Keep the Out-of-State Enrollment Cap

Published January 26, 2013

By Gene Arnold

By Gene Arnold, former legislator and NC SPIN panelist.

Hold the percentage of out of state enrollment at 18%.  Better still, reduce it to 10% and severely penalize any school which finds ways to get around the cap.  Out of state kids come to North Carolina for one reason: it is the best bargain for the money in the United States.  It has been and should remain so, but that bargain should be for North Carolinians.  Although I did not always agree with Rep. Cary Allred, he made the best argument on the House floor in debate when he said "there should be no interest in educating people from New Jersey when we have so many good students in North Carolina."

If the Universities want to raise their SAT entrance scores they should concentrate on cooperating with the State Board of Education and the Community Colleges on raising the SAT scores of North Carolina kids. Certainly all colleges want to have high entrance requirements in order to earn a long list of distinguished graduates.  But the burden to make their university affordable and available is on the university.

These points go hand in hand with the requirement to graduate more students.  To have an abysmal graduation rate of 26% seems to indicate a need to concentrate on North Carolina kids rather than to stack the deck with rich out of state students.

January 26, 2013 at 11:41 am
Patrick Donner says:

Cap the enrollment. It is a state school paid by the taxpayers. I have paid taxes here the majority of my life and why should NC pay for out of state students. Let their states pay for them. NC has invested a lot of time, money and talent into our tax paid schools.