faculty Council. Andrews encouraged all members of the faculty and staff to read the draft report, which is posted on the Faculty Council's web site,

and e-mail comments to Andrews at pete_andrews@unc.edu

The council web site is at http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/ Once there, click on "What's New." That will lead to a series of choices that includes the Tuition Policy Task Force draft report.

Next article
Previous article
Table of contents
Front Page

To UNC-CH Home Page