An excerpt from the Pope Center’s report on the state of North Carolina universities and colleges:
For example, North Carolina has the fourth-highest per-student state funding in the country. The UNC system has been well-funded since its inception in 1971; today, its overall annual budget is roughly $9.5 billion, with about $2.6 billion coming from the state. Despite that abundance, tuition and fees have gone up by 65 percent in ten years. Moreover, student aid packages have not kept up with those increases.
As the State of the State report reveals, results of these trends include an increase in the percentage of students with loan debt, an increase in the inflation-adjusted amount of such debt, and an increase in loan default rates. Unfortunately, in recent years, some universities have added insult to injury by spending money on dubious construction projects and by beefing up their athletics departments, the costs of which are often passed on to students.
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